I had a customer question me about our delivery schedules the past couple of months and thought it may be a good thing to publish my response so everyone can see what has taken place.

As you know, 3 months ago we launched our new custom built software that has been under development of almost 2 years. Unfortunately we were forced to launch about 2 months sooner than we wanted to because of our old software, built on a Filemaker Pro database, crashed one day resulting a very corrupted database. That crash took about 2 straight days of recovery to re-coop most of the information we needed to continue operating, and put ultimately us into fast mode for launching of the new system.

The launch for the most part was successful, however we hadn’t had any time for testing the system in real time action and training of the staff on how to use it. In addition, not all of the modules were completed to be totally functional the way we needed them to be, so we had a dilemma on our hands. The good news was, our processes were solid, so even though we had system issues, we could still produce orders even though we were crippled with software problems.

The issues causing delays in orders can be broken down to percentages of departments

75% - Order entry – the order entry staff had to learn a whole new way of entering orders, finding information, communicating with customers and so forth. After using the old system for 12 years, the new system was a huge change. With the necessity of the early launch, we did not do any proper training resulting in a large delay in getting orders in the system. At the same time, we were making changes on the fly as issues cropped up, so the bottleneck definitely started here.
                • We are now fully trained in the new system and are meeting my expectations of having all orders entered within 48 hours of receipt, with all art, rushes and revisions completed within 24 hours.
                • Our new system is built for speed and most importantly accuracy, so the information that is entered, is correct and ready for production.
                • We are launching the first phase of our web application today, which will allow for automated receipt of orders, resulting in immediate information flow, both in and out of our system.
                • I added staff in the Order Entry Department to assure on-time entry

15% - Receiving - Because order entry was behind in the entering of orders, receiving was having a huge problem with getting product in that didn’t match any order in our system. Because of that, they were having to manage product multiple times rather than only once. We have always had systems in place to manage product that arrived prior to receiving information, but not to this volume. In addition, the new system wasn’t giving us all of the information we needed at first to match the product to the order, again because of the early launch, so we had delays there as well.
                • The Receiving Department is now fully trained and back to receiving all product the day it arrives.
                • They are able to handle 98% of all incoming boxes the day they arrive without touching them a second time
                • More time for exceptions and follow-up

5% - Production issues – Throughout the transition, the department that actually performed the best, even though they took the most heat was production. They were being asked to get orders done the second they were being cleared through Order Entry and Receiving, because they were already late. There were a few times when the issues were caused by Production, but not many.
                 • With orders being entered on time, production can maintain a semblance of a schedule with constantly being interrupted with emergencies
5% - Invoicing - The proverbial, garbage in, garbage out really pertained to the Invoicing department. This module was the last one being worked on when the old system crashed and was the least developed when we had to launch early. We actually had the key person in the department quit because of the changeover, which wasn’t a bad thing, but it added more turmoil to the company. We are now invoicing on schedule and being more proactive with customer contacts with questions, issues etc.
                • We are building an automated module that will allow us to automatically price orders based on agreed upon formulas and automatically invoice orders the second the shipping information hits the system. This will free up more labor time as well as give our customers immediate costing of the orders.

We do have a lot more plans to make the system better, quicker and more intuitive over the coming months. The most important part is we made it through the horrible transition period and are almost back to normal with better things ahead. I hope this explains what has occurred over the past 3 months and will alleviate any concerns that this is going to be a long term problem. I promise you, we didn’t like it any better than our customers did.

Rob