The Pitfalls of Manual Ordering in a Coffee Supply Chain

Here's a typical coffee supply business scenario: your customer calls you up to place their food and beverage orders. Your staff member manually enters all of them into your spreadsheet without the guarantee that they're really typing the orders in correctly. Then the other mundane tasks follow: invoicing, monitoring your inventory, chasing customers for payments, manually processing each order. It's an extremely time-consuming and labour-intensive process, right? What's more, your customers don't really love it either.

Having this kind of manual ordering process in place is risky for coffee suppliers. It comes with a lot of downsides that go beyond just the usual misplaced orders and data entry errors. Below, we'll share with you some other disadvantages of manual ordering so that you can recognise the factors that might be pulling your business down. 

1. WAITING FOR PAYMENTS

The problem with manual order processing is you have to do everything yourself. That includes waiting for payments to come in and chasing your customers for invoices that are past their due date. It's completely different when you have a streamlined online process where you can get on with doing what you love whilst letting your system automatically send electronic invoices and charge customers by credit card or direct debit which means no more chasing payments. 

Let's face it, having to call your customers and ask them to pay you is never fun. It eats up your time, diverts your attention from completing other important tasks, and it's also not a conversation that anyone really wants to have. 

2. LIMITED VISIBILITY

To grow your coffee roasting business, you need to have a complete picture of how your order process works. But this isn't possible with a manual process. Not having an automated b2b ordering system in place means you have limited visibility over your data. It also means you'll be experiencing poor order management and it's really frustrating to have to search through all your files just to look for a particular order of single origin coffee from a loyal customer. 

What's more, coffee suppliers like you have a lot going on and let's face it, the probability of misplacing your order forms in piles of other documents or forgetting to save your Excel files is high. Relying on a manual ordering process or a paper-based system will never improve your business processes and can jeopardise your business growth.

Apart from limited visibility, with manual ordering you also don't get valuable reporting data. With an automated system, you will be able to generate powerful insights and reports which you can use to create excellent business strategies and make better day-to-day business decisions. 

3. HUMAN ERROR

The thing is, no matter how experienced you or your staff are when it comes to data entry, there is still a very high chance that there will be a few errors. Did you know that 90% of spreadsheets actually contain mistakes? According to Xero, data-entry errors happen even when people are well-rested and 100% focused.

Obviously, these data entry issues can negatively impact your coffee supply business. A large order of 100 espresso blends that becomes an order of 10 due to human error will disappoint your customer, and a small order of 10 filter roasts that becomes an order of 100 can cost your business wasted resources and thousands of dollars.

Manual order processes are inefficient and come with lots of pitfalls. If you want your coffee business to grow, you need to move away from this traditional practice and switch to an automated process of managing orders. B2B ordering systems like Ordermentum can help you do just that.

Ordermentum is the leading ordering and payments platform for the food and beverage industry. The handy mobile app allows your customers to place their orders any time, any where and all orders automatically appear in your system.

The app generates production reports, pick slips, customer invoices, delivery slips, instant data and metrics on orders and keeps track of payments - which means that you've got all tools you  need to run your coffee roasting business in the one place.

4. TIME WASTAGE AND PRODUCTIVITY LOSS

No-one wants to go to work just to do repetitive admin tasks. It wastes your time and affects your overall productivity. Just imagine the number of hours and the level of focus you could put into business-growth tasks if you didn't need to manually take orders, email invoices one by one and follow up customers for payments.

With Ordermentum, the proof is in the pudding as they say - local coffee roasters Rumble Coffee switched to the online ordering platform almost two years ago and it's helped them transform their business. Not only have they seen a spike in additional accessories along with regular orders they have also streamlined their ordering process so they can focus on other things. 

“At the end of the day we’re roasters who love what we do. We didn’t get into this industry to chase payments and invoices and stress about collecting orders from clients who won’t answer the phone. We’d rather spend time serving our customers, sourcing better coffee and producing the best product we can. I actually think Ordermentum has put us in a better mood too because we’re less stressed,”
Matt Hampton, Founder, Rumble Coffee 

WHY CHOOSE ORDERMENTUM?

Using a dedicated food and beverage ordering app like Ordermentum means your customers can submit their orders straight to your system anytime and anywhere whilst you work on what you really love doing (no more time wastage and productivity loss). You can automatically send electronic invoices and instantly charge your customers by credit card or direct debit (no more waiting for payments), and you can generate powerful reports and access your data wherever you are (no more limited visibility). 

On top of that, your retail orders will also appear in your system in real time, eliminating the need to manually enter data (no more human errors). Ordermentum is even customisable - you can set up a digital catalogue that's individualised for each customer and you can easily set custom pricing for each retailer you sell to. 

If you'd like to learn more about Ordermentum and how it can streamline your order processing, get in touch with us today.