Manufacturer Uses Automation to Cut Order Intake Time By 75%

Understanding the situation

A family-owned concrete products manufacturer with both domestic and international clients relied on a long-time employee for its entire order intake process. With this employee due to retire, the manufacturer was worried how the process would be handled going forward — and wanted to see how it could improve a 14-day order review process.

Exploring the challenge

CLA’s digital team met with the retiring employee and learned his process. To streamline the steps, CLA created an intake form with logic built in with a “right the first time” approach. This immediately boosted the quantity and quality of knowledge transferred between sales and the lab creating specific product formularies for each customer. Next, CLA created review rules to route the order to the right team of engineers and chemists with the professional knowledge required for each job. Then, the team set up a tracking system for each professional touching a job, replacing a complex system of manual time tracking in spreadsheets.

Achieving results

The intake process was cut from two weeks to two days, providing the manufacturer increased capacity to take on more orders — and boosting customer satisfaction.

With the new system, every employee can see each order stage as it’s reviewed, which is key if any bottlenecks arise. The system also uses automatic routing to assign tasks better.

The new process tracks labor inputs for R&D tax credit calculations, improving accuracy and efficiency and replacing a manual process.