Distributor: 6 Out of 10 of Your Orders Are on Hold. Here’s How to Fix It.

(This article was original published in Oct, 2019 but was updated July, 2023).

When we first wrote this article in 2019, we didn’t know the industry was on the edge of the biggest supplier/distributor evolution since 24-hour ship capabilities.

In 2019, there were no suppliers with ePO's on commonsku and only a percentage with connected inventory and order status. 

Today, seven major suppliers have connected ePOs (or are in the final stages of connecting product data and purchase orders), and more than forty are connected through inventory and order status. That’s thousands of products and millions of data points harnessed through the power of a connected workflow. 

Between 2019 and now (plus a pandemic and near-catastrophic supply chain issues) and you have an incredible net gain of the brightest and best suppliers taking tremendous bets and making incredible strides toward one goal: Simplicity for all.  

Though we’ve made incredible progress, there’s still work to do. And as a reminder of how bad it was (and still is for some distributors and some suppliers) we’re dusting off this lynchpin article, hoping it inspires you (distributors) and you (suppliers) to eradicate this cluster even faster over the next few years. 

What cluster?

This is the nightmare to resolve.

(Disclaimer: The following conversation is a work of fiction. Any name, character, or incident that has any resemblance to an actual project you have is purely coincidental. Or is it?)

The nightmare (which actually, probably, really happened to you just a day or two ago):

1. You win a big order from a new client! It’s a tight in-hands date but a BIG win. (Woo-hoo! High-fives all around!) 

2. You email the purchase order to the supplier.

3. You follow up with the supplier to ensure they actually received the purchase order.

4. There, you think. That’s safely done. On to the next fire … 

5. But wait … 

6. You put the wrong run charge on the PO, and forgot to add the set-up charge. Or you forgot to attach the artwork. Or you forgot to add the size breakdowns. Something happened. (Because 6-out-of-10 orders that you send to a supplier today are missing information or have incorrect information). 

7. Your precious, critical order, is set aside –put on hold– by the supplier.

8. Supplier calls you. Has a question on the PO. Leaves you a voicemail.  

9. You email the supplier. But also know you should probably call the supplier back. Voicemail. 

10. Two more calls later and … 

11. Finally, you connect. You and the supplier chat. Good, that’s resolved. Purchase order is now correct and you can finally move on to the next fire … 

12. Now comes the proof for your precious order.

13. But wait … 

14. There’s a problem. The logo is fine, but you notice that the supplier left off the copy. Now you’re getting nervous about the in-hands date. Enthusiasm drips. High-fives become low-fives.

15. You email back the supplier a note about the copy change.

16. Supplier emails you a confirmation.

17. You email back a confirmation of the confirmation. (Whew!)

18. Everyone good now? Fine? Good. Can we please go on to the next fire?

19. You finally get the corrected proof from the supplier. 

20. Email it to the customer. 

21. Customer doesn’t respond because they’re in meetings. All day. 

22. You leave a voicemail. Deep breath, must maintain a cool attitude to the customer but frantic inside (“Hey, Sue … just wanted you to know I need that proof approval today or we might miss your event date.”)

23. Customer finally approves proof at the end of the business day.  

24. You email the supplier the approval. We good now? Good.

25. But wait … 

26. Supplier calls. Now that there’s been a delay (because of playing phone tag and missing information and proof bounce backs), you’re going to miss your in-hands date if you don’t rush the order. 

27. Bickering ensues. Is it your fault because of missing info on the original PO? Or the supplier’s fault because of the missing copy? (Answer: Both). No-fives. Let’s just get the damn order here and on time.

28. You ask for an estimate on the freight costs. 

29. More bickering: Freight is outrageous because the product is heavy. “That’s ridiculous. If we do this our margin drops by 7%.”

30. You either go with it or miss the event date. Irritated, you approve overnight shipping knowing you’ll absorb the loss in the overall profit.

31. Order ships. 

32. At least it shipped. You get tracking. 

33. But wait …. 

34. Next afternoon, customer calls. Order never arrived. 

35. Fuming, you call the supplier. Supplier checks the order. 

36. Three phone calls later, you realize that the zip code was wrong on the customer’s address.

37. Meanwhile, your big win is now stuck in some holding pattern at UPS while you frantically try to get ahold of someone to try and find out where your damn order is. 

38. Customer’s pissed. 

39. You’re pissed. 

40. Supplier’s frustrated.

41. And everyone lost. 

42. Forty-steps later.

You sick of this yet?

Because it’s not this way anymore for some, but not all.

Here’s a shocker: pretend you had an order with no problems. Zilch, zero. The order just sailed right through from your fingertips to the client, delivered. Even still, there are an average of eight manual touches on every order you process. And that’s for orders that don’t have problems. 

Let’s put that in perspective: For every $1MM in sales (with an average order size of $1200), you’ll process 834 orders. But let’s say your order average is higher, and you process 500 orders for every $1MM. That’s still 4,000 times you’ll handle orders for every $1MM in sales. 

In the clusterf*ck, 42-step nightmare we used above, we covered a few (of many) problems that can happen on any given order. And if six out of ten happen that way, that’s 300 of your orders. 

You can easily see why you spend your time babysitting orders and not selling, it’s the classic, textbook example of “working in your business, not on your business.”

And yet we’ve only demonstrated the production side of the equation. We still have to invoice this nightmare order, which will have problems because of the disagreement over the freight discrepancy. And the order will sit, again. Which means you won’t get paid for a while. 

All these holding patterns: Margins take a hit. And profitability. And cashflow.

But most of all, your sanity.

There is a fix for all of this and it’s right in front of us. 

When we originally wrote this article in 2019, ePOs —the ability for you to automatically enter an order through commonsku and it directly inputs into the suppliers ERP, bypassing human intervention– was not yet integrated.

But now, all this has changed. 

In December of 2022, we interviewed Erin Harris and Emily Douglas with PCNA, just three months into the commonsku+PCNA ePO integration. It shows you the tremendous progress made, but also, the nightmare we can eliminate when two organizations double-down on their digital transformation on behalf of clients (if you want to skip to the most important parts of the convo, a script of the highlights is provided below):

What are ePOs and why PromoStandards?

PromoStandards are a translation protocol that automates (and therefore eliminates) virtually all of those irritating errors and missing information on orders. PromoStandards eliminates keying in orders and allows you to order the right product with the right product specs and the right details every time. 

How? 

To be honest .. it doesn’t really matter how (to you, the customer). 

You see, your customer doesn’t give a shit what pains you go through to get their orders right. And you (rightly) don’t really care what suppliers have to go through to get your orders right. It’s not that we’re all thoughtless and insensitive, we’re just busy. 

So here’s the deal. 

PromoStandards is available to all suppliers. So, why isn’t this live yet with all of your top suppliers? 

This is harsh, but we have to be honest: Because they haven’t made it a priority. But to make this a reality, they need to hear from you, their customer. When your customer calls you and complains about a problem, you jump through hoops to fix it. Likewise, suppliers do too. They respond to their customers because this is a very interdependent business: their success depends on yours. 

And when PromoStandards is a reality for your top suppliers, you’ll eliminate that nasty mess described above and use all that free time to sell more solutions for your clients. Which will make your clients more successful. Which will grow your sales. Which will grow suppliers’ sales.

Everybody wins.

So, let’s help everybody win. Here’s what you can do: 

1. Contact your Top 10 Suppliers. Ask them where they’re at with PromoStandards. Specifically, ask them about their ePO process and what progress they are making on it. You’ll likely hear how hard it is. (And it is). But it’s not impossible. In fact, some are making significant strides but not near enough and not fast enough. 

2. Here’s the selling point but it’s also a critical part of this process: You need to be involved in a system that integrates with PromoStandards (yes, like commonsku). Why? Because when PromoStandards becomes a reality for the majority, it will create a seismic shift in our industry (we wrote about that here). Those who are able to eliminate that mess described above will pull ahead of the pack, but you need to be on a system that is making PromoStandards a priority.  

3. To make your life easier, start using PromoStandards suppliers now.

Someday, we’ll be able to say that this nightmare was the archaic way of making orders happen in this business, but the sad reality is that it’s still normal for a great many of even the most successful distributors and suppliers who continue to throw people at a problem that only technology can fix.

Elizabeth Wimbush, the VP of Supply Chain & Sustainability with Genumark, one of the largest distributors in North America, said this, “Any suppliers that have that kind of full integration, I will put them in front of the sales team more, or I will find ways to remind the sales team about them more. Because it just increases efficiency so much.”

We’ve accepted the way it has been -like that f’d up scenario described above- for far too long.

Let’s do it now. And create more time to sell. And more profitability.

And more joy; less stress. 

And guess what?

Along the way, we’ll discover that, with all that time-savings to sell more, we just might double the size of this damn industry.