Laddawn.com : CE sessions

Notes from Aug, Sept. and... from weekly visits with CE, conversations with Tim T., etc.

9/10/13

Reviewed web screens with Mark, Tina, Meme and Sarah

Power user contacts and determining bill to (all contacts)

• CE envisions sales orgs being able to pick and choose bill to’s that power users are authorized to order for. I think what we are envisioning something more blunt; just flagging contacts as power users who are technically able to order on behalf of any bill to in a sales org (???).
• They would prefer to reverse the order that they enter bill to/contact when initiating a CE request.  In an ideal world, they’d enter a contact, and that would filter the bill to selection down to one, in the case of “non-power users”; or filter to a subset, in the case of “regional power users,” or all bill tos in the case of orgs with totally centralized purchasing.  I said I’d make a note of this but that it was not likely for release 1 – however, it does seem quite relevant to our filtering discussion (attached). They did seem OK with entering the bill to, then the contact, as they do today, and then having their list filters and  checkout bill to defaulting to the CE request bill to.

Saved Items design - If you delete a saved MOD item does it delete the quote(s) behind the scenes?

• Upon review of specs, I could not find an answer to this question.  (We do say that if Sarah is accessing Dennis’s list, the delete buttons are disabled. We also say that “Upon Clicking delete Icon, you will get a warning pop-up, confirming Delete execution.”)

• My best guess is that yes, deleting a MOD deletes the quote – UNLESS that MOD is also sitting in a cart – the quote/MOD get deleted from the saved items list, but live on in the cart. It does not delete anything from past orders.  True?

• CE thinks they probably shouldn’t or wouldn’t have reason to delete any contact’s saved items. Perhaps the delete button should be disabled for CE? (The warning message does deter accidental deletion somewhat, and maybe they should keep their options open ?)

Item numbers

• What will happen if a customer happens to give a part number to a MOD that is identical to a Laddawn stock number? If allowed, what will we return when a customer searches on that number? (Probably an edge case?)

Tina and Meme were disappointed that we postponed the UOM toggle to a future release

To be honest, I didn’t realize that we hadn’t told them; perhaps we did and they forgot? It’s been so long (May) since we made that decision.  This is not an argument to bring it back; I think the reasons for postponing are sound and I think they’ll gain so many efficiencies from doing more of their work on the web, that it will be worth the wait. FYI.

8/27- ?

Workorder comments

In addition to shipping comments there may be comments that have to be passed on to production. This is more the exception than the rule. Primarily Staples and ULine, but there could be a handful of others. Can we automate this too via preferences?

Contract prices

Uline; one Staples bill to; one Xpedx bill to; first two have pricing on z drive for specific MODs; the third, Xpdex (1 bill to - which one?), CE has to call Ezra. Can we pre-program these as Saved Items, with current pricing, for these organizations?

• Uline
• Staples

8/20-21

Allow overrun/show gauge overrides

For MOD orders (quote conversions) everyone in CE is authorized to flip "remove gauge" from no to yes; likewise, everyone in CE has the ability to flip "allow overrun" from yes to no, if this has been done before on an as had. Only CE can do this; customers cannot select this online and Laddawn does not want to advertise these options. If the item being converted has not been quoted before (is "new business") or the 'as had' the conversion is based on did not have "allow overrun - no," CE is supposed to route the req to the sales rep to try to sell the customer on the overrun; if they do not succeed, the request is routed to Mark and Tina for approval.  A couple of key customers - ULine and Staples have blanket approval for "allow overrun - no"; Clearview and Ameripac have blanket approval for "remove gauge - yes."  But these are not preset in Avante; CE must flip the yes/no on every conversion for those customers.

Suggestion for web UI

Pre-program these instructions to appear on all ULine, Staples, Clearview and Ameripac orders with MOD items in the cart, and within the appropriate user preferences screen (read-only for customers). Likewise, pre-program these instructions to appear on an any MOD as hads in any distributor's order, that have had these overrides made.  For all other MOD items (by definition, "new business")  include a link (or some mechanism) visible only to CE, next to every MOD line in an order, like "Overrun/gauge overrides"; they can ignore this unless a customer has made an explicit request for one or both overrrides. Same routing/approval procedures apply.

Comments for "on hold"

When CE reps put a request on hold for followup, they need to capture comments - both for themselves, so they can remember the reason; or for fellow reps, so they know what to do in case they take the followup call or pull the followup fax or email from the queue.  For example, Sarah handled a sales order where the fax specified a problematic date (insisted that order arrive on 9/2 -which is a holiday, and not within our lead time anyway). She called the customer and left a message. So she had to put the req on hold. This could continue to be done in Avante, right?  But I wonder if this is a potential use for sharing items and carts. Could Sarah share the cart with herself, and put the comments in the cover note? When the followup phone call, fax or email came in, could Sarah, or colleagues, easily locate this via narrative thread, save item/save cart filter? What are pros and cons? For further analysis/discussion.

Tie-ins for faxes and emails

(Note: There are currently no ties-ins between Shoretel calls and CE requests.) How are we going to tie faxes and emails to CE requests? I think it is safe to say the proposed new CE request type, for lack of a better name, "Shop (###)," if it functions the way the other workflow req types function in this regard, will accomplish this tie-in. Does it matter if the web-fulfillable fax or email involves multiple, formerly separate request types (quote a MOD and order a stock item, for example).

Speaking of which - whether it's a phone call, fax or email - if the interaction involves multiple formerly separate request types, do we need a means of keeping track of what happened with the new Shop (###) request, for tracking or other purposes?  Should there be a CE req # stamp on tangible web artifcats from a single session, like a saved item, a saved cart, etc.? Or an audit trail of which artifacts got created that feeds into a new field within the Avante CE req screen at the end of the session? It may not be necessary for "one off" req types like price check, stock check, tracking shipment - but does matter for quotes and orders?

Inventory/price inquiries that end up as orders within the same call

Calls that start out as price or stock checks sometimes turn into orders within the same call, but more often than not, the request ends there with the price or stock check.

In the cases where an 070/080 turns into a sales order on the same call, there is no means within Avante to carry the line(s) looked up directly to an order screen (as will be the case on the web). In those cases, CE prefers that reps close out the original request and open a new (030) request for more accurate productivity stats. However, to save some clicks, some reps go back to the initial request screen and change the request type from 070/080, to 030.

In the case where CE does a price/stock check and that’s it, and CE closes the request – and then the customer calls or emails back to place an order...  CE does not refer back to the prior request, since there is no “imprint” in Avante of what the rep told the customer for the original 070/080 request, as far as price/stock availability (which could have changed).

Handoffs

More often than not, the customer doing a quote or price inquiry, is not the person placing the order. The person placing the order typically does not include or reference Laddawn's quote acknowledgment or quote number.  CE reps can create and convert quotes via a single request type (130); they do not have to split it into two req types (110 and 130). Even so, there is a huge number of screens to go through to pull off this feat. 

8/27, PS: CE doesn't take custom orders over phone.  CE requires a fax or email. They may set the order up (and do the quote if there isn't a live one to convert); but won't release the order until they receive the fax or email confirmation w/PO, etc. It doesn't sound like a frequent occurrence. Sarah's gut feeling is that the majority of quotes done online, are ordered online. The majority of fax/email quotes that are converted, are quoted via phone/fax/email (or ashads), not the web.  It's not typical, but some quotes that are done online are ordered via fax/email.

Reordering a converted quote

You can't convert a converted quote (you do a new quote based off of an as had). But going forward, with our new order history, you can place a previously quoted/converted item into the cart w/out having to go through configuration step by step; this could be a major improvement. You can change quantity before or after adding to cart; you can change delivery zip in cart. Is that enough?

Binders full of special instructions - what's in them, and can we cut back on their use, or even eliminate them to improve efficiency?

• 12 pages of instructions for associating requests with the proper bill to organization - provided by senior sales staff (9 sales organizations)
• 3 pages of routing instructions for shipments (3 sales organizations)
• 1 page of exceptions to handling charges and restocking fee (15 sales organizations)  

Bill to instructions

These are instructions for associating quotes and orders with the proper bill to # - for example, "use the address in the top left corner of their faxes" or "if there is no fax cover page, use the above information to cross reference the telephone number with account number." Some of these are organizations with centralized billing, for whom Sr. Sales has set up fake bill tos, to associate quotes and sales with a particular location and/or to be able to enable location-specific brandit labels. (Behind the scenes, via Avante credit screen, the real billing address is reflected.)

Because of the way Avante works today – it is important to get the correct bill to when the request is opened, regardless of whether it is a quote, sales order or something else -- these account lists serve as an important shortcut for CE to get a request started. For large organizations like Unisource and Xpedx who have dozens of bill tos, it is faster and easier for CE to grab the binder and look up the bill to #, than paging through that sales org's list via Avante F3 name search, or guessing the bill to name (to get a direct hit, typewritten names need to be exact (is it Unisource-Anchorage, or Unisource - Anchorage?)). Typing just UNISOURCE will pull up all of Unisource's bill tos, paging 5 at a time; typing "ANCHORAGE."

Don't worry about exact bill to when opening req?

With requests that can be fulfilled on the future website, including sales orders, it seems there is potential to skip getting the correct bill to # up front - at least to get accurate pricing and availability, or to carry out a sales order/quote conversion.  Sarah and I went through the new flow, which requires 'a' bill to, and the correct contact. We concluded that to get a web-fulfillable request started, all CE needs to do is get the sales org right, provided they can change to the correct bill to at checkout if/when an order is actually placed. Pricing should be same, and once you have a bill to # in Avante, you should be able to get to any contact from the sales org, regardless of their bill to association. (She says there are anomalies though where she's been unable to pull up a contact - she conferred with Lee and they suspect it happens if a bill to has not been associated to the sales org, either deliberately - Xpdex Mexico? or by mistake.)

The upside

Sarah thinks CE could get simple reqs opened and closed faster if they could reduce reliance on the binder to get them started. They would still have to refer to the binder for sales orders at checkout stage (does our zip code matching offer any potential for automation or "intelligent suggestions"?). They would have to have "power user" privileges, even if working on behalf of non-power users, in order to get the correct bill-to.

The downside

Without the correct bill to up front, Sr. Sales will only be able to see unconverted quotes by sales org, not bill to. This is probably a dealbreaker.

If we want to pursue this further, we need to break it down further to see if there would be additional unintended consequences of not having the right bill to, for sharing/saving items, adding items to cart; saving and sharing carts; proper attribution of system notifications in narrative thread; filtering saved items/saved carts lists; predictive ordering; and so on.

Alternatives

• Is it possible to improve the bill to F3 lookup by name to be more forgiving? Can we suppress ship-tos to reduce the paging? (Today, Avante allows you include shiptos in lookup, allows you to select it, then gives error!).
• Put contact before bill to in sequence of steps in Avante for opening CE request; key the bill to off of the contacts, who are associated with specific bill tos (even if technically they can order on behalf of any bill to in sales org). In the case of contacts who are flagged in Avante and web as power users (e.g. centralized purchasing agent), CE would have to be prompted to determine if the order is for that contact's default bill to, or one of the sales org's other bill tos; they would then refer to their binder, or could enter some other piece of data like a po prefix or phone number or... ?

Routing instructions

Need to spend more time studying these for potential to program into shipping preferences. Seems like a candidate for phase 2/3.

Exceptions to handling charges/restocking fees

Couldn't we automate these?

Plan B - alternative to automation

Ideally, all of this stuff would be reengineered and automated or programmed into preferences. But none of it can be, at least not for launch, the next best thing might be to put reference documents online, so they are at least searchable within a browser window right next to your other open Avante or website window, and easier to distribute and keep up to date. Sarah liked that idea; she also suggested that it would really, really help for CE (especially new reps) to be prompted somehow to know they need to look these instructions up for certain customers.