From operational chaos to market advantage

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In many manufacturing and distribution companies, sales growth no longer translates into increased profitability. Revenues are growing, but service costs are rising faster. Salespeople are overloaded, customer service is drowning in emails, and accounting is chasing lost documents. This signals that the operating model has stopped scaling.

This condition can be called operational chaos: a situation in which processes created for a smaller business scale begin to block further growth of the company. The good news? This chaos can be sorted out and turned into a competitive advantage.

The organization's biggest mistake is not a lack of modern tools, but a lack of awareness of how much the current way of working really costs. In the operational chaos, money "leaks out" in several repetitive areas.

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Salespeople as administrators

When a sales representative checks the status of an order, the availability of an item, or sends an invoice, he or she is not selling. If each of the 10 salespeople loses 1.5 hours a day on administrative tasks, the company loses the equivalent of almost two sales jobs per month.

Customer service as a "human interface" to ERP

In many companies, 40-60% of inquiries to the BOK concern simple information: order status, price, availability. This means that highly paid employees are acting as "screen data readers" instead of dealing with issues that require real competence.

Manual data entry errors

Manual transcription of orders from emails to the ERP system generates mistakes: wrong addresses, quantities, products. The cost of a single error in B2B is estimated at 250-400 PLN. With dozens of errors per month, we are talking about tens of thousands of zlotys in losses per year.

Frozen cash

"We didn't pay because we didn't get the invoice". - this phrase is familiar to every accounting firm. The lack of an organized digital workflow directly prolongs DSO and worsens liquidity.

Losing customers through lack of convenience

24/7 availability ceases to be an advantage - it becomes the standard. If a customer can order an item from a competitor on Sunday night and has to wait until Monday with you, the 2% difference in price no longer matters.

If a company sees real losses in even two of these areas, the problem is not operational. It is strategic.

Customer service automation touches sales, finance and IT. Therefore, its success depends on building a common language between these departments. Each of them looks at the project differently:

• sales wants to regain relationship and sales time,

• finance expects to improve margins and cash flow,

• IT is afraid of risks to systems stability,

• management is thinking about scaling the business.

The key is to show that the B2B portal is not a "new toy," but a way to free up salespeople's time, speed up receivables, organize access to data and grow without a commensurate increase in headcount.

The most effective tool for convincing management is a one-page business case that combines three elements:

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An example of the logic of such a calculation:

• Problem: salespeople spend 40% of their time on administration.

• Solution: a B2B portal integrated with ERP that takes over repetitive inquiries, orders and document access.

• The result: recovery of X FTEs in terms of salespeople's time, reduction of DSO by X days, increase in basket value thanks to cross-selling in the portal. In many companies, already a small increase in the average order (e.g., by 2-5%) can cover the cost of implementing the system in the first year. This is the point at which the conversation stops being about technology and starts being about profitability.

A B2B portal is not a shopping cart website. It is a digital extension of a company's processes. Therefore, the key questions become:

• off-the-shelf components vs. building from scratch,

• how to integrate with ERP in real time,

• handling non-standard, complex processes,

• the willingness of the partner to challenge misguided ideas,

• architecture that allows the system to be expanded with new modules.

It's all about creating a platform that will grow with the business.

The best system won't work if salespeople see it as a threat and customers see it as a hindrance. Therefore, implementation must be accompanied by conscious change management.

Three principles are particularly important:

Make merchants ambassadors – show that the portal takes away their boring administration, not customers

Sell convenience, not technology - communicate specific conveniences, not system features.

Don't fight your customers' habits - let them continue to write emails, but automatically enter this data into the system and direct them to the online status preview.