this sounds really technical and a little bit like something a huge delivery business should have.

But not so… It is just a way of describing how a business takes an order from a customer whether that be fax, email or a telephone call and what happens to that order when it is taken.

Are the details entered into a computer database that spits it out to the relevant department, is it written down and handed to Dave who takes the orders or is it just put in a book?

Everyone has their own ways of handling sales orders but i have managed to find one that is cost effective, saves time and actually helps small businesses make more money.

The SaaS option from Esker is basically a pay as you go sales order processing tool, which means that small businesses like mine can afford to have it and it gives me big business operational speed. So here’s how it works…

My company receives around 700 orders per week for small goods. some come online via email, some come over the phone, some come in the post and some come via fax. All the orders have to be entered manually into the sales database where they would be allocated manually to accounts and dispatch. The post and fax orders where a real pain in the a** as they took an age to process and sometime even got lost.

Enter  stage left…. Esker.

They automated my whole operation in days. I answered a series of questions about my ordering and within a few days every order was entering the system electronically and being routed to the correct department instantly. So far I haven’t lost and order or missed a delivery slot!

• The Fax’s arrived as an email and were automatically routed into the system.
• The Postal orders were simply and quickly scanned in  and the software read the order and converted it instantly to the system.
• The emails flew straight in

This left bags more time for my staff to concentrate on hitting the phones and taking telephone orders which they processed easily onto the systems order screen.

My costs have reduced and my turnover has increased by 15% in just two months.

Thanks EsKer, I for one am very impressed.