Thompson & Morgan Automates Paper Based Processing

The ReadSoft Effect on: Thompson & Morgan
Process: Business transaction processing
Segment: Seeds, Mail order
Country: UK

By integrating ReadSoft software with their current multi channel solution from Sanderson, seed supplier Thompson & Morgan has been able to automate the processing of paper based order forms. This increases the cost savings and efficiency that the rest of its integrated mail order business delivers.

Thompson & Morgan have been selling seeds from its base in Ipswich, Suffolk for 150 years. The Thompson & Morgan Group are the largest horticultural mail order operation in the UK. Today, its customer base is made up from both consumer and business trade including professional growers and garden centres in the UK and abroad. Like most mail order businesses, Thompson & Morgan relies on multiple sales channels including post, telephone and web. To improve efficiencies and customer service they wished to automate the large volumes of orders they receive by post.

Automating a paper process

Manually handling a large volume of paper-based orders was reducing the impact on the cost and operational savings that were a result of integrating everything else - from sales order processing, stock control and delivery to financials.
According to Andy Winwood, Thompson & Morgan’s Financial Controller. “Having automated the processing of our web based orders it was clear that further efficiencies would be realised if we could also automate the processing of paper-based order forms. We approached Sanderson to see if there was a solution that would achieve this. Sanderson recommended ReadSoft and worked with our team to incorporate the software into our existing Sanderson system.”
The solution integrates multi channel operations for both e-commerce and more traditional channels. For businesses and their customers, this means the process is well managed from order entry through to delivery and invoicing. An open architecture means third party software can be integrated to deliver even greater functionality for a business.

Optimising resources

Paper based orders are now scanned the moment they are received by Thompson & Morgan. These can be scanned individually or in batches of 2 or 3 different types of forms at a time. The software pulls information from the order form, including customer details, catalogue number, product code and payment information. Any queries within this data are directed to the operator for verification. When these queries have been resolved, the data is uploaded to the mail order system via an interface. The mail order system then processes the order as it would with telephone and web orders that have been entered directly onto the system.

Automating this process eliminates the need for sales operators to manually enter data from the order forms onto to the system, reducing re-keying errors. Currently, the system is reading multiple order forms that Thompson & Morgan use for consumer orders. These are high volume low item orders and, because sowing seeds is seasonal, this volume reaches its peak between January and March.

To cope with this demand, in previous years Thompson & Morgan has recruited additional staff to handle the load. The solution is now helping to reduce this temporary head count.

Intelligent order forms

Thompson & Morgan is working to streamline the process further by redesigning the order forms and product coding so that even greater efficiency is achieved. For example, by switching catalogue codes to all numeric digits rather than a combination of numeric and alpha codes, time savings will be bigger by reducing the number of queries flagged for manual verification.

Thompson & Morgan’s Winwood continues:

“Already one operator is doing the work of two when entering paper-based orders onto the Sanderson system. As order volumes increase during peak periods and we get better at managing the process we expect the system to be able to take over the workload of 3 or 4 operators handling data entry. This will allow us to divert this valuable manpower to more profitable sales activity. Looking to the future, we are hoping to extend automation to our business orders.
We are confident that with intelligent design, the system will be able to read more complicated orders. Generally, these are around 900 lines long and deal with multiple sales agreements, such as sale or return etc.”