Staged deliveries and quote-to-order for a building products supplier
The situation
A supplier of building products works with contractors on projects that run for weeks or months. Most work starts with a quote in Unleashed at agreed project prices. When the contractor sends their purchase order, it often doesn’t match the quote exactly, and the materials need to arrive in stages as the build progresses.
Today, someone compares the PO with the quote by hand, splits the order into deliveries on paper, and keeps track of what has gone out and what’s still due. Site addresses are frequently new and occasionally wrong, which shows up as failed pallet bookings.
What we’d build
- Quote to order. Open quotes are pulled from Unleashed. When a PO arrives from a customer with an open quote, the agreed quote prices are used for the price checks instead of the standard price list. Accepted quotes can also be turned into orders directly from a list.
- Split deliveries. At review, an order can be split into several deliveries, each with its own lines, quantities and date. Each delivery is picked, packed and booked on its own schedule while staying part of the same order in Unleashed. How each delivery is invoiced is agreed during specification.
- Address validation. Delivery addresses are checked against the Royal Mail postcode database when the order is parked. Invalid postcodes are flagged with suggested corrections that can be applied in one click.
How an order flows
- A contractor emails a PO for a project quoted three weeks earlier.
- The platform finds the open quote for that customer and checks every line against the quoted prices. One line is over the agreed price and is flagged.
- The postcode for the new site doesn’t match the street, so a corrected address is suggested.
- The reviewer applies the address fix, corrects the line, and splits the order into three deliveries across six weeks.
- Each delivery appears in the warehouse queue nearer its date, and pallets are booked within the carrier’s window.
What changes day to day
- Quoted prices are honoured automatically, without anyone cross-referencing the quote.
- Each stage of a project is visible as its own delivery, with its own status and tracking.
- Fewer bookings fail on bad addresses, and the ones that do are caught before the pallet is on the dock.
Typical scope
Order automation with the ERP quotes to orders, split deliveries and address validation add-ons, with the warehouse and shipping phase to follow. See pricing for indicative ranges.