Order Cancellation Alerts
Our client is a globally leading shoe and active-wear manufacturer. In addition to working with retail partners, our client has a D2C option through their website where customers can order their products directly. Of course, with thousands of product offerings, it is essential that the sales order process runs smoothly. To this end, the client had already implemented an automation to cancel orders that could not be completed due to lack of inventory. In short, if a customer ordered a product and the inventory was not confirmed within a certain timeframe, the order was automatically cancelled.
Challenges
One Monday morning, the client discovered that over the weekend an excessive amount of orders had been unnecessarily cancelled. Needless to say, solving this problem became a top priority. Because the automatic cancellation had already been used successfully for some time and was a part of day-to-day operations, the client was unsure how to proceed without disrupting the flow of business. Some complicating factors were the large order volume processed by the website 24/7, the fact that only certain distribution centers (DC’s) were affected, and the reality that orders could be cancelled for any number of reasons (not only by the pre-made automation).
Data Refreshes
Distribution Centers
Monitoring of Orders
Solution
DataLane had been working on a Process Mining project within the Sales Order process and consequently was immediately consulted once this issue arose. Fortunately, during the ongoing Process Mining project DataLane had already integrated the sales order date into the Celonis EMS cloud. Still, it was important to have a workable solution as soon as possible to avoid additional lost revenue. It quickly became clear that adjusting the already existing automation would be too large of a project for the immediate client needs.
Together with DataLane, the client determined that an hourly automated alert system would suffice. The alert would need to warn designated team members of specific DC’s if the automated cancellation rate was abnormally high. Using the data already available, DataLane was able to create a technical definition so that only the relevant order cancellations were targeted. Once this definition was created, DataLane created an analysis in Celonis to determine if the cancellation rate was abnormally high (checked automatically on an hourly basis).
Based on these criteria, DataLane was able to create an automated workflow (also in Celonis) to inform employees if the cancellation rate is too high. The messages are automatically sent via email and MS teams to ensure that corrective action can be taken quickly.
Business value
- Total turn-around time for the project was under a month which means the client began to see results almost immediately.
- With 24/7 monitoring of cancelled orders the client has been able to avoid lost revenue, increase customer satisfaction, perform root-cause analysis quickly, and have greater trust in their sales order process.
- Even on weekends, the client can be confident that things are running smoothly!
- Additionally, the client benefits from the entire analysis and automation being built in Celonis. This means that the solution is accessible and easy to adjust based on new data and strategic priorities.
