What it takes to place an order

Posted on May 27, 2005 by Dave J.

Sometimes I have to wonder what takes so long to get an order these days. About half of the items on my May forecast haven’t closed because the order is trapped in red-tape. You’d think technology would make getting an order easier these days.

Here’s an email from a Fortune-50 customer of ours that is just amazing, sharing what she has to go thru to buy a $15,000 test unit:

I finally completed the paperwork, meetings, signatures (it took a total of 14!), to get approval to buy this equipment, then sent it all to someone in India who will hopefully send an AR number to me tomorrow. Then I can write the order. Of course, if your company is a new vendor for XXX, then they have to have paperwork done in Mexico to add a vendor to our system, and that takes 2 to 10 days. I know it doesn’t seem it, but we really do want to get our equipment as soon as possible, particularly because the old junky one we were using broke down last week.

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  • Evad

    I’ve got another one for you…We are opening another office for our company nand have commissioned Comcast Business Canle to be our temp broadband connection. The sales process was great, of course, only to be told it can take up to 14 days or the contractors to come out for the install.Keep in mind that the tenant next to us is already using their service. They only need to run the line into our space and turn it on…it’s that easy.Comcast insists that they are full of orders and cannot get to their customers any sooner.When our phone lines were being installed, Verizon was out within the hour of calling. How can the same problem be so dramatically different for 2 companies? When you are a tech company, you would think you could use tech to expedite your problems.We can hope, right????

  • Evad

    I’ve got another one for you…We are opening another office for our company nand have commissioned Comcast Business Canle to be our temp broadband connection. The sales process was great, of course, only to be told it can take up to 14 days or the contractors to come out for the install.Keep in mind that the tenant next to us is already using their service. They only need to run the line into our space and turn it on…it’s that easy.Comcast insists that they are full of orders and cannot get to their customers any sooner.When our phone lines were being installed, Verizon was out within the hour of calling. How can the same problem be so dramatically different for 2 companies? When you are a tech company, you would think you could use tech to expedite your problems.We can hope, right????

  • Ephraim Cohen

    I often tell companies I work with that global enterprise procurement systems are no different than government procurement systems. This seems to be a perfect example. All technology really does is digitize the process. It only speeds it up if the design of the procurement process is changed. Since, like in government, this is unlikely to happen, the more successful approach is often to find and form relationships with people who know how to work the procurement process. While having a guide may not speed things up, it will lower the fustration level and speed the win rate.

  • Ephraim Cohen

    I often tell companies I work with that global enterprise procurement systems are no different than government procurement systems. This seems to be a perfect example. All technology really does is digitize the process. It only speeds it up if the design of the procurement process is changed. Since, like in government, this is unlikely to happen, the more successful approach is often to find and form relationships with people who know how to work the procurement process. While having a guide may not speed things up, it will lower the fustration level and speed the win rate.