How to Automate Ordorite

A mattress is sold weeks before it exists in the warehouse

Ordorite is retail software for furniture and bedding shops, built in Galway and sold to retailers in Ireland, the UK and the United States, along with baby stores. It covers the whole business rather than the till: enquiry, quote, order, purchasing, warehouse, delivery, service.

That shape comes from how a bed is sold. Somebody chooses a mattress and an adjustable base on a Saturday and pays a deposit, and the thing they bought is on a container that has not sailed, or in a factory that has not cut the fabric. Between the sale and the first night's sleep sit eight weeks, a purchase order, a shipping line, a warehouse bay and a two-man crew.

So a sale in Ordorite is a live thing rather than a receipt: what was ordered, what has been paid, which container it is on, which box it became, which van it goes out on, and what happened when it got there.

Everything after the deposit depends on somebody else's date

A furniture retailer's week goes on finding out where things are.

A supplier's lead time has moved and nobody has said so. A container is at sea, and the arrival date on the shipping line's site is not the one in the system. A crew rang the bell at a house where nobody was in, and that customer needs a new slot. A mattress bought on a comfort guarantee is coming back and a firmer one is going out. A finance application was approved in March and never used. Half of Friday goes on telling people a delivery window they were already given.

None of it is complicated. It is a person, a phone and eleven browser tabs, every morning, before the crews load.

Ordorite

Late containers, early warning The vessel carrying a week of orders tracked on the shipping line's own page, so the calls go out before the customers ring in.

Lead times that actually changed Every open purchase order checked on the supplier's portal, so an eight-week promise that quietly became fourteen is caught at the order rather than at the door.

Yesterday's failed drops Each no-access and refused delivery turned into a reschedule message with the new window already in it, ready for a person to send.

Ordorite plans the delivery from dates it was handed

The system is built around that gap between the sale and the van. You can sell from stock in another store, from an incoming container or from a purchase order still in production, so a promise made on the floor is one the business can keep. A stock ledger traces movements by product, location and container for any date range, a Goods In process confirms arrivals, and a box-level ledger copes with the three-box sofa that turns up on two different days.

Purchasing has container management, forecasting and automatic replenishment. Delivery has scheduling, route planning, pick lists, loading lists, dockets and mobile scanning, with cubic metre calculations so a van is loaded to what it can hold. Around that sit RFM analysis with personalised SMS and email templates, review monitoring across Google, Facebook and TrustPilot, business intelligence dashboards, returns and exchange handling, and an API into accounts packages and the usual ecommerce platforms.

Every date in all of it, though, is a date somebody was told once.

The supplier's portal knows the lead time went from eight weeks to fourteen. The shipping line knows the vessel is five days behind. The manufacturer knows the fabric was discontinued last month. None of that reaches Ordorite until a person goes and looks.

Twelve customers can be told the container is late before they ring

A vessel's position is published, and so is the day it is due to berth.

The container carrying twelve customers' orders, tracked on the shipping line's own page against the arrival date in the system, so those twelve get a call on Tuesday instead of making one on Friday. Every open purchase order checked on the supplier's portal, so a lead time that went from eight weeks to fourteen is a conversation you start rather than one you lose. The manufacturer's discontinued list, matched against orders taken last week that nobody can now fill.

Inside the business there is a second set of lists worth having by seven. Deliveries that failed yesterday, each one a reschedule text drafted with the new window in it. Comfort guarantee check-ins falling due this week. Orders where a deposit was taken in spring and nothing has moved since. Finance applications sitting approved and unused, where a two-line message is the difference between a delivery and a refund.

Then the things a shop finds out by accident. What the retailer two towns over is advertising the same bed range at this weekend. Which supplier has quietly reissued a price list before your tickets get printed.

The vessel tracking is a chore, and the phone call is not

The reading is routine. The calls that come out of it are not, and it is the reading that eats the morning.

WebRun is an agent that drives a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens Ordorite, a supplier's portal, a shipping line's tracking page or a competitor's site, reads what has changed and puts it in front of whoever has to act on it.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it part way. Anything that reaches a customer, a reschedule text or a call about a delayed order, is drafted with the details filled in and waits for your team to send it.

Each of the workflows below names the pages it reads and what it leaves you with.