9 Strategies on How to Improve Order Processing

Key Takeaways

Learn how to improve order processing by eliminating manual data entry and streamlining workflows
Discover best practices for order entry process improvement across departments
See how AI-enabled automation improves speed, accuracy, and customer service
Understand how to prepare for touchless automation and ERP integration
Find opportunities to reduce costs and increase ROI

Order processing is one of the most critical workflows in the order-to-cash (O2C) cycle, yet it’s often bogged down by inefficiencies. When customer orders require manual entry, validation, and cross-departmental approval, even a small volume increase can strain your teams and delay fulfillment.

For enterprise organizations operating at scale, learning how to improve order processing is no longer a “nice to have”; it’s a mission-critical priority.

The good news? You don’t have to start from scratch. With the right strategies and tools, you can eliminate errors, streamline operations, and improve customer satisfaction.

Strategies on How to Improve Order Processing

Standardize How You Capture Orders

Before you can process customer orders, they need to be accurately captured and routed into your ERP system. For many companies, this involves manual handoffs—orders arrive by email, fax, mail, EDI, or phone, and someone has to rekey the data into a sales order. It’s error-prone and time-consuming.

A critical first step in the order entry process improvement is to standardize your order capture methods. Whether the order comes from a web form, phone call, or EDI feed, having a consistent intake process ensures nothing falls through the cracks. More importantly, it sets the stage for automation.

Implement Intelligent Capture to automatically extract, classify, and validate order data the moment it arrives—no matter the source or format.

Eliminate lost or duplicate orders
Accelerate ERP input and reduce lead time
Create a foundation for touchless sales order entry

Standardize Your Customer Order Forms

While some orders arrive as standardized purchase orders, many don’t, especially in B2B environments where orders may come in via custom forms or informal channels. Discrepancies in how data is captured across these forms often delay processing and introduce manual work.

Standardizing customer order forms, whether digital or physical, makes it easier for CSRs to verify details, train new staff, and prepare for automation. The goal is to align all intake channels to feed into your ERP in a structured and predictable format.

This is a critical tactic if you want to improve order processing and reduce time spent tracking down missing fields or correcting invalid data. It also simplifies exception handling and audit readiness.

With standardized forms and digital intake, companies can reduce entry errors and onboard new customer service representatives faster.

Automate the Order Entry Process from End to End

If you’ve done everything manually and still find bottlenecks in your workflow, it’s time to automate. An end-to-end order management automation solution removes many of the delays associated with manual processes, from intake to validation to ERP posting.

Sales order entry automation solutions can:

Monitor multiple inbound channels (email, EDI, fax) for new orders
Extract order details using AI-enabled automation
Match part numbers, pricing, and terms against your ERP in real time
Flag exceptions while processing the rest robotically
Learn from past corrections using machine learning

By investing in robotic automation of business processes, companies can achieve touchless order entry, significantly reducing order-to-ship times and improving overall fulfillment accuracy.

Knowing how to improve order processing means knowing where human oversight is essential—and where automation delivers more consistent results.

Streamline Multi-Department Collaboration

If your company sells made-to-order or highly customized products, the path from order to fulfillment likely involves multiple internal stakeholders—engineering, credit, logistics, etc. Unfortunately, handoffs between departments are where orders often stall.

Relying on emails or printed documents creates unnecessary delays and introduces the risk of misplaced approvals or outdated versions. A better approach is to use automated, role-based workflows that ensure every stakeholder has immediate access to the documents and data they need.

With digital workflow automation, you can route customer orders through engineering, compliance, credit, and fulfillment without duplicating data or tracking down status updates. Once a step is completed, the system automatically pushes the order to the next phase—validated, time-stamped, and version-controlled.

This is a powerful form of order entry process improvement because it:

Removes legacy knowledge from the process
Ensures compliance with internal controls
Provides real-time visibility into order status
Supports full audit trails and analytics

Centralize Order Records for Better Service and Compliance

Processing an order is only half the battle. After shipment, customer service and AR teams still need to field inquiries, confirm delivery status, resolve disputes, and handle collections. If they can’t easily access supporting documentation, your customers will notice—and your DSO may climb.

The solution is to create a centralized, searchable archive of every customer order and its associated records.

That means:

Customer POs
Confirmations and acknowledgments
Shipping documentation
Invoices
Order history and approvals

A fully searchable, electronic archive improves visibility for your internal teams and enhances the customer experience. It also supports compliance efforts, helps resolve disputes faster, and shortens the collections cycle.

Want to improve order processing across the entire O2C lifecycle? Make your documentation strategy part of the solution.

Integrate Order Processing with Inventory Management

To improve order processing, your system must have real-time access to inventory levels. Nothing frustrates customers more than placing an order for an item that’s out of stock or delayed due to poor visibility.

By integrating order processing with your inventory management system, you can:

Automatically validate product availability at the time of order
Suggest substitutions or alternative fulfillment options
Trigger restock alerts based on order volume

When online order processing is directly tied to inventory data, companies can reduce backorders, avoid manual inventory checks, and keep fulfillment promises accurate.

Implement Rules-Based Order Routing

As your order volume grows, manual routing of sales orders to the correct department or approver becomes unsustainable.

A better approach is to use rules-based routing that automatically determines the correct path based on specific criteria, such as:

Order value
Customer type (e.g., new vs. returning)
Product type
Contract terms

With predefined workflows, your system can instantly determine whether an order needs credit approval, engineering review, or expedited fulfillment, without a human in the loop.

This approach not only improves speed but also reduces the risk of delays caused by misrouted or overlooked orders.

Use Real-Time Dashboards and Reporting

A major part of the order entry process improvement is visibility. When supervisors and executives have real-time access to order processing metrics, like average processing time, error rates, and order volume, they can spot bottlenecks early and make informed decisions.

By implementing real-time dashboards:

Managers can monitor SLA performance and order queues
CSRs can prioritize high-value or time-sensitive orders
Executives can spot trends across regions or product lines

The result is a more agile, accountable order processing operation, and better decision-making at every level.

Prioritize Exception Handling With AI-Powered Workflows

One of the most overlooked ways to improve order processing is by focusing on how your system handles exceptions, orders that don’t follow the typical path due to missing, incorrect, or incomplete information. These exceptions often require manual review, delaying fulfillment and adding friction to the customer experience.

With AI-powered exception handling, you can detect and resolve issues much earlier in the order entry process.

Using Intelligent Capture and machine learning, advanced automation systems can:

Flag anomalies like mismatched part numbers, pricing discrepancies, or missing PO references
Automatically route exceptions to the appropriate person or department for resolution
Learn from previous corrections to continuously improve future order accuracy.
Isolate exceptions so standard orders can continue through touchless automation

This reduces bottlenecks and prevents a few problematic orders from slowing down the entire queue. Over time, the system becomes smarter, minimizing the need for manual intervention and improving straight-through order processing rates.

For large enterprises processing thousands of orders per month, exception handling powered by AI isn’t just helpful, it’s essential for achieving scale, consistency, and faster order cycle times.

Bonus Strategy: Embrace AI-Enabled Automation for Long-Term ROI

It’s no longer enough to simply digitize paper forms or install basic workflow tools. To stay competitive, enterprise organizations must adopt AI-enabled automation that continuously improves order handling over time.

For example, machine learning algorithms can analyze previous orders and corrections to prevent future mistakes. Predictive routing can forecast which departments will be required for a given order type, speeding up the process.

This approach not only helps you improve order processing today, but it also sets the foundation for touchless automation and process analytics that power continuous improvement.

How to Improve Order Processing in SAP, Oracle, and Infor Environments

For companies running enterprise-class ERP systems like SAP (ECC, S/4HANA), Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, or Infor Global Solutions, your ability to improve order processing depends heavily on seamless ERP integration.

IntelliChief supports deep integration with all major ERPs, allowing automated sales order solutions to:

Validate order details directly against ERP master data
Create sales orders automatically with no rekeying
Trigger credit checks and inventory lookups in real time
Update order statuses and generate confirmations automatically

By aligning automation with ERP-native workflows, companies gain full visibility and control across every touchpoint in the order lifecycle.

This is the difference between generic automation and true digital transformation, and it’s how you lay the foundation for long-term success.

Don’t Just Improve—Transform

Knowing how to improve order processing is about more than shaving a few minutes off data entry. It’s about transforming the way your business serves customers, collaborates internally, and scales over time.

By implementing these strategies:

Standardized capture
Smart form design
End-to-end automation
Cross-department collaboration
Centralized records

You can achieve a future-ready workflow that supports growth, compliance, and exceptional customer experiences.

Ready for Order Entry Process Improvement? IntelliChief Can Help.

If you’re serious about improving customer order processing, IntelliChief offers more than just software, we offer a structured implementation process backed by decades of best practices consulting.

Our platform enables AI-enabled automation for order entry that integrates directly with enterprise-class ERPs, allowing you to:

Achieve touchless automation
Eliminate manual rekeying and validation
Improve service and reduce DSO
Unlock real-time analytics across the order-to-cash process

Contact us today to learn how IntelliChief can help you implement scalable, intelligent solutions for your unique business needs.

Or, explore our Customer Case Studies to see how others in your industry have leveraged IntelliChief for order entry transformation.