Trade orders, without the typing.
A multi-currency store with a gated trade portal, and now AI that turns stockists' purchase orders into draft orders.
- Client
- A doctor-founded skincare brand selling worldwide
- Engagement
- E-commerce and trade portal · AI upgrade
An award-winning skincare brand founded by a practising doctor, selling direct to customers in several countries and wholesale to salons, clinics and stockists. It needed one site that served both: the right currency for every shopper, and trade prices only for approved businesses.
- A customised online store with localisation, so every customer shops in the right currency
- A streamlined checkout on a responsive, scalable site
- A separate trade application: businesses request an account and see products and trade prices only once approved
Built by our engineering team. The client is described, not named.
Hands-free trade orders
Trade customers still order the old way: emails, PDFs, spreadsheets, even photos of handwritten lists. For every order, someone on the order desk reads it, finds the products behind old names and shorthand, applies the account's terms and keys it in, then chases the stockist about anything unclear. Orders wait a day or two before they are confirmed, so goods ship and invoices go out late, and a mis-keyed line becomes a wrong shipment and a credit note.
Where the time goes today
- Keying trade orders from emails, PDFs, spreadsheets and photos
- 20–25 hrs a week
- Chasing stockists about unclear lines, old codes and missing quantities
- 5–7 hrs a week
- Fixing wrong shipments and raising credit notes after keying errors
- 3–4 hrs a week
With the upgrade
- Same day
- orders confirmed, so goods ship and invoices go out a day or two sooner
- ~18 hrs
- a week back for the order desk, close to half a full-time role
- Fewer errors
- wrong shipments and credit notes, since every line is matched against the catalogue
Estimates. Based on a brand taking 30–40 trade orders a day from salons, clinics and stockists. Every project starts with an Audit that measures the real numbers first.
How it works
- 01Purchase orders are read wherever they arrive: email, PDF, spreadsheet or phone photo.
- 02Each line is matched to the right product, including old names, shorthand and misspellings.
- 03The order is priced with that account's own terms and currency, and checked against stock and credit limit.
- 04A draft order is created in the store, and the stockist gets a confirmation to check.
- 05Anything uncertain goes to a person with the likely matches shown.
What stays with people
Orders start as drafts. A person approves them until measured accuracy has earned the right to post on its own, account by account.
What we measure
- Hours a week the order desk spends keying and querying trade orders, before and after
- Time from purchase order received to order confirmed, and the share confirmed the same day
- Line-matching accuracy against the brand's past orders, and wrong shipments traced to a keying error
The AI is the easy part. This is the rest.
- 01Dozens of order layouts from different stockists
- 02Product matching that has to be right every time
- 03Per-account pricing rules and currencies
- 04Writing orders into the store and the accounts system
- 05An approval queue with a full audit trail
Have a system that needs this?
Tell us what it does today and where the work piles up. In 30 minutes we will tell you what AI could add, what it would take, and whether it is worth doing at all.