How Order Intelligence Simplifies Order Management

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) platform represents one of the most powerful enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions on the market. However, you can make your work within BC even more powerful and streamlined through the integration of intelligent order management solutions. 

Known as an “Order Intelligence Platform,” Cavallo’s suite of technologies simplifies the order management process by addressing three key pillars: visibility and control, margin optimization, and analytics. Learn how these pillars can modernize your order management process and pave the way for maximum profits. 

What Is Order Intelligence? 

Order Intelligence is both a concept and a solution. The concept involves introducing data-driven processes to the entire order lifecycle to maximize profitability at scale and provide a thorough analysis that covers all aspects of the order lifecycle. This provides users with the confidence that no crucial information or opportunity for improvement will be overlooked. The more you know about when and how people place orders — as well as what happens next — the more control you’ll have over the product lifecycle. 

As a solution, Order Intelligence combines multiple technologies, including visibility and monitoring capabilities, margin optimization, and in-depth analytics tools, to uncover and fix hidden defects, analyze profit-draining trends, and perfect your processes to maximize profit on every order — no matter your scale. 

Visibility and Control

Product-centric brands understand the essential need for end-to-end visibility of the product lifecycle. Gaps in your visibility can lead to delayed decision-making, excessive waste, and suboptimal margins. Persistent visibility and control issues can also diminish the customer experience, as their ability to transition from the point-of-order to receiving products will be hindered. 

Take back control over the entire order lifecycle. Control solutions integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to provide next-level functionality, including payment processing, analytics, and custom fields. You can use these tools to automate tasks and keep low-margin orders from slipping through the cracks. 

Automated workflows represent one of the biggest value drivers for any organization. Every time you automate a critical function, you eliminate a potential failure point from your process and reduce the administrative burden on your team. In turn, you can reallocate them to more dynamic tasks that support the company’s long-term mission. 

When leveraged correctly, workflow automation tools allow you the effective visibility and control you need to take active steps toward the ultimate order management prowess. 

Margin Optimization

Constant visibility of your gross margins is vital for several reasons. If you lose sight of your profit margins or work with inaccurate data, you’ll suffer from margin leakage.

Margin leakage refers to the loss of potential profit in your business due to inefficiencies, uncontrolled costs, pricing errors, or operational mistakes. It occurs when your business doesn’t capture the full value of its sales due to factors like discounts, unnecessary expenses, poor contract management, or unoptimized pricing strategies.

Leakage erodes your profit margins. Even though you are generating revenue, a portion of the expected profit gets lost along the way. Over the course of a quarter, margin leakage can lead to significant revenue shortfalls and diminished cash flow. 

Our suite of solutions supports the control and real-time insights necessary to find and prevent leakage. You can identify where you are losing revenue, what’s causing it, and how to solve the problem. While not all leakage is preventable, knowing where you lose profits is key to maintaining accurate revenue forecasts and ensuring adequate liquidity. 

Address all of these concerns with full order lifecycle visibility. Smart solutions geared toward product-first business management can instantly capture orders with low margins and other issues facing your business. Your leadership team can take it from there, reviewing each flagged order and ensuring the business generates optimal revenue. 

Analytics

Data analysis tools represent the third pillar of an Order Intelligence platform. These solutions shed light on profit trends and sources of leakage. With many organizations leaking margin on a third of their orders, the need for analytics tools has never been more apparent. 

Profit Analytics solutions that integrate with Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC allow you to fully unlock the data you are already collecting. You can analyze information using pre-structured visualizations that make insights more digestible and accessible to non-experts. These graphs, charts, and other visuals are ideal for keeping the leadership team in the loop and capable of informed decision-making.

The best analytics tools allow you to slice and dice data on your terms. You can explore granular data points, like the reason behind profit decline at a line-item level. Alternatively, you can look at big-picture metrics such as customer churn and its impacts on profitability. 

Analytics tools help you understand what happened and why. More importantly, they provide guidance on what you can do in the future to achieve desired outcomes and improve long-term profitability. 

How Does Order Intelligence Enhance the Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC Experience?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is an exceptional ERP, but you can enhance its capabilities via holistic tools that address every phase of the order management lifecycle. By making Order Intelligence technology part of your BC instance, you can unlock a wide range of far-reaching benefits.

Streamlined Workflows

Meeting the demands of modern customers requires you to work fast while maintaining near-flawless precision. Simplify and automate key processes within Dynamics 365 BC by taking human error out of the equation. Instead of manually entering, processing, and tracking orders, your business can automate much of the order-to-cash cycle.

Every process you automate makes the cycle faster and more efficient. You can also reduce the risk of processing delays and ensure that tasks are completed efficiently. This means that automation decreases manual intervention and gets cash in your accounts sooner. 

Better workflows also benefit customers. The faster and more accurately you process orders, the sooner your clients will receive their orders. Fast, accurate orders lead to higher customer satisfaction and less churn, both of which are great for business. 

Increased Control 

You can’t optimize your order lifecycle if you don’t have precise control over it. You need to take greater control over every process, including inventory management, order processing, and financial tracking. Once you exert control over these critical aspects of order management, you can consistently meet customer expectations.

You can increase your control in several ways, primarily by integrating Order Intelligence functions with Dynamics 365 BC to provide real-time data. If something goes wrong within your order management workflows, you’ll know about it right away. These systems can alert you to bottlenecks, discrepancies, and low-profit orders so that you can get to the root of the problem and address it. 

Additionally, increased control helps your business meet compliance standards. You can use your newfound oversight to manage costs and avoid delays. The road to optimization begins with greater control, which is exactly where this platform excels. 

Better Visibility

One of the most significant advantages of implementing Order Intelligence within Dynamics 365 BC is better visibility into your operations. Clear, real-time insights into every stage of the order process enable you to make informed decisions and manage resources more effectively.

Suppose that a delay occurs at a point in your supply chain. Our technology can immediately highlight the issue and offer potential solutions, such as rerouting shipments or adjusting inventory allocations. This level of visibility reduces the likelihood of missed deadlines or unexpected costs.

Increased visibility can also translate to better opportunities for improvement. You can track trends and patterns in order management to adapt to changing demands. 

These visibility benefits extend beyond your internal operations, providing you with insights into customer preferences, supplier performance, and market trends. The more you know about the environment you are operating within, the better equipped you’ll be to adapt. 

Improved Efficiency

Efficiency is key to staying competitive. The benefits of Order Intelligence solutions within Dynamics 365 BC significantly enhance operational efficiency and streamline your business.

Create custom automation workflows to reduce human-caused delays and promote overall efficiency. For example, automated order validation ensures that product requests are accurate before you process them. Improved validation reduces the risk of costly errors or returns. 

You can also eliminate unnecessary steps in workflows. This will allow your employees to focus on tasks that add more value instead of getting bogged down in tedious work. This shift will trickle down your entire supply chain, promoting faster order fulfillment and better customer service. 

More Robust Analytics

Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC already features powerful analytics tools, but its capabilities regarding order management are somewhat limited. Order Intelligence solutions supplement a workaround for these limitations and allow you to explore order data more effectively. You can track performance metrics, dig into customer behavior, and forecast demand with greater accuracy. 

For instance, suppose you are restructuring your inventory and safety stock thresholds. If you understand peak order times and identify which products are frequently assembled, you can use this information to adjust your stock levels in accordance with consumer preferences and ensure you have enough SKUs to meet projected demand.

The true power of Order Intelligence also includes predictive analytics capabilities. You can use these tools to predict what will likely happen in the future based on historical data and adjust your business practices accordingly. Customer trends can emerge out of nowhere and fade just as fast. Predictive analytics allow you to seize these fleeting opportunities and capitalize on every chance to boost revenue. 

Enhanced Communication With Other Companies

The order management lifecycle is largely dependent on external factors and entities. Address these critical aspects of your workflows by improving communication with upstream and downstream supply chain partners. You can ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page and reduce the risk of frustrating miscommunication by sharing data in real time and integrating with external systems.

These partnerships are critical to your short and long-term growth, which is why you must position your business as an appealing partner. Proactively collaborating with other entities in your supply chain can reduce friction and promote stability. 

Greater Access to Powerful Automation 

Automation is at the heart of Order Intelligence. Integrating these tools with Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC opens up a wide range of possibilities for making your business more efficient and nimble. You can automate numerous steps in the order management workflow, including order validation, inventory management, customer notifications, and more.

Automation also saves time by allowing your employees to focus on high-level tasks. Instead of assigning workers to input order information manually, they can spend more time on customer service, product development, or strategic planning. Automation also reduces the odds that your team will make a mistake by decreasing the number of redundant tasks they must perform. 

Unlock Your Full Potential With Order Intelligence

Cavallo’s Order Intelligence platform represents a holistic suite of solutions designed to address profit visibility, order management efficiency, and margin leakage. Explore our solutions today, or contact our team to learn more about how we can help you unlock the full revenue potential of your products.