Orders by phone and email cost more than they look
In a distribution business, a serious share of the sales team's time goes into taking down orders the customer could enter themselves: codes dictated over the phone, lists sent by messaging apps, emails asking someone to confirm availability.
The real cost is not the time spent, it is the mistakes: a mistyped code becomes a return, and a confirmation given from memory becomes a delivery from stock that does not exist.
What the partner sees in the portal
- A catalogue with their contract prices, not list prices
- Real stock, updated from your system, with an estimated delivery date
- Fast ordering by code, by pasting a list from a file, or from previous orders
- Order history, with the status of each order and its documents
- Invoices and delivery notes available for download, without asking by email
- Balance and credit limit, so they know upfront whether they can order
What changes behind the scenes
The order lands directly in your system, validated from the start: the codes exist, the prices are the right ones, the quantities respect packaging multiples.
The sales team stops transcribing and handles exceptions and the customers who genuinely need a conversation. In practice, that is the difference between growing your customer base and hiring two more people to take orders.