BrainTrust Query: Are Perfect Orders the Holy Grail or a Dead End Trail?

By Deck P. Murray, Managing Director, Dechert-Hampe & Co.

The perfect order...sounds so simple. Just deliver a product order to a customer that is complete, accurate, on time and undamaged. However, perfect orders are quite elusive for many companies. And when used as a metric, high perfect order scores require the kind of effective coordination and communication across departments that are unattainable by most companies.

Nevertheless, the benefits of a perfect order are clear and compelling. Perfect orders can drive down inventories, eliminate rework, reduce deductions and improve customer satisfaction. They can foster enhanced collaboration among supply chain, IT, finance, sales, marketing and customer service. Further, AMR Research reports that a three percent improvement in perfect order fulfillment can translate to a one percent increase in profits.

So why aren't more companies working to ensure that more perfect orders are delivered? And why aren't more companies tracking their results?

The 2005 Customer Service Benchmarking Study conducted by Dechert-Hampe & Co. revealed that only 34 percent of companies track perfect orders, and yet 77 percent of these same companies rate perfect orders as a valuable metric.

Why the disconnect? Is it because perfect orders require an unrealistic level of cooperation between customer service, supply chain and sales departments? Is it the need to have effective monitoring systems in place? Is it just too hard to achieve high results?

Discussion Questions: Are perfect orders a meaningful metric to track and measure? Is the prize worth the effort? Or is the perfect order like a perfect 10: an ideal that we dream of but rarely achieve?