Improving Wholesale Order Accuracy in Fashion with Data Analytics

An inaccurate wholesale order causes incorrect allocations, delayed production, and additional time and money spent correcting the mistake. It also often creates friction between a brand and retailer and can sometimes seriously damage business relationships. 

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For these reasons, brands are keen to maximize their wholesale order accuracy, and one of the best ways to do this is by paying close attention to analytics, so they can identify patterns and anomalies and spot mistakes as soon as they appear. Before investing in a wholesale analytics platform, brands must first make sure they are capturing their source data consistently. 

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Wholesale Order Errors Usually Begin Before Reporting Exists 

Order errors often start as emailed spreadsheets, edited PDFs, or outdated linesheets that have been manually changed somewhere between sales, operations, product, and finance. 

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All it takes is a handwritten 1 to look like a 7, and the wrong quantity gets ordered. An accidental deletion of an Excel row could cause an entire color to be missing from an order. One email from sales that didn’t CC finance, and there’s a retailer record that doesn’t match the agreed order pricing discount. 

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Issues like these at the point of capture only become more destructive the further along down the order process they go before they are resolved. 

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Accurate Analytics Depend on Consistent Order Capture 

An analytics dashboard that only stores details of a final order cannot resolve wholesale order issues or resolve incomplete or inconsistent source data.

In the fast-moving, high SKU industry of fashion wholesale where style, color, size, season, delivery window, and retailer details all affect production and fulfillment, businesses must use a workflow that captures changes, status, product detail, retailer information, and communications in a connected record so that mistakes can be spotted easily and resolved quickly. 

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Centralized wholesale order management with a platform like JOOR is essential for fashion businesses that need to have a consistent flow of order capture data. 

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Metrics That Help Teams Find Accuracy Problems 

Order Changes & Status History

By tracking changes in status, it’s easier to identify where orders are being edited, delayed, or held for clarification.

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Spotting bottlenecks swiftly allows brands to push through correct orders and focus on centralizing clarification communications to ensure these issues don’t keep occurring.

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Product-Level Patterns

By looking at styles, colors, sizes, or delivery windows associated with repeated corrections, it is easy to identify where and why errors are happening. Perhaps an ERP failed to sync, or sales reps are using a legacy PDF that needs to be updated. 

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Retailer or Account Patterns

If a specific retailer or account is continually experiencing errors, analytics can help identify if this is a retailer-specific issue or a broader process issue. It might be possible to offer platform training to the retailer's main buyers to reduce the chance of recurring errors. 

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Season, Region, or Sales Representative Patterns

By tracking seasonal and regional metrics, it is easy to spot when errors cluster across certain teams or markets. There may be data sync failures within a regional ERP or localized software issues that are causing the inaccuracies.

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Production & Allocation Reports

Clear production data makes it easy to see where errors appear, which can quickly be resolved by connecting the confirmed order to what needs to be made, allocated, or shipped.

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Order-Versus-Inventory Visibility  

Visibility metrics make it easier to check whether the data used for commitments and planning is current. If it isn’t, this can quickly be corrected, reducing further problems. 

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Connect Wholesale Order Data to Production & Inventory Decisions 

Cleaner order data can act as a single source of truth that can support downstream decisions. Digital order reporting can help improve allocation, inventory visibility, production planning, and retailer communication, as well as aid in financial management.

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By obtaining analytics from fashion ERPs and wholesale order workflows, brands can improve their back-end systems and significantly reduce the chances of errors. 

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The luxury UK brand, Brodie Cashmere, used JOOR’s wholesale platform as their single source of truth and saw sales improve significantly. The platform’s reporting tools were proven invaluable in identifying best-selling products by region, eliminating the need to ask retailers for their in-store best sellers. 

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By leveraging JOOR’s reporting capabilities, Brodie Cashmere was able to gain valuable insights that influenced their inventory planning, production decisions, and even their design choices for upcoming collections. 

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How JOOR Supports Connected Fashion Wholesale Order Reporting

The JOOR platform can connect with over 100 ERPs to offer centralized order visibility as well as real-time order tracking. This makes it easy for brands to track retailer engagement and monitor product performance.

Its analytics suite also features sales, style, retailer, geography, season, and sales-representative filters where applicable, making it easy to quickly identify where a regional or seasonal error or discrepancy may have occurred. 

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The platform also offers production and allocation reporting with exportable, customizable reports for finance, merchandising, and operations, so all areas of a wholesale business can use the data as a single source of truth. 

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Analytics Cannot Fix an Unclear Wholesale Process on Its Own

An analytics dashboard alone cannot compensate for inconsistent product data, unclear order ownership, poor change control, or an integration that does not pass the fields a fashion business needs. Wholesale order accuracy can be enhanced with analytics, but reporting is not a replacement for a clear wholesale process. 

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To truly evaluate if a wholesale analytics solution is right for your business, you must define the level of accuracy and the fields you require. You should also consider the escalation process.

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Once an error has been identified within the system, what do you need to happen next in order for your wholesale business to run smoothly? Perhaps you need automated correction, or maybe you would prefer an email to be sent to your team flagging the issue so it can be corrected by a human. 

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Better Order Accuracy Starts With Better Data Flow

To maximize wholesale order accuracy, fashion brands should capture order data consistently, report against operational questions, fix the source of recurring issues, and measure whether the process improves. 

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Brands interested in connecting wholesale order capture with reporting can request a demo of JOOR here.

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FAQs

What is wholesale order accuracy? 

Wholesale order accuracy refers to the percentage of brand orders that are fulfilled correctly with the exact quantities and requirements requested by a retailer.

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Can data analytics reduce wholesale order errors?

Yes, data analytics can help to reduce wholesale order errors by making it easier to identify the root cause of discrepancies, allowing brands to fix the source of the issues. 

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Which wholesale order metrics should fashion brands track? 

Fashion brands concerned with improving wholesale order accuracy should look at tracking metrics such as order changes, production and allocation reports, and order versus inventory visibility.  They should also look out for product, retailer, regional, or seasonal patterns that could be causing order errors. 

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Why does order capture matter for wholesale reporting?

Order capture is essential for accurate wholesale reporting as it acts as a single source of truth that informs all analytics. 

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Can an ERP or wholesale platform improve order accuracy? 

Yes, a wholesale platform like JOOR can improve order accuracy through its analytics dashboard and reporting tools. They make it easy to identify order errors and their root causes so they can be resolved quickly, helping to maximize a fashion brand's wholesale success. 

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