Automation
Remove the manual work around ecommerce
Behind most online stores, people copy data between screens, check things by hand and chase exceptions. We automate that work carefully, and keep a person in the loop wherever judgement matters.
Where the time goes
Operational work we automate
Order processing
Orders routed by product, stock location or destination; tagged, split or held by rule; and sent to the warehouse or supplier without anyone opening them.
Fraud review
Orders checked against your own rules – value, mismatched addresses, unusual delivery destinations – so only the doubtful ones wait for a person.
Supplier orders
Purchase orders raised when stock crosses a threshold or a drop-ship item sells, in the format each supplier accepts.
Stock synchronisation
Levels kept in step across warehouses, marketplaces and the storefront, with a reconciliation that reports differences instead of quietly overwriting them.
Returns
Requests checked against your returns policy, labels issued, and stock updated when the parcel arrives rather than when it’s promised.
Refunds
Refunds checked against what the payment provider actually did, so one that failed or is stuck pending is noticed before the customer chases it.
Reporting
Sales, refund and stock reports built from the systems themselves and delivered on a schedule, instead of assembled by hand in a spreadsheet.
Notifications
The right person told about the events that matter – a failed payment, an unusually large order, a best seller out of stock – without a stream of alerts nobody reads.
Customer-service routing
Enquiries matched to their order and routed by order status, value or topic, with the details already attached.
Product feeds
Shopping and marketplace feeds generated from the catalogue, with products that would be rejected held back and listed for someone to fix.
Approval workflows
Trade orders over a limit, price overrides and quotes sent for sign-off, with a record of who approved what and when.
Approach
Automation your operations team will trust
- Start with the task, not the tool. We watch the work being done, count how often it happens and what a mistake costs, then decide what’s worth automating.
- Exceptions go to people. The routine cases run automatically; the unusual ones are held with a clear reason, rather than guessed at.
- Every automatic action is logged. Anyone can see what happened to an order and why, and undo it where that makes sense.
- Use what the platform already has. Built-in automation and rules come first. We build when they can’t express the rule, can’t reach the other system or can’t cope with the volume.
In practice
What this work typically involves
An automation project starts with one task and the people who do it: how often it happens, where the data comes from, and what a mistake costs. The routine cases are then automated, the exceptions are routed to a person with the reason attached, and every automatic action is logged.
Typical results are proforma invoices generated automatically for wholesale orders instead of by hand, stock, orders and fulfilment brought into one view across sales channels, and refund and payment exceptions detected automatically, with one alert per problem that closes itself when the money finally moves.
That last example is what eplatforms’ own product, Order Exceptions, does for online stores.
Next step
Where does your team re-key data or check things by hand?
Describe the task and how often it happens. We’ll tell you what can be automated safely.