It’s said that almost 40 percent of all products ordered in the U.S. get returned. To add insult to injury, returned goods can cost the provider up to 50% more than the original price of the ordered goods. With these statistics in mind, let’s talk about reducing returns.
Paradigm has a return-reduction strategy that can help our customers save money and resources. From the beginning, we have understood that having an electronic catalog goes a long way toward reducing ordering mistakes and, of course, continually maintaining the quality of a catalog further diminishes errors that lead to returns.
The benefits of moving from hand-written orders to electronic catalogs and ordering have been enormous. These benefits are the result of your dealers knowing you can produce the product they configure and order. Before electronic catalogs, it was anyone’s guess.
1. Ensure order accuracy and consistency
Now, Paradigm is taking further strides to reduce incorrect orders and the physical return of product. For starters, we’ve developed tools that ensure order accuracy and consistency. These tools, available to everyone using Paradigm Omni, flag orders that might have errors by looking for inconsistencies across configurations on the quote.
Let’s say an order has 20 bronze casement units and one white unit. Did the dealer really mean to add that one white unit? Reviewing the order before placing it lets users correct any mistakes before the order is submitted to the manufacturer for production.
2. Apply error reduction technology
But that’s not all! Our Paradigm Safeguard PowerUp allows manufacturers to perform thousands of automated tests comparing two catalog versions. This form of advanced error-reduction technology uses production-order data to generate test cases and identify changes between the current catalog version and a “release candidate catalog” to proactively identify errors before they enter production.
Using this technology, the manufacturer can identify unintended changes and correct them to reduce manufacturing errors and subsequent returns. This form of advanced error-reduction technology is going to go a long way in return reductions, making Paradigm’s customers more profitable every day.
