ERP Implementation for International Fulfillment
Automated the order fulfillment process for tVNS Technologies, a medical device startup, by implementing an ERP system using Billbee.
The Challenge
tVNS Technologies was processing orders almost entirely by hand. Inventory was tracked on physical stock cards, and the online shop had no visibility into actual stock levels. This gap became impossible to ignore when a single marketing campaign generated hundreds of overnight orders, many of which couldn’t be fulfilled in a timely manner because the online shop had accepted more than what was in stock. As the company began selling to larger research organizations in the US and UK, the manual process proved inefficient.
The Work
I was tasked with selecting and implementing an ERP system to automate the fulfillment pipeline, reduce manual touch points, and bring the company’s inventory and logistics operations into line with the scale it was growing into.
My first task was mapping every manual touchpoint in the existing process before touching any system. From physical stock cards to the disconnected storefront to the customs workflow for UK and US orders, each of these slowed the process down and required unnecessary labor.
The ERP was configured with full product data including weight, dimensions, stock levels, making inventory visible in real time and eliminating the storefront’s ability to oversell. From there, the priority was integrating it with existing tools. The payment platform was linked so invoice matching automatically moved orders from “ordered” to “paid,” and the DPD account was connected so shipping labels generated the moment an order was marked as packed.
Two manual steps were kept: Order confirmation after payment, as required under German law, and the packing confirmation trigger. Everything else was automated around them.
The Results
The new system eliminated nearly all manual touch points in the fulfillment pipeline, leaving only two steps requiring human confirmation. Inventory was now visible to the storefront in real time, preventing the overselling issues that had previously disrupted customer relationships. International order processing, previously one of the most time-consuming parts of the workflow, became largely self-managing, with customs forms and shipping labels generated automatically.
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