Question

Phorwex Canada Inc. is a cleaning and hygiene catalogue company that accepts customer orders by phone, online, and mail. About 75% of customer orders are received by phone; salespeople complete the paper order and send it (by fax) to the main office for shipping. The remaining orders are mainly online with very few sent through postal mail.

The company has experienced many issues with customer orders in terms of delays in data entry, errors in customer information, incorrect order details, and so on. The firm decided to develop a real-time system for phone orders that can be used by salespeople who accept orders from customers.

You have been hired to assist the company as they design the new order system and recommend the set of controls required to solve these issues.

What key attributes need to be included in the new real-time order system?

What controls policies and procedures should be adopted?

Answer 1

In the given case, the main issue seems to be with the orders which are received by phones and account for 75% of the total orders received by the company. Hence, the key attributes that need to be included in the new real time order system should be to able to record all the details of the customer likethe address, order details like prodcut ordered, its color, quantities, expected delivery date. All the system should be such that an automatic mail is generated to the main office containing all the details for quick shipping.

The control policies and procedures that can be adopted are:

- Before the package is shipped, confirmation can be taken from the customer regarding the order details.

- The phone orders can be recorded aand played jusst before the item is shipped to check that the poduct being delivered is accurate.

-Turn around time (TAT) can be set for everyone within which an order should be shipped and same should be regularily monitired that the TAT is being followed. It can be linked with the employees performance evaluation.