Order confirmation, then retype
Your web-to-print store takes an order for 500 business cards. The customer uploaded their artwork, chose the stock and paid or charged it to their account. It feels automatic. Then the order email arrives in the office, and someone opens the MIS, creates a customer if needed, creates a job, types in the spec, downloads the artwork, saves it to the job folder, and sets the delivery address.
It takes a few minutes per order. On a busy Monday with a backlog from the weekend, it takes the morning, and the storefront's promise of speed ends in the office.
Why the two systems never met
Storefronts and MIS systems are usually bought at different times for different reasons. The store was set up to win online orders; the MIS runs production. Connecting them means agreeing how a product in the store maps to a spec in the MIS, and that job often falls between the supplier of one and the supplier of the other.
- Store products are described for customers, not in the terms the MIS uses.
- Customer accounts exist in both systems and do not match.
- Artwork is stored in the store's system and has to be moved by hand.
- Options chosen online, such as rounded corners or a second address, arrive as free text.
- Nobody is sure whether the MIS or the store supplier should build the link.
What retyping costs you
Staff time, first. Then errors: a stock chosen online becomes a different stock in the MIS because someone picked the wrong line, or a quantity is typed with one zero too few. Orders placed on Friday evening sit untouched until Monday, which undercuts the whole point of selling online. And because the job was keyed in by hand, the customer's online order status often tells them nothing useful.
The storefront to MIS connection
- We map each store product and option to its production spec: stock code, size, colours, finishing, and the route it takes through your MIS.
- Orders are collected from the store automatically through its API or export, as soon as they are placed.
- Each order becomes a job in the MIS under the right customer account, with spec, quantity, due date and delivery address filled in.
- Artwork is copied into the job's folder and, if you use automated preflight, passed through it.
- Anything that does not map cleanly, such as an unknown option or a new customer who needs a credit check, goes to an exception list rather than being guessed.
- Job status flows back to the store, so the customer can see when their order is printed and dispatched.
| Step | Now | Connected |
|---|---|---|
| Create job | Typed by hand | Created from the order |
| Customer account | Searched and matched | Matched automatically, new ones flagged |
| Artwork | Downloaded and filed | Copied into the job folder |
| Order status | Customer emails to ask | Updated from production |
We work with what your store and MIS expose. If one of them has no usable API, we say so early and look at alternatives such as structured exports.
An office that checks instead of types
Orders reach production as jobs, often before anyone in the office has seen them. Office staff look at the exception list rather than every order, and the exceptions teach you where the store's product setup needs tidying. Customers who ordered online see progress online. Weekend orders are ready to schedule on Monday morning.
Is your storefront disconnected?
- Every online order is keyed into the MIS by hand.
- Online orders have gone to press with the wrong stock or quantity.
- Artwork is downloaded and filed manually.
- Customers email to ask about orders they placed online.
- Your store and MIS have different customer lists.