Email orders into the TMS you already have

The question this file answersWhy is a clerk still retyping customer emails into a TMS we already pay for — and what happens when that clerk is off?

Fits: logistics operators handling 100–500+ orders a day where orders still arrive by email into the TMS; in the composite, a ~300-person operator with ~400 orders a day

Not for: operators whose customers already order through EDI or a portal — there is little retyping left to remove

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical, from the logistics playbook. A mid-size operator sees 100–500 orders a day; in the composite, about 400, most from a handful of repeat customers who send the same layout every time. Someone opens each email or PDF, checks the customer against the master, types the order into the TMS, sends the confirmation and parks anything odd. It hurts on the days a top customer sends more than usual — the clerk cannot type faster — and on the days that clerk is off, because nobody else knows the customer master by heart.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

Monday, 08:30. The clerk opens a review list of the orders that failed a check — a wrong consignee, a new address, a multi-leg request — not an inbox of 400 messages. The repeat orders from the top customers are already in the TMS, confirmations sent, before anyone sat down. The clerk's day becomes the exceptions and the phone. You see it in two places: the TMS shows orders entered overnight, and the review list tells you how many needed a person and why. The clerk does not disappear; the retyping does. The playbook's range covers the repeat flow only — new customers and complex quotes sit outside it.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

~50%

less typing on the biggest customer flow — top 3 customers, ~70% of volume

Before: a clerk retypes ~400 email orders a day into the TMS. After: roughly half of that handling can go on the covered flow — an industry range (McKinsey 2023, Deloitte 2022), not our measurement.

Where this number comes from

Composite from the logistics playbook mini-case. Industry benchmarks: McKinsey 2023 (50–70% of order-processing activity automatable); Deloitte Logistics Automation 2022 (40–60% time in intake pilots).

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

Nothing replaces your TMS — SAP TM, Transporeon, CargoWise, Alpega or whatever you run. We add a reading step in front of it:

inbound mail is sorted — order, quote request, status question, everything else
the order fields are extracted from the message or the attached PDF
each field is checked against your customer master — consignee, address, service level
orders that pass are written into the TMS through its API or, where there is none, through the import your team already uses
anything that fails a check lands in a short review list for the clerk, with the reason.

We start with the top customers — in the composite, three of them sent seven orders in ten — because their layouts repeat.

What stays human — and what this will not do

Exceptions. New customer onboarding. Complex multi-leg quotes. The clerk does not disappear — the queue of boring repeats does.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

Customer email layouts drift — a new PDF template fails extraction until it is re-taught, which is why failures go to a person instead of being guessed. If your customer master is dirty, the check fails often and the review list is long for the first weeks. Without a TMS API, writes go through import files — slower, and it needs IT time. Multi-leg quotes and new-customer onboarding stay manual; the 40–60% range is not about them.

How long it takes, and what we need from you

Audit, about two weeks (€1.5–3K): we sit with the clerk, count real orders per customer and per layout, and check whether your TMS has an API your IT will let us use. Pilot, 3–5 weeks — medium complexity in the logistics playbook (€10–20K): the top customers only, the clerk reviews every exception, nothing is entered silently. Production: the rest of the customers, one layout at a time. From you: mailbox access and a month of past orders.

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

This is about you if…

Do orders still arrive as emails or PDFs that someone retypes?
Do a few customers make up most of the volume?
Does your TMS have an import or API your IT already uses?

What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map a logistics process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Example · Logistics.

Deep-dive process file. Volumes, weeks and sources come from the industry playbook; nothing here is a named client.

All process files