Apogee StoreFront in-depth
Order approval
One of the key advantages that web-to-print offers for corporate customers is the ability to set up an approval cycle for all purchases. Before each order is passed on to the print service provider it has to go through an approval phase in which a manager approves the print requests from their employees or franchisees.
The order approval process
- A print buyer orders one or more products in a corporate B2B web shop.
- A company administrator is notified by e-mail or through the Apogee StoreFront Dashboard that new orders require approval. Using a direct link, he or she can log into StoreCenter where a list of all pending orders is directly accessible in the Orders tab.
- If an order is rejected, the admin has to provide a reason for this. This justification is included in the e-mail notification that the print buyer gets when an order is rejected.
- Approved orders automatically get the status 'In progress' which means that the Apogee Prepress workflow will download the order items for processing.
Approval criteria
Whether an order should be approved or not may depend on various criteria:
- Cost - to avoid excessive spending an administrator can evaluate the total value of the order as well as the cost of each separate order item.
- Content - An employee might create or upload inappropriate or incorrect content for a print order. This can range from supplying an outdated version of a document to typos or giving oneself an incorrect job title on a business card. A company administrator can check a PDF softproof of the content of all the orders that require approval.
- Order data - An incorrect shipping address or a missing internal purchase order code are mistakes that may also lead to an order being cancelled.
A valuable service to corporate accounts
Many companies struggle to streamline their print ordering process. The trend to decentralize and allow people to work from home, the need to maintain tight control over budgets and the desire to shorten the time to market all add to this challenge. The order approval features that are built into Apogee StoreFront enable a print service provider to offer a valuable service to business customers.
For companies that require even more advanced collaboration and approval tools, Agfa Graphics offers additional web portal solutions such as Apogee WebApproval.