Manufacturers and retailers have long pursued the Holy Grail of consistently achieving the "perfect order." If a high percentage of your orders are "perfect," the theory goes, you will have happy customers who will repay you by ordering more. In its simplest (and most traditional) incarnation, a "perfect" order meets the elements of a product shipped in full, on time, undamaged and with the right documentation (including invoice). But many believed this age-old definition of perfect order left out too much. For one thing, it does not address whether or not the order actually met the customer's needs.

Over time, many people added their input to the concept of perfect order. R. "Ray" Wang, then a Forrester analyst, advanced the concept several years ago by writing that an order had to meet 20 different criteria before it could be considered "perfect." ¹  Not surprisingly, Wang's expanded perfect order included elements for quality and consistency.

Given that "perfect order" means something different to just about everyone today, we revisited the concept to see where it retains value and where companies need to adjust it in order to align their customer value metrics to meet today's supply chain challenges.

Definitive statistics are hard to come by, but our conversations with inventory managers reveal that for most companies, not even 50% of orders approach perfection via the traditional definition. So, why is it so difficult to achieve? And, even more so, why do manufacturers and retailers even try?

To update the perfect order metric and make it useful in the context of today's dynamic demand-driven environment, manufacturers and retailers need to:

Beyond the remaking of the "perfect order," manufacturers and retailers need to reimagine order execution in ways that create continuous value and resolve customers' ever-changing business needs.