Tiếng Việt
日本語The story below is an illustrative scenario, drawn from common implementation patterns Sonix has seen with import-export clients, representing a company trading with partners across multiple countries and time zones. The context and figures are illustrative of a type of problem many businesses in this industry commonly face, not audited data from one specific named client.
This is the full journey: from the moment the company recognized it was losing track of orders, through reorganizing its tracking process with Salesforce, to what changed afterward, laid out in detail so you can compare it against your own situation.
Table of Contents
- Company overview
- Context before implementation
- Pain point 01: Orders getting lost between time zones
- Pain point 02: Information scattered across email and personal spreadsheets
- Pain point 03: No one sees the full order picture
- The 5-step implementation process
- Before and after comparison
- Results after implementation
- Lessons learned
Overview
Company overview
The company operates in goods import-export, trading regularly with partners in Europe, the US, and a few Asian countries, with an operations team of about 15 people split into three shifts to cover different time zones. Each month the company processes several dozen orders, each one typically running through multiple steps from negotiation, confirmation, shipping, to payment.
Before working with Sonix, the company had never used a centralized order tracking system, managing things mainly through email and individual staff members’ personal spreadsheets, a pattern common among many import-export businesses of similar size.
Context
Context before implementation
Because partners were spread across different time zones, emails often arrived in the middle of the night or early morning Vietnam time. The operations team split into shifts to respond promptly: the morning shift handled Asian partners, the afternoon shift handled Europe, the night shift handled the US. Each shift only had access to the inbox and personal files of whoever was on duty.
When a night-shift employee finished a step on an order, the morning-shift person taking over usually had no way of knowing exactly whether that step was complete, unless they read through the entire email thread or messaged the other person directly, something not always possible given the mismatch in rest hours.
Pain point 01
Orders getting lost between time zones
An order typically needed three to four handoffs between shifts before completion. Each handoff was a point of risk: if the previous shift forgot to note down what had been handled, the next shift might duplicate work, miss a critical step, or give the partner incorrect information.
The most common scenario was a partner sending a delivery schedule change request during their own working hours, right when the Vietnam team was off shift, meaning the request only got handled after half a business day’s delay for the partner, risking knock-on effects on shipping or customs schedules.
Pain point 02
Information scattered across email and personal spreadsheets
Each employee handled their own group of partners and tended to track order progress their own way: some used a color-coded spreadsheet, some kept notes directly in email, some just remembered. There was no shared format anyone else could open and immediately understand an order’s status from.
When an employee took unexpected leave, the orders they were handling essentially stalled, because whoever stepped in had to spend time reading through the entire email history just to get up to speed, while the partner was still waiting on a timely response.
Pain point 03
No one sees the full order picture
Because data was scattered by whoever owned each account, leadership had no way of knowing at any given moment how many orders were pending, how many were at risk of running late, or which partner was generating the most issues that quarter.
Every summary report required each employee to manually compile their own files and send them up, usually taking a day or two and never reflecting the real-time situation, which meant staffing decisions across shifts always lagged behind problems instead of getting ahead of them.
Implementation
The 5-step implementation process
Map the full order journey
Sonix worked with the operations team to map out every step an order goes through, from negotiation to payment, defining exactly what information each step needs to capture.
Build the pipeline in Salesforce Sales Cloud
The mapped-out steps were turned into specific pipeline stages, each with clear criteria for moving to the next one.
Centralize every note into the order record
Any partner interaction, whether by email or phone, got logged directly into the order’s Salesforce record as it happened, instead of scattered across personal inboxes.
Configure automatic alerts
The system was set up to automatically flag any order with no updates within a set window, catching orders at risk of being forgotten between shifts early.
Train the team on shift handoff
All three shifts were trained on the same standard handoff process: open the order record in Salesforce at the start of a shift, update its status before handing off.
Comparison
Before and after comparison
Before Salesforce
✕ Information scattered across individual staff
✕ Shift handoffs relied on rereading email
✕ No early detection of forgotten orders
✕ Summary reports took 1-2 days
After implementation
✓ All information centralized in one order record
✓ Shift handoff is just opening the record in Salesforce
✓ Automatic alerts when an order has no updates
✓ Reports available in real time
Results
Results after implementation
On shift handoffs: handoff time between shifts dropped significantly, since the incoming shift no longer had to reread entire email threads to get context, just open the order record in Salesforce.
On partner response speed: requests coming in outside working hours got logged into the system immediately and automatically surfaced as priority for the next shift, instead of waiting for someone to stumble onto an old email.
On staffing risk: when an employee was unexpectedly out, whoever stepped in could pick up the order immediately thanks to the centralized history, instead of waiting for that person to return or digging through multiple inboxes.
On management visibility: leadership could see for the first time, in real time, how many orders were in progress and how much risk of delay existed, instead of waiting for a manually compiled weekly report.
Lessons
Lessons learned
For businesses operating across time zones, the core problem usually isn’t individual processing speed, it’s whether information is fully synced between shifts. Even a great employee can lose track of an order if whoever handed it off didn’t record enough context. For businesses considering implementation, the most important lesson is: map out the shift handoff process clearly first, then pick the tool that fits that exact process. This is the same principle covered in the piece on why CRM doesn’t fix a bad sales process: a tool only delivers value once the process underneath it is already clear.
“What we used to dread most was an issue coming up right at shift change. Now everything’s already in the system, whoever’s on duty can just pick it up.” (Operations Manager, import-export company, shared during implementation with Sonix)
Facing a similar situation in your import-export business?
Book a free consultation, the Sonix team will help you reorganize your order tracking process so nothing gets lost between shifts.
Sonix: Your success is our happiness.
Leave us your comment