Ever since the nineties I've seen the same tension in every sector: sales closes the deal, operations has to deliver on it. The solution is simple, yet rarely set up well: bring operations in early, and let only a clean order into the organisation. We call that the front door.
From the very start of my career, I've seen the same thing come back in every company and every sector: the tension between sales and operations. Whether it's manufacturing, services, software or market research, the pattern is the same everywhere. And it has always fascinated me, precisely because the solution is actually so simple.
Sales is eager to close the deal. That's exactly what a good salesperson is there for. But in the excitement, promises are sometimes made that can't quite be kept. Operations is then the one who has to deliver what sales has sold, left adjusting and measuring to get something working that was never really meant to work that way.
I saw it back in the nineties, and I've seen it return often in my own organisations since, even while I was keenly aware of it. Sales pushes operations to think outside the lines ("surely we can do that, we'll sort it out for this customer"), while operations wants everything to be delivered neatly and to standard. Both with the best of intentions. And still it grates.
The solution is actually very straightforward. Make sure that the moment a new opportunity is being discussed with a customer, operations is at the table as early as possible. Not once the signature is on the page, but already during the conversation.
Then the customer gets promises we can genuinely keep. Sales brings the commercial side, operations knows what is and isn't possible. Of course that clashes now and then, but that's healthy friction. It's infinitely better than an order that comes in and only afterwards turns out to be undeliverable.
Sales knows what the market needs. Operations knows what's genuinely possible. You need them both, right at the front.
At our last company, Roamler, we didn't solve this entirely, but we improved it a great deal. The agreement was simple: an order, assignment or request only enters the organisation once it's "clean". Every box must be ticked before the rest of the business starts working on it.
The idea isn't new. I remember it from my earliest working years at KPN, where we called it the clean order process. Every box ticked, and only then did the back office get going. A simple principle, with a big effect.
At Cohæro we often call this the front door. That front door is something you need to set up really well for every organisation. That's where the agreements with the customer are made, that's where the promises are given, and they're carried by sales and operations together. Set up that front door well, and you get a smooth collaboration between colleagues, with the clean order as a natural result.
And yes, something may still go wrong from time to time, that's just life. But you no longer head towards the 25 to 30 percent cost of failure I've seen build up in organisations. In my experience you bring that down to perhaps 5 or 10 percent.
For a long time this was mainly a matter of agreements and discipline. There was software that promised to bridge the gap, of course, CRM, project management, ERP, but honestly I've rarely seen the best examples of it. It seldom really matched how an organisation actually worked.
That's different now. Today you can build something together with your own organisation that genuinely fits your process from sales to delivery, where collaboration between colleagues comes first and the clean order is the natural result. Not a system you have to bend yourself to fit, but a front door that suits how you work. And that's exactly what we love to help with.
We'd love to look at your process from sales to delivery and operations with you. Together we can quickly see where the pain is, and how best to solve it as a team!