How to Outsource Purchase Order Updates in Infios (Without Losing Control)

Outsourcing PO updates in Infios is one of the highest-leverage moves a furniture retailer can make — and one of the easiest to get wrong. Here's how to do it without losing the visibility and control that buyers depend on.

What to document before you start

1. A list of every vendor you order from, with their ACK turnaround and document format quirks
2. Your PO numbering convention and how SOs (sales orders) are tied to POs
3. Which fields in Infios must be updated when an ACK arrives, in what order
4. How exceptions are escalated — discrepancies, vendor non-responses, line-item splits
5. The reports buyers run weekly that depend on PO data accuracy

What to keep in-house

• Vendor relationship management and negotiation
• Final approval on PO creation (the trigger event)
• Decisions on cancelling, splitting, or re-issuing POs

What an outsourced team should handle

• Daily ACK reconciliation against open POs
• ETA updates as new information arrives
• SCRUB report comparison and discrepancy logging
• Daily summary report of changes made and exceptions flagged

How to measure quality

Three metrics worth tracking from week one of any pilot:

1. Update lag — hours between ACK arrival and Infios update. Target: under 24 hours.
2. Error rate — discrepancies between what was entered and what the source document shows. Target: under 1%.
3. Exception escalation time — minutes between an outsourced team finding an issue and the right in-house person knowing about it. Target: under 4 business hours.

If those three numbers are healthy in week one, the engagement will be healthy at month six. If they're not, the playbook needs adjustment before scaling up scope.