Questionnaire — Pilot clarification call (email-order desk)

Introduction

Purpose. Structured agenda for the clarification call with the Prime Products CEO on the REQ-014 pilot. One call should yield: the pilot department identified, the systems named, the constraints known, and success defined — enough to start Phase 1 of the pilot discovery plan.

Method. Guided conversation, not a form. The meeting is recorded with Fathom; the transcript is fed into the vault and answers are committed in English (ADR-003). Administered in Greek — use the Greek administration copy (ADR-011); this English file is the master.

Time. ~60 minutes. If time runs short, sections A, D, and H are the must-haves; B/C/E details can move to the department interviews.

Answer formats: [free text], [number], [multiple choice], [names].

✅ Answered — call held 2026-07-06 (Fathom, 56 min)

Answers below (**A:**) are distilled from the transcript; the interview note is the fuller record and the raw transcript is kept per ADR-012. The transcript is ASR-noisy — uncertain readings are flagged. Items marked ⏭ carried were not (fully) answered on the call and move to Phase 1/2 of the discovery plan.

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A. The department (must-have)

1. Which department exactly runs this flow, and what is it called internally? Is the whole flow (email → SoftOne → B2B match → follow-up) inside one department, or split across several? [free text]

   A: The cylinders department (“τμήμα φιαλών”) — calibration-gas cylinders for the gas-detection instruments Prime Products supplies to vessels; some cylinders are flammable (dangerous goods), which is what makes fulfilment hard. The whole flow lives inside this one department for these products. The same pattern (quotes/coordination) exists for other product lines, run by another 10–15 people — out of pilot scope, expansion signal.

2. Who manages it, and how many people work the order desk day-to-day? [names + number]

   A: Lead: Fotini; 3 people total (third member just hired). (The transcript also mentions “Ioanna” amid an on-call name mix-up — names/roles to be confirmed via the team-details email.)

3. Who would be the best pilot champion? [names]

   A: Fotini — named owner on the call (“you will run this”).

4. May we interview the manager and 2–3 operators, and sit with them for half a day to observe? Who arranges it? [free text]

   A: Yes — client fully available (“we are available”). Fotini to email team details (names, roles, emails, tools, daily routine) and intro Evangelia (IT); follow-up call agreed.

B. Order intake (email)

5. How many customer orders arrive per day/week, and how seasonal is the volume? [number + free text]

   A: ~5–10 requests/day; ~1,100 cases in the last half-year (requests/quotes, not all became orders). The load is not the count but the coordination per case. ⏭ Seasonality not discussed — carried.

6. In what form do orders arrive? [free text]

   A: Mostly PDF (often generated by the customer’s own system), also Excel, free-text cover letters, and ~3 customer procurement platforms Prime Products must log into to pull RFQs. Shares not quantified.

7. One shared mailbox, several, or personal inboxes? Which addresses? [free text]

   A: A central shared “Customer Service” mailbox (3–4 company mailboxes overall — ASR-uncertain); staff label/assign messages to the owning department inside the mailbox (labeling, not forwarding). ⏭ Exact addresses — carried to the team email / Evangelia.

8. What languages do order emails come in? [multiple choice]

   A: ~99.9% English.

9. What makes an order email “hard” today? [free text]

   A: The request itself may be unclear (product must be clarified with the customer before quoting). The real difficulty is not the email but the coordination loop that follows — see Q24.

10. Do the same customers order the same products repeatedly, or is every order different? [free text]

    A: ⏭ Not directly answered — product codes are stable (1–3 lines per request); repeat-pattern analysis carried to the sample set.

C. SoftOne order creation

11. Who keys orders into SoftOne, and how long does one typical order take? [free text + number]

    A: The cylinders team; ~1–2 minutes per registration when the request is clear. Entry is not the bottleneck.

12. Which SoftOne edition/version do you run, and does your license include Web Services / API access? [free text + names]

    A: Web Services/API: YES (stated on the call — verify with a live test, Phase 2). ⏭ Version/edition unclear on the call (ASR-garbled); SoftOne partner not named — carried to the IT interview (Evangelia).

13. How good is the master data? [free text]

    A: Good — product codes are specific and stable, matching emails to SoftOne records is not a pain; SoftOne data is trusted (“single source of truth”, confirmed by the sponsor).

14. What errors happen at order entry, and what do they cost? [free text]

    A: None reported — entry errors are a non-issue (small line counts, stable codes).

D. Supplier B2B matching (must-have)

Premise corrected on the call: there is no supplier B2B system. Suppliers accept email only — the “matching” leg becomes RFQ-email drafting/parsing. The platforms that do exist belong to the customers (~3, login-based).

15. Which supplier B2B system(s) do you match products on? [names]

    A: None — suppliers have no APIs or portals; all supplier communication is email. ⏭ Names of the ~3 customer platforms — carried to Phase 2.

16. How does the desk access it — portal login, API/EDI, catalog files? [free text]

    A: Customer platforms: username/password; some provide tooling to fill in prices directly (described as “apps” — verify). ⏭ Demo logins — carried.

17. How does matching work today? [free text]

    A: The supplier does the matching: Prime Products sends the product as named in SoftOne / by the customer, and the supplier maps it to their own catalog; basic identification data suffices. Not a Prime Products-side pain.

18. What happens when a product can’t be matched/supplied? [free text]

    A: Supplier answers “not available” → ask the port’s 1–2 other candidate suppliers; if the port can’t be served at all → inform the customer and re-run the whole loop at the vessel’s next port.

19. After matching, is a purchase order placed on the B2B system as part of this same flow? By whom? [free text]

    A: The desk emails the supplier the purchase order together with a SoftOne-issued commercial invoice / delivery note used for the physical delivery to the port agent. No system involved beyond SoftOne + email.

E. Customer follow-up

20. Walk us through “follow up until completed”. [free text]

    A: Request → SoftOne registration → supplier RFQ email(s) → quote to customer (SoftOne pricing policy auto-applies; contract entitlements checked manually against a separate list — e.g. the MSC contract, ~1,000 vessels) → customer approval → PO + delivery paperwork to supplier → delivery to the customer-appointed port agent → confirmation via signed & stamped delivery note (local) or FedEx AWB tracking (air, main UK/US supplier) → case closes on confirmed onboard delivery. The desk informs the customer by email throughout.

21. Where is order status tracked? [free text]

    A: Split: orders/pricing in SoftOne; contract entitlements in a separate manual list; the coordination state effectively lives in Outlook threads. No single worklist — that is the ask (Q31).

22. What do customers chase you about most? [free text]

    A: Delivery within the vessel’s port time window — that is the whole game; fast, reliable quote turnaround second. Missed windows create the “chase the vessel to the next port” loop (1–2 weeks of extra work per case).

23. Are there response-time expectations or SLAs? [free text]

    A: Informal but hard: the port call window is the deadline. Earlier customer notice helps but cannot be relied on. Vessel schedules come from the customer (public AIS tools don’t help — no forward ETA/ETD); MSC provides a schedule portal (username/password).

F. Volumes, pain, and baseline

24. The single biggest pain? [free text]

    A: The email ping-pong per case — ~15 communications across customer + supplier(s) + agent to lock product/port/price/window; “each order is a small project of its own”. Everything runs across Outlook + SoftOne + customer platforms with manual data movement.

25. How much of the desk’s day goes to re-keying and status-chasing versus judgment work? [free text]

    A: Registration is minutes; effectively all of the 3 people’s time (and more) goes to coordination/chasing — “the work doesn’t get done”, quote success rate low (no number given).

26. May we measure a one-week baseline before changing anything? [multiple choice]

    A: Agreed in principle on the call — time-to-close is not measured today (“only judged empirically from the mailbox”) and both sides want a before/after measurement. ⏭ Formal 1-week baseline arrangement — Phase 1.

G. Constraints and data access

27. Can we get 20–50 representative order emails + matching SoftOne orders as a sample set? [free text]

    A: Yes — the client will compile them (with attachments, including ugly/exception cases) into a folder; data-handling terms to be agreed on the follow-up (data-handoff) call.

28. Any red lines — actions AI must never take autonomously? [free text]

    A: None stated when asked (audio was poor at that point — reconfirm in writing at Phase-3 scoping before setting autonomy boundaries).

29. Who in IT should we work with? [names]

    A: Evangelia — knows all systems, can grant email/SoftOne/platform access. Intro requested from Fotini (action item).

30. Confirm identity records: website primeproducts.gr, VAT 998740232 — and which email domain does staff use? [free text]

    A: Email domain @primeltd.com — observed on the Fathom participant labels of all Prime Products attendees; the Cloudflare Access allow policy already matches, no change needed. Website/VAT not re-litigated on the call.

H. Success and next steps (must-have)

31. What result makes this pilot a success — and by when? [free text]

    A: In the client’s words: (1) work from ONE platform instead of Outlook + SoftOne + customer platforms — “that alone would be a major success”; (2) morning clarity — log in and see exactly what needs doing. KPI direction: requests closed without delay; time-to-close before vs. after.

32. If the pilot works, what happens next? [free text]

    A: ⏭ Deferred on the call (“second phase”). Strong expansion signal though: the same coordination pattern burdens another 10–15 people on other product lines; framed by TPL as platform unification (not CRM).

33. Budget/timeline expectations for the pilot? [free text]

    A: No budget figure exists. Timeline: urgent — “we have a huge problem” — but no formal deadline.

34. Anything we haven’t asked that we should know? [free text]

    A: Yes — three things the questionnaire missed: (1) the port agent is a third key party (appointed by the customer, receives and delivers onboard, must be identified per order and monitored); (2) vessel tracking is its own sub-process (customer-driven; MSC portal; AIS tools useless for schedules); (3) contract/consumption tracking (prepaid free-of-charge entitlements per vessel, checked manually) — a named pain, candidate for its own REQ at scoping.