HG Walter Reclaims 850 Hours a Month by Automating Order Admin
Around 850 hours of order admin absorbed every month - the equivalent of 3.5 full-time people - across roughly 14,000 orders.
Results at Glance
~500
Orders processed per day
~850
Hours of admin absorbed each month
3.5
Full-time roles of capacity reclaimed
~500
Orders processed per day
~850
Hours of admin absorbed each month
3.5
Full-time roles of capacity reclaimed
WHY BURNT
“We used to spend hours every day just retyping orders and figuring out what customers meant. Now that's all handled automatically, and we're actually talking to customers instead of staring at paperwork.”
HG Walter,
Operations team
01
THE PROBLEM
Close to 500 orders a day, every one keyed in by hand
HG Walter supplies premium meat to retail, wholesale and restaurant customers across London. Volume kept climbing. Every order still had to be read and keyed in by a person.
Orders arrived in whatever format the customer preferred, and not always in English. Chefs described what they wanted rather than quoting a code, so someone had to work out which product before anything could be entered. At close to 500 orders a day, the reading and retyping filled most of the working day.
WHAT WAS SLOWING THEM DOWN
01
Drowning in admin
Hours every day spent retyping, correcting and interpreting orders instead of serving customers.
02
Multi-format chaos
Orders arriving in different formats and different languages, each needing manual interpretation first.
03
Missing product codes
Chefs describe what they want, not catalogue codes. Staff had to identify every product by hand.
04
Scaling pressure
With volume approaching 500 a day, admin was growing faster than the team could absorb.
02
THE FIX
It reads the order the way a person would
With Burnt, every order lands in one place. The agent reads it whatever the format or language, works out which product each line means even when no code is given, and pushes the finished order straight into their system.
And it doesn’t just trust itself. When something looks off, it flags it and asks before anything moves. The team still has the final say on the edge cases. 97.5% of orders now land confirmed and logged without anyone retyping them. Nothing about how they work had to change - Burnt fit around the process, not the other way round
H OW IT WORKS
01
Capture
Orders arrive in one inbox, in whatever format the customer sent them.
02
Read
The agent pulls product, quantity and customer, across languages.
03
Check
It matches descriptions to real products and flags anything unusual.
04
Push
Confirmed orders flow straight into their system, untouched.
03
THE RESULT
What it added up to
~500
Orders processed per day
Close to 500 orders a day now run start to finish without retyping. 97.5% land confirmed and logged straight into their system.
~850
Hours of admin absorbed each month
Around 850 hours of order admin taken off the team every month, across roughly 14,000 orders.
3.5
Full-time roles of capacity reclaimed
The equivalent of three and a half full-time people, back on the work only people can do: the customers behind every order.
~500
Orders processed per day
Close to 500 orders a day now run start to finish without retyping. 97.5% land confirmed and logged straight into their system.
~850
Hours of admin absorbed each month
Around 850 hours of order admin taken off the team every month, across roughly 14,000 orders.
3.5
Full-time roles of capacity reclaimed
The equivalent of three and a half full-time people, back on the work only people can do: the customers behind every order.
04
WHY IT LAST
A partner, not a platform
BUILT FOR FOOD
Burnt was built from the ground up for food distribution, by a team with real roots in the supply chain. Automation isn’t bolted onto an old system - it’s the starting point. So when the Burnt team sat down with HG Walter, the work was about matching how the business actually runs, not forcing it into software designed for someone else’s world.
ROOM TO GROW INTO
With close to 500 orders a day flowing through on their own and 97.5% confirmed and logged, HG Walter can take on more without taking on more admin. More order volume, new channels, a wider product range - the foundation handles it, and the quality and personal service their customers expect stay intact.
HG Walter,
Operations team
