Staples®, the large office supply company, sells not only in retail stores, but also to other large corporations. Top management at Staples realizes that these corporate sales are dependent upon customers' satisfaction with their buying experience. Staples must have sales processes that maximize customer satisfaction, because the sales processes are what make up the buying experience. However, customer satisfaction depends on the whole range of activities from ordering and product delivery to efficient billing and collection, and facilitation of product returns. Staples must have, monitor, and improve all of the internal processes that generate the sale, deliver to the customer, and collect the payment. These processes must be able to handle walk-in sales, telephone orders, and Web orders. To improve performance in filling customer orders and collecting the cash, Staples monitors the following performance measures:

• Order entry accuracy
• Order fill rate versus unit fill rate
• Percent of items mispicked
• Percent of orders delivered next day
• Products delivered undamaged

To perform efficiently in these areas, Staples must have processes within the company to enter customer orders, pick the correct items from the warehouse shelves, package and ship the items correctly, bill the customer correctly, and collect the payment as quickly as possible. If these processes are inefficient or poorly managed, the result may be unhappy customers and reduced sales. This chapter describes these types of revenue processes and the internal controls within those processes.