Overview
Purchase Order Coordinator Jobs in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa at HRExec
Title: Purchase Order Coordinator
Company: HRExec
Location: Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
The Purchase Order (PO) Coordinator is responsible for ensuring the accuracy, completeness, and ongoing management of Purchase Order (PO) and shipment data across multiple client accounts. This role is critical to the successful onboarding of new clients, providing manual support for PO processes until automation is fully implemented and ensuring continued data integrity across CargoWise and Control Tower platforms thereafter. Acting as the central order management data-quality checkpoint between clients, operations teams, and origin control towers, the successful candidate will proactively identify data gaps, manage discrepancies, and ensure order information remains accurate, current, and actionable.
Responsibilities
1. Purchase Order Setup & Client Onboarding
- Support the onboarding of new clients into the Purchase Order management process.
- Provide administrative and operational support during implementation and transition phases.
- Manually manage, validate, and maintain PO data until automated workflows are fully operational.
- Ensure PO structures, mandatory data fields, and workflow requirements are correctly established from the outset.
- Act as the primary data support resource during early-stage implementations to ensure continuity, accuracy, and process compliance.
2. Ongoing Purchase Order Management & Validation
- Review incoming Purchase Orders to ensure all required information is accurately captured,
- Monitor Cargo Ready Dates directly with supplier and ensure alignment between Purchase Orders and associated shipments.
- Identify, investigate, escalate and/or resolve discrepancies between PO data and shipment information
- Maintain clear audit trails and ensure consistency of data across all systems.
- Ensure Purchase Orders are accurately linked to corresponding shipment records.
- Support the preparation of client reports and data analysis in collaboration with the wider operations and account management teams.
3. CargoWise Data Management & Dashboard Integrity
- Maintain day-to-day accuracy of order data within CargoWise.
- Monitor order progress and update records with relevant comments regarding order splits, changes, delays, and exceptions.
- Proactively identify missing, inaccurate, or outdated information that may impact shipment visibility, reporting accuracy, or operational performance.
- Support the integrity and reliability of client-facing visibility tools.
4. Data Gap Resolution & Operational Support
- Identify data gaps, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies across Purchase Orders and shipment records.
- Communicate issues clearly and effectively to operations teams, control towers, and relevant stakeholders.
- Follow up proactively to ensure data discrepancies are resolved within agreed timeframes.
- Provide accurate and validated data to support operational decision-making and effective shipment management.
- Assist in maintaining data governance standards across all client accounts.
5. Control Tower & Origin Support
- Support origin Control Tower teams by ensuring Purchase Order and shipment data is accurate, complete, and visible where required.
- Provide validated data to enable proactive exception management and issue resolution.
- Highlight potential risks, delays, and operational inconsistencies at the earliest opportunity.
- Support continuous improvement initiatives focused on enhancing data quality, visibility, and process efficiency across origin and destination operations.
Qualification, Experience & Skills
- Diploma OR 5 years work experience
- 2+ years’ experience in data analysis, reporting, business support, or operational analytics – logistics experience beneficial.
- Strong communication skills between internal and external stakeholders globally.
- Proven experience in data management, validation, and quality control with exceptional attention to detail.
- Experience working with Purchase Orders, shipment management, logistics, or supply chain data.
- Working knowledge of CargoWise or similar freight forwarding, logistics, or transportation management systems.
- Ability to manage manual data processes accurately and efficiently in advance of automation.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to identify discrepancies and investigate root causes.
- Effective communication skills with the confidence to engage with operations teams, control towers, clients, and internal stakeholders.
- Excellent organisational and time-management skills, with the ability to manage multiple data streams and priorities simultaneously.
- Knowledge of Microsoft Excel.
