Today e-commerce has become the most preferred choice for buying any products or services globally, and it has become one of the fastest-growing industries. Like every industry faces several challenges to meet customer satisfaction, even e-commerce companies are striving hard to meet customer demands and providing in time delivery. The overall process that takes place right from the moment the customer places an order till the product gets delivered is known as Order Management System (OMS) or Order to Cash process(O2C). Earlier manual OTC process was heavily dependent on paper and manual work; as a result, there was a delay in payments, shipping errors and lack of customer satisfaction due to which companies were not able to gain expected revenue.

With the recent advancement in technologies like RPA, AI, and other useful automation tasks, e-commerce companies introduced intelligent automation process for their Order Management Process thus improving the delivery process with high precision and in time.

Integrating Intelligence Automation with Order to Cash process (O2C):

What is Intelligence Automation (IA)?

Intelligent Automation (IA) is basically automation of the company’s process using Business Process Management (BPM) and specific tasks using RPA supported by analytics and decisions made by Artificial Intelligence.

Now let’s go through each aspect in the O2C process and find out how Intelligent Automation can uplift the manual process effectively. There are lots of steps that run in the background, and the four main aspects of the Order to Cash process are:

1. Order processing
2. Order Fulfillment
3. Invoice Generation
4. Cash Allocation

Order processing:

Orders typically come through different channels like email, fax or scanned images. These data have to be entered in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning refers to a single platform in which business manage all their finances, logistics, operations and inventory in one place) or finance system to generate a host of other documents such as internal sales order and warehouse picking lists. In manual order processing employees must manually retrieve Purchase Orders (PO) from email or any other portals. They must extract key data from purchase orders and enter them into the database. Then they must validate and confirm PO data and execute the data in ERP.

When Order Processing is automated using IA, we can automatically capture order information from incoming documents which might be in different formats and automatically transfer data into ERP. The validation of PO data and execution of data in ERP can be done automatically but, a manual check is required since bots cannot be 100% accurate. Thus, automated order processing can eliminate errors and can improve overall productivity.

Order Fulfillment and Delivery:

This part of O2C also involves many manual touchpoints. Critical documents such as inventory picking lists and proof of delivery documents need to be created from the sales order and sent to the right warehouse location for printing. If a printer malfunction or a paper document is lost or misplaced, customers can experience delivery delays—which leads to complaints and, in worst-case scenarios, lost accounts.

When this process is automated, critical documents can be generated automatically and sent to the right warehouse digitally such that we can avoid delivery delays and minimize product returns. Thus, by accelerating fulfillment and reducing errors, you can drive customer satisfaction and increase your brand value.

Invoice Generation:

The next step in the O2C cycle is Invoice Generation where an invoice is sent to the customer with all the details related to individual order inclusive of tax and discounts if applicable.

When this process is replaced with Intelligent Automation (IA), The data input is automated, thereby reducing manual efforts and human errors. This also helps the finance staff for better decision making while processing invoices.

RPA bots begin to extract information from the document as soon as they detect the presence of invoice in the folder. Software robots will be able to read out the information that is visible on the invoice by using intelligent Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities.

Bots extract key information from each invoice and use their credentials to open the company’s database or enterprise resource planning system.

After successful registration of each invoice, software bots send notifications in the form of emails to the responsible employee or the vendor in question and in case of any exception an email is sent to the responsible party.

By implementing Intelligent Automation to this process, we can speed up payments by sending electronic invoices, statements, payment reminders on time and we can increase customer satisfaction by sending error-free invoices and resolve queries about invoices more swiftly.

Cash Allocation and Reporting:

It is the slowest and most demanding aspect of the O2C process, and this process is performed manually because of its complexity and importance.

By implementing Intelligent Automation to this process, we can improve cash flow, transparency and compliance. By automating, you can dramatically reduce the number and dollar amount of unallocated payments. We can identify unpaid invoices faster and match payments automatically and can achieve fast Return on Investment (ROI). Automation of this function quickly earns back the money you pay to deploy IA.

Conclusion:

At a time when businesses are desperate for ways to drive growth in today’s increasingly competitive world, slow and inefficient order-to-cash processes can affect their ability to grow. Errors in order processing can increase costs, which may result in write-offs, and frustrate customers and stakeholders. And delays in order processing can result in missing top-line revenue targets.

With everyone leveraging the current technology trends and advancements in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and RPA, this is the time when organizations should move away from a typically manual and inefficient order to cash cycle. Now is the time to create a system that breaks silos and allows for the smooth movement of information across subprocesses. Imagine putting intelligent bots to work on your O2C processes which eliminate errors effortlessly and improving cash flow. Imagine happier customers and more productive employees. All this is possible by implementing Intelligent Automation to the process.

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