by Sophia Riley | May 25, 2023 | AP Automation
Sales order automation can be a game-changer for businesses looking to scale. By automating taking and processing orders, companies can increase efficiency, reduce errors, and free up valuable time for their employees to focus on other business areas.
Automated sales order processing is faster and more accurate than manual processing, meaning you can process more orders in less time with fewer errors. Digitizing sales order processing reduces the costs associated with manual data entry, processing, and shipping. It can help you save money and reinvest those savings into other business areas.
Sales order automation improves customer experience by providing faster, more accurate order processing and delivery times. As your business grows, manual sales order processing can become a bottleneck. Automated sales order processing allows you to scale your business without manually processing each order.
Sales and Order Management Challenge
Businesses face many issues in order processing, especially those dealing with a high volume of transactions. The challenge involves effectively managing the entire sales process, from lead generation to order fulfillment, while ensuring customer satisfaction and profitability.
Some of the specific challenges that businesses may face in sales and order management include the following:
- Lead generation and prospecting: Finding and attracting potential customers to generate sales leads can be time-consuming and costly.
- Sales forecasting and planning: Accurately predicting sales volume and revenue can be difficult, especially in a dynamic market environment.
- Order processing and management: Efficiently managing the ordering process, including order entry, tracking, and fulfillment, is crucial for customer satisfaction.
- Inventory management: Ensuring adequate inventory levels while avoiding overstocking or stockouts is essential for meeting customer demand and maintaining profitability.
- Price and discount management: Setting prices that are competitive while still profitable can be a complex balancing act, as can managing discounts and promotions effectively.
- Customer relationship management: Maintaining positive customer relationships and providing excellent customer service is essential for repeat business and referrals.
Businesses may implement strategies to address these challenges: investing in technology solutions like customer relationship management (CRM) software, streamlining processes, optimizing pricing and discounts, and training staff to provide excellent customer service.
Digital Solution to Business Challenges
Effective sales and order management requires a comprehensive approach that considers the entire sales process from start to finish.
Digitally integrated selling and buying refers to using technology to connect buyers and sellers seamlessly and efficiently. This approach involves leveraging digital tools and platforms to streamline the sales process and enhance the customer experience, from initial product research to order fulfillment.
If you’re serious about scaling your business, get serious about sales order automation. Some of the critical features of digitally integrated selling and buying include:
- E-commerce platforms: Online marketplaces and e-commerce websites enable customers to browse, compare, and purchase products from anywhere, at any time.
- Personalization: Through customer data and analytics, businesses can personalize the shopping experience, offering tailored product recommendations and promotions.
- Omni-channel selling: By offering a variety of sales channels, including in-store, online, and mobile, businesses can reach customers wherever they are and provide a seamless shopping experience across channels.
- Sales automation: Automation tools like chatbots and email campaigns can help businesses scale their sales efforts and respond to customer inquiries quickly and efficiently.
- Data analytics: By analyzing customer data, businesses can gain insights into customer behavior and preferences, optimizing pricing, promotions, and product offerings.
- Fulfillment and logistics: Digitally integrated selling and buying also involves using technology to manage the fulfillment and logistics of orders, from inventory management to shipping and delivery.
By implementing a digitally integrated selling and buying strategy, businesses can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance the customer experience, ultimately driving growth and profitability.
B2B Sales and Order Interactions
It refers to selling products or services between businesses, including various activities, from lead generation and prospecting to closing deals and fulfilling orders.
In B2B sales, the emphasis is often on building long-term relationships and providing customized solutions to meet their needs. It requires a deep understanding of the customer’s business and industry and the ability to communicate the value of your product or service in a way that resonates with the customer.
Order interactions in B2B sales involve receiving and fulfilling customer orders. It can include everything from managing inventory and shipping logistics to invoicing and payment processing. In many cases, B2B sales involve complex products or services that require extensive customization or integration with existing systems. Order interactions can be quite involved and require high coordination between departments and stakeholders.
Effective B2B sales and order interactions rely on strong communication, collaboration, and a deep understanding of the customer’s needs and preferences. By building solid customer relationships and providing them with tailored solutions and exceptional service, businesses can establish themselves as trusted partners and drive long-term growth and success.
Impact of Sales Order Automation
Sales automation can play a significant role in accelerating business growth by streamlining and optimizing the sales process. Here are some ways sales automation can help businesses grow:
- Improved lead generation: Sales automation tools can help identify and track leads more efficiently, enabling businesses to effectively target and convert potential customers.
- Enhanced sales pipeline management: With automation, businesses can track leads through the sales pipeline, analyze where they are in the buying process, and prioritize follow-up actions to move them closer to the sale.
- Increased efficiency: Sales automation can reduce manual tasks and administrative work. It allows sales teams to focus on more productive tasks like building customer relationships and closing deals.
- Better customer relationships: Sales automation can help businesses understand their customers better, personalize their communication, and offer tailored solutions, resulting in more robust and long-lasting customer relationships.
- Data analysis: Sales automation tools provide businesses with real-time data on sales performance. It enables them to make informed decisions on sales strategies and resource allocation.
Conclusion
Sales automation can be a game-changer for businesses looking to grow by increasing sales efficiency, productivity, and customer engagement. Overall, automation is a crucial tool for businesses looking to grow. By streamlining the order processing process, businesses can save time, reduce errors, and ensure customer satisfaction.
by Sophia Riley | May 23, 2023 | Risk Management
Risk assessment is a critical step in the planning process. At oAppsNET, we help CFOs improve risk management by identifying and analyzing key risks. It’s an opportunity to identify and prioritize risks and their impact on your organization. In addition to helping you identify key risks, oAppsNET can help you assess how likely they are to occur. This information can help you determine how to manage those risks.
Who Is oAppsNET?
oAppsNET is a cloud-based business process automation company that allows companies to improve their backend processes by reducing costs and speeding up the process. It’s a fully customizable platform that takes into account your companies current level of automation and future goals.
oAppsNET is designed to be compatible with most major brands of ERP Systems. You can use the platform to manage transactions for all your customer or suppliers in one place and then manage risks. It also includes integrated analytics tools that gives you in site into your cash operations so you can make better business decisions.
How oAppsNET Helps CFOs
The oAppsNET platform also helps CFOs manage their team members’ performance, giving them insight into how to improve it. This helps them identify areas where they need to focus on improving productivity and efficiency among their team members.
With oAppsNET, you can easily:
Assign risk exposure to each process, activity, or person
Risk management is about understanding how your processes operate, who’s involved in them, and their impact on your bottom line.
Risk management is a continuous process requiring regular assessment of business risks. Every hour of every day, you must think about what could go wrong and impact your business if it fails. You can’t ignore risks; they’re too important. With oAppsNET, you can assign each process, person, or other entity with risk exposure based on its impact on the overall business operation.
Identify potential risks by analyzing business processes and activities
Risk management is all about identifying potential risks and taking the right actions to mitigate the damage if they occur. While this sounds simple enough, it can be a difficult task for most businesses. This is because each business has its specific risk profile, which means it’s not immediately obvious what these risks are or how they could negatively impact your business. To help you identify potential risks and manage them effectively, oAppsNET uses machine learning algorithms to analyze your company’s existing data and identify any new risks previously unknown to you.
Prioritize your risks by considering cost and impact
Risk management entails prioritizing your efforts to spend your time and money on the areas that impact your bottom line and overall operations. To do this, you need some way of classifying different types of risk in terms of their severity or impact on your organization. Fortunately, oAppsNET has built-in tools that make this process simple for even small businesses that don’t have staff dedicated specifically to risk management or budgeting.
Generate a list of high-priority risks from your results
Improving risk management helps in identifying the risks that your company faces. This can be done in several ways, including by reviewing the results of your financial statements and external auditors’ reports or using accounting software like oAppsNET.
When you review your results, it’s essential to consider the various types of risks you face. For example, if you have a high level of debt and are heavily reliant on short-term funding from lenders, you may need to put more emphasis on reducing that exposure. If your financial statements show that there is a lot of volatility in your revenue stream, then you may want to explore ways of increasing sales volume as well as improving the predictability of your revenue streams.
Once you have identified high-priority risks, you should think about how these might affect your business in the future. Is there any way that these risks could develop into bigger problems? Are there any mitigating factors that will help protect against these risks?
You’ll see how expenses affect cash flow and whether new investments pay off in terms of returns on investment (ROI). You’ll also know when funds are needed for unexpected expenses such as bad debts or legal settlements.
by Sophia Riley | May 18, 2023 | Artificial Intelligence
The function of departments that deal with accounts payable has mostly stayed the same during the past decade: complete payments, bring spending under control, and complete bill processing, verification, and reconciliation. But how the job is being carried out is starting to undergo specific changes. Technology is advancing rapidly and will bring more changes and benefits to accounts payable teams. This is where accounts payable software comes in.
What is accounts payable software?
Accounts payable software is used to resolve the issue of having incompatible systems and procedures for approving invoices. It is no secret that the accounts payable (AP) process is manual, heavily dependent on paper documentation, and lacks the necessary checkpoints to reduce the risk of error and fraud. Despite the significance of this activity, businesses frequently need to provide it with the adequate attention and resources it requires. Surprisingly, the one procedure in an organization that calls for the most collaboration also receives the least input from the people who are essential to the process.
Once an invoice is received, it is forwarded circularly from person to person and system to system, with no care for reviewing the invoice for errors or identifying whether or not it is valid. Verifying that the signatures have been obtained is done manually if approvals are necessary. The company risks paying an incorrect bill if the verification does not occur.
AP Technology eradicates the vast majority of these issues if not all. Automation enables the creation of a central receiving location for all bills. With only one system, departments communicate and cooperate without a hitch. The details on the form are viewable by everyone, and they can also be verified. Furthermore, the technology is capable of automating the approval procedure. AP Technology can obtain approvals from the relevant parties and halt payment for any transactions that have not been approved. As a result, invoices are only paid if they have been given the appropriate approval. In addition, implementing artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible to do away with processes that formerly required a lot of manual labor.
What is Artificial Intelligence [AI]?
The term “artificial intelligence” (AI) refers to technology that, under identical conditions, can carry out the same functions as a human. Artificial intelligence software can learn in the same way that people do. As a result, the program can process enormous volumes of data, adapt to shifting circumstances, base choices on previous data, and carry out complex data analysis tasks.
Intelligent accounts payable software uses artificial intelligence to reduce the amount of manual human processing and speed up the approval procedure for invoices. The program can set up checkpoints at various process stages to ensure each bill receives appropriate scrutiny. In addition to this, the use of AI technology makes data entry simpler.
The papers can be uploaded to the system in a wide variety of locations. After the data has been entered, AI technology can interpret the data and populate the correct fields in the system in real time. Once the data has been entered, the AI tool can index the form. When AI is used for indexing, it guarantees that the form can be searched and located in the system according to specific criteria. When done correctly, indexing can reduce the likelihood of losing an invoice.
Will accounts payable software replace human?
The widespread misconception that AP software is the answer to reducing labor expenses by employing fewer people is quite common. However, the purpose of the AP software is not to take the personnel position; instead, it is to automate many time-consuming procedures associated with the accounts payable process. If such responsibilities are removed, the remaining staff members can work more effectively throughout the day and contribute more value to the organization.
The technology that manages accounts payable does a wonderful job of easing the work for the staff. The primary function of their employment is no longer extended data entry; accounts payable intelligence automatically harvests real-time invoice data and auto-populates the code for accounts payable teams to examine. In addition, they no longer have to spend time locating specific individuals to obtain the information they require to proceed with the payment. Instead, the software will send automated notifications and reminders to the task owners. This will allow the accounts payable personnel to improve their communication with suppliers and other departments to resolve any problems.
The ability of Automated Invoice Management software to upload a huge number of invoices in a relatively short length of time enables a greater volume of work to be completed in a shorter amount of time. Companies can avoid incurring late penalties by making payments promptly because of the higher processing speed. When a company pays its bills on time, it opens the door to further opportunities, such as receiving trade discounts. Entering data manually is fraught with the potential for error. Because the software uploads the data, the likelihood of making an error is significantly reduced. Before beginning the processing of each bill, staff members can begin their work knowing they have access to accurate data.
Wrapping up
Accounts payable software is an essential tool. Not only can it be used to speed up the process of processing invoices but companies can exploit the AP data for strategic planning once a new approach that is streamlined, transparent, and efficient has been implemented. Cash flow is one example of such an area.
Because AP information comes from just one source, businesses get a more precise picture of how much money they spend. They can then utilize this data to pinpoint areas of their spending that are superfluous, freeing up more capital for them to utilize. The ability to perform an in-depth analysis of AP data can also assist managers in ensuring that the money spent goes toward areas that contribute to achieving the company’s goals.
by Sophia Riley | May 16, 2023 | Digital Transformation
The customer experience (CX) has become the core of corporate change. The fundamental pillars of enhancing customer experience are order administration, processing, and fulfillment. Organizations deal with a tremendous amount of paperwork, translating to volumes of data they need to manage. Automating sales order management is inevitable to eliminate manual tasks and speed up the process.
Order management is essential for enterprises, and numerous transformational strategies exist. This article will cover the potential for automation in order management, its most important applications, and how to revolutionize order management.
Managers are aware of the necessity for digitization because there has been an increase in utilizing analytics to optimize inventory management. Automation significantly decreases order processing time frames and saves firms money with every customer request, helping to balance supply and demand.
Sales Order Processing
After a consumer puts in an order and pays for it, order management procedures begin. The inventory section receives the order information, and warehouse staff handles the selection, packing, and delivery. A business completes the process by calling the consumer to see if they are satisfied with their purchase. Here is an overview of the steps;
Taking orders from Customer
When someone makes an order, the first phase of the order management process starts. It entails acknowledging the client’s order and obtaining payment. After that, the information about the transaction is sent to your storage facility so that the team may begin preparing the goods for shipping.
completing the order
The next stage involves completing the client’s requests. QWe can divide this phase into the following three steps:
Selection: Picking, or getting the things out of storage, is the first step in completing an order. Store employees must be able to swiftly and precisely choose the appropriate items because shelves in most warehouses are lined with various product categories. After selection, the products head to a packaging section where they are packaged.
Packing: The people responsible do more than just package and transport products. They choose the proper packing supplies for every item to ensure that the product does not get damaged during shipping and reaches the customer in excellent shape while using the resources at their disposal.
Shipping: Once selection and packaging are done, the subsequent step is to dispatch the proper order. Warehouse staff will handle several tasks:
- Labeling the package for shipping and attaching an invoice, as appropriate, to the purchase
- indicating across the sales channels that the order has been sent
- Emailing the consumer with delivery updates and purchase tracking information
When customers ask for products that are out of stock, businesses have two options: reject the consumer or delay order fulfillment later.
Post-sales activities
Taking care of the post-sale procedures is the final phase of order management. Businesses use this to communicate with clients after the sale to get feedback, confirm whether they are happy about the order processing, and handle requests for refunds and returns if necessary.
An average order management procedure consists of all three steps. Organizations choose to tailor their order management strategy to meet their demands better. Let us examine how automation can help.
Reasons to Implement Sales Order Automation
Various transformational levers fit in businesses’ e-commerce strategies. For a seamless integration of components like a website, a mobile application, purchases, scheduling, distributors, production & distribution, enterprises will implement multiple digital tools.
Organizations can benefit from automated order processing by taking advantage of features like robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML), and optical character recognition (OCR). In the office’s front end, chatbots can inform clients about the progress of their orders via emails, websites, social media, and user portals.
The technology provides multifaceted insights using dashboards on consumer wallets, the average order, overall effectiveness, and shortcomings of the order execution infrastructure. Here are the benefits of integrating digital tools for order processing;
Using a digitized processing system gives businesses control over their data. Fewer people handle the data management tasks thanks to the program connecting to other business management software and tools. The administrator can provide access to company data depending on the worker’s job description and role, decreasing the likelihood of data loss. By utilizing automation, you can ensure that stakeholders, including your customers, have access to the required data while also enhancing data security.
The system takes customer orders and verifies them for processing. Also, it collects and stores client information like delivery location, ensuring staff does not enter information repeatedly. It builds databases and consolidates information organizations can use in decision-making or strategizing.
Cost Reduction
As businesses expand, the expenses associated with human errors will increase, resulting in lost sales or requiring additional resources to correct the problem. They risk losing workers due to a lot of repetitive tasks.
The situations are far more unlikely to occur with an automated order processing system as it reduces human mistakes and enables staff to concentrate more on high-value jobs.
Boost employee satisfaction
Manual order processing exposes your employees to mistakes, as data entering is tasking and frustrates them. It leads to poor productivity, and workers may quit due to the pressure. However, an automated system will support their role and improve efficiency. It boosts employee satisfaction, making them loyal to the company.
Boost client satisfaction
Consumers are ready to spend additional money on online retail transactions to receive orders faster, highlighting the desire for quick order fulfillment.
Your staff can more quickly fulfill orders using automated order processing, which will also help you satisfy client demand. It will strengthen customer connections and boost client satisfaction.
Final Thoughts
Given the benefits, enterprises must begin their automation journey as soon as possible to avoid falling behind in the digital transformation revolution. The best strategy is to research and identify the best service providers for automating order management processes.
People should be at the forefront of every business’s digital transformation. It is vital that the digital solution is scaleable to suit your company’s future requirements and include change management strategies to aid with implementation.
by Sophia Riley | May 11, 2023 | EBS Upgrade
Businesses handle loads of data daily, which is crucial to operations. Small and large enterprises can benefit from data loading tools. An efficient system will help with data management and analytics.
Studies show that companies lose millions of dollars annually due to poor data quality.
Despite being sufficient for business needs, there are certain restrictions to utilizing the Oracle ERP program for data processing. You could discover that entering data into the system takes time, and the forms aren’t easy to use.
A solution to the problem would be integrating data processing tools. Enterprises can get it free, use software developers, or from a tech company like oAppsNET: It will speed up data loading.
Nowadays, enterprises largely depend on technology for business growth and to enhance processes. Companies with a developed digital strategy attribute their achievements to technology. Innovation may promote development and profit, but it requires a lot of preparation and strategy.
The two main options when choosing business management tools are build vs. purchase. “Build” means a system developer customizes the program according to the customer’s needs before implementing a digital solution. The “buy” option is getting pre-made software to address a particular business need.
An example of a free application from Oracle is Oracle EBS WebADI, which enables data entry into well-known apps like Microsoft Office.
Users need not download any extra software to use this tool because it is already available in the Oracle EBS data loading system. The Oracle EBS server incorporates security features and controls the program.
Still, there are limitations to using WebADI, much like Oracle. It never improves the data loading, and the interface is often challenging to use, requiring skilled users.
Customized Data Loading Program
This option involves technicians writing specialized code and scripts for Oracle data processing software according to the business requirements. It requires experts to undertake tasks that might be costly for small enterprises or start-ups.
Programming takes time and necessitates code adjustments for each Oracle EBS data load update. Businesses will also lose a valuable employee if one of your expert’s departments quits the company.
Third-Party Software
Another option is to purchase technologies from third-party firms in the industry, like Dataloader and oAppsNET. It is an affordable and effective solution to improving the Oracle EBS data loading system.
Enterprises can integrate Oracle into an Excel front-end and streamline data loading. There are dozens of digital tools that integrate with the most recent editions of Microsoft Office and streamline your Oracle EBS data processing.
The Benefits of oAppsNET
oAppsNET platform enables you to use Oracle’s complete capabilities within a comfortable interface like Microsoft or Google worksheets, unlike other alternatives provided by rivals like Dataloader, More 4 Apps and Excel 4 Apps.
Our user-friendly solutions remain centered on the end user. The objective is to keep accurate data even while handling massive volumes. oAppsNET assists with simple Oracle ERP data loading procedures, so your team may focus more on technical business activities.
Our licensing structure is based on the number of transactions so it’s not a User based license.
Looking for more information about integrating data loading solutions? Contact us right now or grab a free whitepaper from our official website.
Factors to Consider
Before determining whether to manufacture or purchase software, you must consider all pertinent factors. Evaluate several aspects, including the project’s objectives, the initial cost, ongoing maintenance, etc. In addition to organizational concerns, you must consider how outsiders interact with them.
Below is what to bear in mind:
- The Cost
Companies operate on a budget and must always search for the most affordable options. However, the financial burden of IT initiatives may add up very rapidly. Costs associated with the original development, support, testing, updates, and market status are things to consider. Also, more than half of IT projects take longer than expected.
Purchasing a program has a significant upfront expense but is a valuable investment for the long term. Since it is a developed product, organizations use it as it is and do not face unforeseen challenges associated with building software from scratch. Still, businesses save on costs and avoid the hassles of developing their application.
- Configurations
You should also consider how much you’ll require to configure the digital tool to suit your existing system. Most software developers and vendors provide customizable templates, meaning you receive a packaged version, which you may easily alter according to requirements. There is less space for error because the layout is simple, and tweaking the application won’t be difficult.
Software development requires more money and prolonged maintenance than buying pre-made digital tools. The implementation will take longer because of the coding process.
- Design
Users must find it simple to use the program to get the best outcome from its integration. Software should be straightforward to use, regardless of if you are buying or creating it. If your instrument is difficult to use, it beats the purpose of investing in it. A user-friendly design allows any member of the staff to learn it.
Besides affecting the output, the software design will determine the customer experience. The right technology needs to digitize and streamline processes.
- Security
Another thing to consider is company security when investing in digital tools. It is essential if your business involves handling highly private data. Think carefully about data security and its associated risks. You can be safe by strengthening the firewall to lessen the chance of data breaches.
- Maintenance
Finally, think about your technology in the long term by determining future maintenance and support needs. If you choose to build, it is best to utilize the same team who created it for upgrades and scaling up, making it challenging to do urgent maintenance or repairs.
Purchasing software is effective because another technician can handle the designs without relying on the service provider for support, updating, and maintenance.
Conclusion
Buying technology or developing it from the ground up is one of the most pressing for businesses.
It is necessary to consider the features of business management applications to pick the right product. The insights in this read will help with choosing the best solution fitting your business’s requirements.
