Order to Cash Automation Software for a Perfect Business

Order to cash automation can help you increase productivity, reduce turnaround times, and improve your cash flow. You can process orders faster, speed up claims, and access your profits faster to reinvest in your business. With a more efficient O2C cycle, you can better convert orders into revenue – meaning steady and sustainable growth.

How is the process from Order to cash?

The purpose of the O2C process is to deliver goods to customers in exchange for cash. In a typical cash sale scenario, the process flow looks like this:

• Make an order
• Order fulfillment
• Delivery order
• Billing
• Payment

These are the basic steps of the process, but if you know a little about the O2C process, you know it’s never that simple! Consider the additional steps that make up the process, such as the issue of goods, manufacture of shipments, or comparison of credit checks. Millions of transactions flow through departments and systems, making it nearly impossible to get a clear picture of the entire process.

This process consists of two main parts: orders and accounts receivable management. And they have slightly different goals.

Order management covers all steps from order creation to delivery. Delivery of the Order then triggers the creation of an invoice. Order management goals include improving order completion speed, on-time delivery speed, and order execution cycle time.

Claims begin with the creation of an invoice and end with the settlement of the invoice. The purpose of the claim is to reduce arrears and days outstanding (DSO).

Order to cash best practices

Here are the 5 main areas of the Order to cash best practices ready for a transformation.

• Order Management
• Invoice automation
• Credit and Billing Administration
• Reduce DSO
• Cash Application and Reporting

Common challenges in O2C processes

In the cash-to-order cycle process, these two parties (order management and accounts receivable) are highly dependent on each other. Order management cannot achieve efficiency without accounts receivable support and vice versa. However, the teams that manage these two parts of the process sometimes work in silos, which is not suitable for an efficient process.

Other common challenges in O2C processes are:

• High error rate due to manual order entry, leading to expensive and time-consuming processing
• Poorly maintained customer master data causes delays and lost sales
• Delivery performance issues affecting customer retention
• A high percentage of DSO affects cash flow and misses investment opportunities in other business areas.

Complex processes like Order to cash digital transformation are ideal for discovering the automation potential with the help of process mining. Without digging into the process, you only see the tip of the O2C iceberg.

What is Order to cash automation?

Order to cash automation is software that accelerates the order-to-money cycle with artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) to enable faster accounts receivable.

Why automate the Order to cash function?

The IBM Institute for Business Value found that an increase in efficiency in cash orders could increase a company’s performance by up to 83 percent. That means employees can get more work done faster and spend the rest of their time on other projects. The same study found that cash-to-order process automation can increase an organization’s end-to-end cycle time by up to 60 percent.

Some strategies for increasing Order to cash ERP are:

• Use automation to support data management
• Use the percentage of customers who pay bills on time as a KPI
• Evaluation of a new creditworthiness account
• Imposition of Credit Limit
• Share depreciation with credit function

Data automation has the greatest impact at every step of the order-to-cash process cycle. An overall automation strategy can impact everything from managing sales orders to billing customers to billing payments. Organizations that automate their Order to cash ERP workflows also consume fewer resources and allocate fewer resources to low-value tasks.

How can Order cash process automation instructions improve business efficiency?

The payment order cycle is more than just a series of business process orders to cash. It offers an unrivaled understanding of how, when, and why your customers do business with you. Optimizing your cash to order process cycle may be the key you need to achieve higher customer satisfaction and increase efficiency and customer retention.

Why do companies need automation from orders to cash?

Because the Order cash function cycle covers many aspects of order fulfillment, many companies try to optimize it to get the best results. You can especially streamline your cash to order process cycle by automating Order to cash with RPA and ai for credit control, shipping, risk management, and accounts receivable.

If the company does not automate its o2c solutions cycle, employees will have to manage and monitor many processes manually. The type of manual work in the O2C cycle that is not automated or partially can slow down a company’s workflow, leading to delays and customer dissatisfaction. In addition, non-automated Order to cash process flow cycles can lead to more errors, as humans are more likely to make errors when entering data or switching between different systems.

By choosing an O2C automation service, companies can delegate o2c solutions tasks to state-of-the-art Order to cash software. This Order to cash software helps companies gain a competitive advantage by reducing inaccuracies and speeding up key processes in the cycle.

How automation can support every step of the cycle from Order to cash

By learning the basic steps of the Order to cash function and understanding how automation can help, you can make more informed decisions about whether Order to cash digital transformation automation software is right for you. Learn more about the basic steps in an O2C cycle and how automation can help improve cycle times below:

1. Receive and Manage Orders

As soon as your company receives an order from a customer, the o2c solutions cycle begins. In this cycle phase, you manage the Order and notify the appropriate employee or department about the purchase. In an automated order to cash management system, responsible team members receive instant notifications and can start performing related tasks as soon as possible.

2. Customer Credit order to cash Management

After a customer places an order for the first real-time, they have to go through a credit approval process. Instead of manually completing this approval cash to order process or having employees monitor returned customers who have already been approved, an automated system can do it all for you. The automating Order to cash with rpa and ai software will manage new clients through an automated credit approval process, approve or reject applicants as needed, notify finance staff of more complex cases, and send returning clients straight to the implementation phase.

3. Execute the command

In non-automated systems, you must employ staff to monitor stock levels to ensure you don’t receive orders that you can’t fill due to stock shortages. If you accidentally receive an order that you cannot fulfill, you must cancel the Order and warn the customer. Automated inventory management order to cash software tracks your inventory automatically by rejecting unfulfilled orders and approving orders that can fill. The Order to cash software also standardizes orders into an easy-to-understand digital format.

4. Order Delivery

After the execution phase, you need to send the Order to the customer. With manual systems, employees can be overwhelmed with the coordination effort required to get orders from warehouses to customers in real-time. With an automated cash to order cycle system, teams have the appropriate data from Order to cash management and execution stage to support delivery. Automated otc process programs can also help delivery teams choose the right carrier delivery schedule and ensure customers receive their products on time.

5. Create an invoice

When the shipping phase is complete, you may send an invoice to your customer. Relying on manual invoicing is more likely to result in inaccuracies and delays, resulting in dissatisfied customers and Order to cash process automation problems. Order to cash process automation reduces manual input for invoices by creating them automatically. This automated invoicing uses data such as delivery date, order date, order details, credit terms, and costs to generate and send accurate invoices to customers quickly.

6. Claim

With a manual system, unpaid invoices can fail, slowing your billing. You can set up an automated order to cash accounting system to flag invoices that have not been paid in real-time and notify claims team members accordingly. Automating Order to cash with rpa and ai can also help these team members quickly access order system data to correct errors and send verified invoices.

7. Collect payments

If you rely on manual collection, payments tend to be processed quickly, and customers are billed after paying. Raw payments can also cause estimation inaccuracies.

The automated system uses your billing and order management system to automatically process customer invoices. This ensures you don’t double charge per customer and keeps the relevant country updated with the latest financial information. Additionally, automated systems can flag late payments or unpaid invoices by asking the receiving team to take action.

8. Perform data management and make reports

At the end of the Order to cash process flow cycle, you can better picture your overall performance with automated reporting and data management services. O2C automation software tracks data during the O2C process to help management identify where there may be delays and areas for optimization. By identifying even minor process inefficiencies, your organization can prevent them from becoming a larger problem that affects the entire cash to order cycle.

8 Best benefits of Order to cash automation

When you rely on software to fully automate your otc processes, you can see several key advantages over non-automated processes: higher cash flow, faster no-touch order processing, and shorter execution times. Learn more about the benefits of the O2C automation solution below:

1. Improve Cash Flow: One of the main benefits of otc process automation is making it easier for customers to pay your company for products and services. You can automatically generate important sales documents such as customer invoices to cash solutions. By automatically generating key documents, you optimize payments by increasing your company’s cash flow. Plus, you don’t have to pay employees to perform key orders to cash process flow, saving your business process order to cash in the long run.
2. Eliminate manual data entry: When you automate the O2C cycle, the software does the data entry for you. This eliminates the need to allocate staff for manual entry. This ability to disclaim program entry responsibilities speeds up the normally slow data entry process and reduces inaccuracies due to human error.
3. Speeds up no-touch order processing: Another benefit of Order to cash solutions automation is the ability to speed up the order process by eliminating manual data entry and written order forms. By increasing the speed of invoices and payments, you can increase the profitability of your business process order to cash. Otc process software can also use automated Order targeting to ensure that orders are transferred seamlessly from one department to the next without getting caught up in clutter.
4. Avoid customer disputes and additional risks: Order to cash business process automation solution software greatly improves customer communication, reducing disputes. Businesses can provide customers with automated shipping and delivery notifications and issued receipts, which results in greater customer satisfaction. In addition, the software provides employees with instant access to key customer order documents and data, making it easier for agents to resolve customer disputes and reducing the risk of customer dissatisfaction or inaccurate information for your business.
5. Reduce waiting time: Automated Order to cash solutions processes are helping companies reduce their waiting time significantly. In non-automated systems, your employees have to email documents, get signatures for various transactions, and perform other tasks, increasing waiting times and the likelihood of wrong orders. O2C Order to cash automation solution software reduces execution time by automatically routing documents to the required departments so your team can get started right away.
6. Increase Order to cash accounting visibility and productivity: O2C automation software can give your staff a more comprehensive view of your inventory and ensure products are available before customers can make purchases. O2C automation software also has several business process order to cash metrics that give you more insight into your company’s performance reports. The software can help you identify which buyers you want to establish more relationships with and help managers make decisions.
7. Free up staff: If you decide to use O2C automation, you can significantly reduce the amount of staff you have to devote to optimizing your O2C cycle. For example, you don’t have to manually enter employee data or monitor every sale funnel because the program does it for you. By freeing up employees with automated programs, you can reassign them to more profitable tasks and expand your business efforts.
8. Generate new revenue opportunities: When you automate Order to Cash business processes, you can increase the efficiency of your company. You’ll also build stronger customer relationships through faster turnaround times and fewer errors. These stronger customer relationships can encourage customers to continue buying products from you. Greater O2C Order to cash cycle efficiency also gives you more time to meet new partners and grow your business.

Conclusion:

These notes are multi-layered and require effort to be managed effectively. But did you know that you don’t have to do all these steps manually?

To navigate today’s complex O2C Order to cash processes and increase sales in the B2B marketplace, you need to have the right tools. This is why O2C automation is becoming more and more popular.

With Automatic Billing, you can automate the invoice creation process from initial Order to final report and digitize all invoices, PDF files, and other documents for easier processing and review. Order a demo today to get started.