Automating Data entry significantly impacts an organization’s efficiency as it drastically improves the sales order management process. With automated data entry, Purchase orders are converted to sales orders automatically, without error.
Data entry automation is a powerful modern technology that continues to modernize a range of business processes. Almost any business process that includes the capture and conversion of business documents can benefit from data entry automation to become more efficient and faster. This includes sales order management.
Quickly and accurately converting purchase orders into sales orders is crucial in manufacturing and distribution. The efficiency of a business is directly dependent on how fast, and flawlessly this is done. Moreover, when PO to sales order conversion happens efficiently, customer service representatives win back the hours of their day. They can focus on driving growth and provide personalized, one-on-one service to customers.
These outcomes, however, can only be realized with a data entry automation solution that is touchless and error-free.
Manual vs. Automated Data Entry
Some organizations are still choosing not to automate data entry from a text coming in via email when it comes to their purchase orders. Millions of businesses are still relying on manual supply chains. In the US alone, B2B sales of $7.37 trillion, nearly half of total B2B sales every year – are still being processed manually.
“Manually” means that the critical data from purchase orders are not extracted and converted through an automated process. Instead, the conversion of purchase orders into sales orders still happens the way it was done decades ago: By manual entry, line by line. Customer service or other company representatives take a purchase order and manually key it in, trying their best to avoid making a mistake as they go.
The lack of a data entry automation solution creates a terrible inefficiency in the sales order management process. On average, staff spends around 20-30 minutes of manual entry time per order and nearly 3 hours a day entering and perhaps correcting part numbers or pricing. Due to this, the order-to-cash cycle stretches to an average of 43 days. The overall cost of this approach adds up to hundreds of millions a year, eating up a massive chunk of the profits.
HubBroker: Automating Sales Order Processing
There are a few data entry automation solutions in the market. OCR (optical character recognition) is a popular option. But OCR essentially is a workflow solution. Though OCR provides sales order processing with a level of data entry automation, it is an inherently predictive technology that can still invariably introduces errors.
Even with the use of advanced correction tools, almost all of the OCR automated data entry errors need to be corrected or removed manually. So again, CSRs find themselves continuously correcting such data entry errors, and whatever efficiency was gained through automation start to dry up.
RPA (Robotic Process Automation) data entry also has some similar flaws and inadequacies. According to a Gartner report, more than 50% of RPA implementations fail to deliver sustainable returns on investment. Instead, by 2022, nearly 80% of businesses are expected to stop using RPA in favor of low-code integration platforms.
Introducing a truly automated data entry technology, like the HubBroker’s solution, to the sales order management process is the key to creating a “touchless” process. Purchase orders are converted into sales orders, without requiring any human intervention and without any error. Incoming purchase orders are transformed into 100% data-accurate and machine-consumable transactions.
Such a high level of sales order automation enables organizations to go from order emailed to pack and ship in less than 15 minutes. This automation drastically impacts order processing costs, which are reduced to less than a dollar per order.
Key Benefits of Sales Order Automation
An error-free, completely automated sales order management improves an enterprise’senterprise’s capacity to process their customers’ orders while substantially reducing the fulfillment time. This effectively results in the following:
- Reduced order cycle times
- More significant revenue
- Enhanced ROI
- Much more satisfied customers
In addition, HubBroker’s order automation solutions enable enterprises to fully maximize their workforce. Instead of relegating them to repetitive manual data entry tasks that don’tdon’t add much value to the business, companies empower their staff to offer the highest quality service to existing and potential customers. All our customers have found that with HubBroker, the order entry time has been reduced by more than 90%. Moreover, their staff is now spending 85% of their time on customers, which was earlier spent on data entry only.
HubBroker puts an end to manual order entry. Our proprietary technology can extract data from each customer order form, automatically collecting the order numbers, item numbers, prices, quantities, billing information, and shipping information. It automatically validates the data as it’s extracted, then imports it into your ERP.
With sales order automation, your employees don’t have to waste time on manual data processing – and you don’tdon’t have to worry about preventable mistakes. Your customers get exactly what they ordered, every single time.
To know more about our automation solutions and how they can help improve your business’s efficiency, please contact us today or schedule a free demo with our experts.
