6 Myths About Sales Order Automation

The Top 6 Myths About Automation www.conexiom.com Sales Order a publication by ecmarket inc. How to Determine if Sales Order Automation is the Right Fit for Your Business The Struggle to Be More Efficient Today everyone is facing the same pressures to become more efficient and reduce costs. The old adage ‘doing more with less’ has never been more essential. But finding ways to improve business processes without signing up for big headaches is no easy task. As a busy distributor or manufacturer, time is never on your side. It’s a never-ending race to keep up with the demand. Customer purchase orders fly in from every avenue and managing the order cycle can easily become a nightmare. And here’s why. Surprisingly the majority of purchase orders are still processed manually. It’s archaic, cumbersome, and painstakingly slow. Oh and let’s not forget how it’s fraught with error and comes with a high price tag. Sound a little too familiar? Well here’s the good news - it doesn’t have to be. www.conexiom.com Why Consider Sales Order Automation? Aside from constant pressures to optimize business practices, lower costs, and generally do more with less, one of the most common reasons to consider changing business practices is to alleviate unnecessary frustrations. Here are the top 10 sales order challenges according to our research. 1. fluctuating order volumes 2. backlogs of orders awaiting manual processing 3. delays in order cycle times 4. high cost of processing each order 5. costly errors and disgruntled customers 6. lost or misplaced orders 7. long response times to customer inquiries 8. low visibility 9. failing to actually connect with your customers 10. a mountain of paper to be processed and archived If you identify with two or more of these issues, it’s time to consider automation. But it really goes beyond just reducing your headache. It’s about improving your business processes and creating a solid foundation for growth. The ability to process, fill, and ship orders is the core of your business, making it the perfect place to start looking for innovation. After all, finding ways to serve your customers better can arm you with a competitive advantage and boost customer loyalty all at the same time. www.conexiom.com How to Tell if Automation is Right for You Sales order automation minimizes headaches and streamlines order processing. It eliminates manual entry, improves order accuracy, and accelerates order cycle times. Not to mention reducing the cost of processing each order! Sure it sounds great, but is it really for you? You know there’s a lot of room for improvement, but do you find yourself wondering how could you possibly find time to get started? Or how to evaluate the right solution? Maybe you’re skeptical and you wonder if automation could really work in your business reliably and accurately? After all, processing orders correctly is essential. Or maybe you’re asking how you could find the budget? Or the expert resources needed for proper configuration? Don’t worry. We’ve developed this handy guide to answer these common questions and more. Keep reading to help decide if sales order automation is the right move for you. www.conexiom.com Myth #1: “I can’t afford sales order automation.” Many automation solutions follow a software as a service (SaaS) model, which is an affordable alternative to big upfront costs for expensive hardware or software licenses. Since this type of solution is already configured and hosted in the cloud, there’s no need for large initial capital expenditures or even any upgrades to your existing infrastructure. With Conexiom®, you simply order the customer pack that fits your needs based on the number of customers you’re ready to automate. A great way to get started is to select a group of customers based on high volumes or frequent orders. Once you’ve proven just how easy automation can be, it’s easy to add more customers at any time. Your Challenge Good News www.conexiom.com “I simply can’t afford to invest a lot of money into an automation solution. Our budget was cut back and we don’t have any excess. Plus it’s already allocated for the year.” Myth #2: “I don’t have time to implement it.” Sales automation solutions that follow a SaaS model are incredibly easy and quick to implement. The application is configured and installed through the cloud. SaaS offers all the benefits of an on-site software solution without needing to wait for your IT resources to become available. In a matter of hours, you can have your first customer up and running with Conexiom. You can leave the work to us and let the experts guide you through our proven onboarding process that accurately maps your current customer purchase orders into your existing ERP system. Getting started is easy and the setup tasks can usually be scheduled into a regular work week. Then the rewards are just around the corner as you start to see the benefits of sales order automation right away. Your Challenge Good News www.conexiom.com “I just don’t have the time to launch complex IT projects that require months of configuration and testing with a team of experts. Our IT team is already beyond capacity.” Myth #3: “I’ll have to get my customers to change the way they do business with us.” www.conexiom.com When choosing a solution, it’s important to consider the cost of change – in this case the cost of asking your customers to change – to both you and your customers. Let’s face it. Improving your business shouldn’t impact your customers. A good sales order automation tool works with your existing business practices rather than requiring new ones. At Conexiom, we respect the fact that customers have their unique way of doing business. We can easily handle as many purchase order variations as you do. And as an added bonus, your customers don’t even have to know that you’ve switched to automation. Here’s how it works. You select a specific customer and grab a collection of their unique purchase orders. Then we work with you to carefully map the customer’s data ensuring it’s accurately captured and automatically transformed into sales orders in your existing ERP system. Then you can sit back and enjoy the benefits of automation. Your Challenge Good News “Is there a standard format or template to automate? I’d love to automate order processing, but can’t ask my customers to change the way they do business with us.” Myth #4: “It’s impossible to achieve 100% data accuracy.” www.conexiom.com The goal of automation is to help you become more efficient, which can’t happen if you find yourself double and triple checking orders. A quality sales order automation solution offers accurate data capture technology to ensure your order data is recognized and extracted correctly. When choosing a solution it’s important that it offers total data accuracy to ensure your orders are captured correctly regardless of the purchase order format. At Conexiom we’re proud to offer 100% data capture accuracy by always reading the actual character data from the order directly, rather than relying on optical character recognition. We work with you to define each customer’s purchase order format and then understand, define, and apply business logic that determines how that data should be mapped into a sales order. This ensures orders are processed accurately every time. Your Challenge Good News “The idea of sales order automation sounds great, but I’m concerned about accuracy. We’ve worked hard to achieve our low error rates and can’t afford to see any increases or inconveniences to our customers.” Myth #5: “Orders will still fall through the cracks.” www.conexiom.com A robust sales order automation solution is designed to handle a few bumps in the road. Whether it’s an incomplete or incorrect part number or a new shipping address, ideally there should be built-in business logic that can notify you right away. When evaluating a solution, consider features like exception handling, validation, and confirmation to ensure smooth order processing, as well as fill availability. Conexiom works closely with customers to establish an alert system that ties into the ERP system’s standard exception handling tools to allow you to stay ahead of the game. Email notification can be set up and issued in real time to the department of your choice. This allows users to resolve their own exceptions before they become problems. In case of a substantial change to a customer’s purchase order format, Conexiom can be quickly and easily adjusted to ensure that all future purchase orders continue to be processed seamlessly. Your Challenge Good News “Sales order automation sounds too good to be true. What if there’s a problem with a purchase order or it doesn’t translate perfectly into a sales order in our ERP system?” Myth #6: “It can’t handle multiple offices and languages.” www.conexiom.com Whether this describes your current state of affairs or your future plans, it’s important to choose a solutions provider who can support you today and scale into the future. When choosing the right solution, look for a proven international track record to ensure you select a reliable partner that will grow alongside your business. At Conexiom, we serve large national and international organizations in dozens of countries. Translating purchase orders into sales orders transcends language barriers, as demonstrated by our relationship with major industry leaders such as 3M. Conexiom supports double-byte character sets such as those found in Arabic and Asian languages, as well as offering 24/7 service availability and a robust support line. Your Challenge Good News “We’re a global company with many offices located around the world. How can sales order automation effectively support multiple offices and multiple languages?” How to Get Started with Conexiom Now that you’ve decided sales order automation is the right solution for you, getting started is easy with Conexiom. We’ve honed our wealth of experience into a proven methodology that’s successfully enrolled thousands of customers. To accelerate the process, we assign an Onboarding Specialist to simplify implementation and ensure you see results even sooner. Typically, new customers are able to roll out Conexiom in a few weeks or less. Once the initial group of customers is successfully enrolled and the mapping process is mastered, it’s easy to expand the deployment to include additional customers and to realize the full potential of sales order automation.  866-860-3388  [email protected] select Select a small group of customers to get started (usually 5-10) create Create accounts for each customer in the Conexiom System Gather and submit a collection of recent purchase orders (POs) for each customer map Map relevant PO information to where you expect to see it in your ERP system define Define business rules for notifications and exception handling 6 5 4 3 1 2 receive Receive training on how to manage customer accounts and on-going support gather Getting Started is Simple and Hassle-Free Are You Ready to Experience the Difference? Are you ready to eliminate the hassles associated with order processing? Would you like to shorten order processing times by up to 90%? And reduce the cost of processing orders by 80% or more? Excited to say goodbye to manual processing and increase order accuracy rates? Are you ready to redefine customer service? If you’re ready to experience the many benefits of sales order automation, give us a call at 1.866.860.3388 to learn how you can get started today. Conexiom® allows manufacturers and distributors to focus on serving customers and managing supplier relationships instead of entering data. The patent-pending Conexiom solution was created by ecmarket, a cloud solutions developer. Conexiom revolutionizes critical sales and accounting business practices by automating manual entry with 100% accuracy. Conexiom effortlessly converts emailed and printed customer purchase orders and supplier invoices into automated sales orders and invoices, enabling companies to focus on driving growth. Conexiom helps organizations across the globe maintain a competitive edge. For more information visit www.conexiom.com  866-860-3388  [email protected] About Conexiom