Simple Digital Transformation with Conexiom

www.conexiom.com 1 Simple Digital Transformation with Conexiom www.conexiom.com 2 Simple Digital Transformation with Conexiom Organizational leadership can struggle to understand the tangible outcome of digital transformation efforts and subsequently have difficulty in determining which areas of their business are most suitable to transform. Digital transformation is simple. It means using digital technologies to maximize business efficiency. Approaching digital transformation planning from this standpoint makes it easier to commence plans for enterprise digital transformations because the end goal and measure of success is straightforward. Where can productivity be increased? Which business processes are the least efficient? A primary driver of technology advancement in digital transformation has been a focus on improving efficiencies and productivity in business processes. While scope and process integration innovations have been accelerating across all industries, business process automation continues to be a primary target of technology investment. Where to begin implementing digital transformations can seem daunting to industry executives. www.conexiom.com 3 Digital Transformation can be Simple Examining Sales Document Processing Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and wearable technology are the primary pillars of digital transformation. Enterprise-level projects require substantial investment and legacy platform upgrades in order to realize transformation goals, thus increasing difficulty for some businesses that are not prepared for extensive changes. There are simpler and more cost efficient digital transformations that also deliver efficiency gains such as optimized workflow and improved customer experience. Document processing is one of the most time- consuming and labor-intensive tasks in modern distribution and manufacturing. It requires manual entry and provides virtually no additional return beyond the initial sale. Automating this process can deliver a multitude of benefits for businesses and is one of the easiest and most cost effective digital transformations to implement. Business is constantly evolving and technology is driving serious innovation. With leading retailers like Amazon and eBay revolutionizing the B2C customer experience, expectations can be seen spilling over into the B2B world. Customers are demanding faster fulfillment, more flexibility, better accessibility and competitive pricing. As a result, modern distributors and manufacturers find themselves looking for new ways to deliver more customer value, as the trend is only increasing with the penetration of e-marketplaces in the industry. A key task for all distributors and manufacturers is order processing. Despite technological advances, over 80% of orders, requests for quotes or special pricing agreements and contracts still require manual processing. Manufacturers and distributors rely on expensive manpower for tasks like data entry that provide no added value to the company. Daily, orders arrive via email, fax, phone or are posted to web portals for customer access, prompting a team of customer service representatives to manually facilitate the sales order process. Undeniably, entering this data into a company’s ERP system is a mission critical activity. Staying in business means selling goods, services or some combination of the two. Entering sales orders quickly and accurately is essential to customer order fulfillment and overall satisfaction. The actual process however, of staff pounding on keyboards to re-key information is outdated, slow and inefficient. Often, executive leadership will have insight into which business processes can be improved in terms of productivity but surprisingly, the sales order entry process is often ignored when evaluating how to digitize and elevate the customer experience. www.conexiom.com 4 Although many companies recognize manual entry isn’t working well, they’re unaware of a better alternative and that automating the process is a digital transformation that can be easily implemented. As orders and bid requests pour in, the first solution is often adding a few extra hands to provide relief to fluctuations in order volume. However, as order volumes increase these productivity and efficiency issues will only expand. There are many reasons why a digital transformation of sales document processing is vital to survival. Manual processing has serious physical limitations. Customer service and subsequently customer satisfaction is only as good as the number of hands on the team, which means incredibly high operational costs. Expenses are only aggravated with overtime hours. Yet trying to align demand with staffing numbers creates hiring pressures. Secondly, it’s fundamentally flawed. It creates a lot of undesirable effects like bottlenecks awaiting entry, lost or duplicate orders, delayed order cycles and even slower payments. It also introduces order entry errors that come with a hefty resolution price tag stemming from rush orders to write-offs. In a nutshell, manual processing requires an excessive level of effort to yield slow, sub-par results. Many types of documents that distributors and manufacturers manually process can be digitally transformed including purchase orders, quote requests, and accounts payable invoices. Automation of these processes can dramatically reduce errors and speed up workflow, meaning increased efficiency and ROI. The following are some examples: Automating incoming POs not only speeds up order- to-cash cycles, but also increases data accuracy. With more time on their hands, customer service reps can focus on value-added tasks such as improving customer relationships. Quote automation accelerates the response time of bids and quotes to minutes, with 100-percent accuracy. With the ability to process requests for quotes no matter the time of day, companies gain a competitive advantage by responding to bids around the clock. Automating contract management can streamline workflow for key processes including pricing agreements, task management, digital signature capabilities, automated alerts, and record management. When custom pricing is involved, automation eliminates errors and decreases the number of line item rejections and discrepancy claims that are more likely to happen when keyed in manually. Automatically converting faxed and emailed incoming AP invoices into payable postings, eliminates potential errors associated with data entry. With automation, companies can capitalize on early payment discounts, and prevent duplicate payments. It also allows AP staff to focus on other important tasks like addressing supplier requests. How Manual Processing Affects your Bottom Line Benefits of Digitally Transforming Document Processing www.conexiom.com 5 Most customer service representatives are overwhelmed processing orders. It takes a lot of time and effort to stay on top of order volumes especially during peak season. By automating document processing, companies can free up time and increase productivity by automating repetitive tasks. CSR teams can free up to 95% of the time previously dedicated to manually processing customer orders. It makes it possible for companies to maintain a competitive edge by leaving more time for actual customer service, exception handling, and problem solving. CSRs can devote time to demonstrating their deep product knowledge and providing recommendations to customers. Ultimately digitally transforming this area of the customer experience makes time for revenue generating tasks and improving customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and the bottom line. Generating Growth by Redefining Customer Service 866-860-3388 [email protected] About Conexiom Conexiom® allows manufacturers and distributors to eliminate manual entry associated with the processing of business documents through its 100% accurate automation solutions. Developed by ecmarket, Conexiom is a cloud-based solution that doesn’t require customers or their trading partners change the way they do business. Customer service and inside sales teams rely on Conexiom to effortlessly capture and convert POs, RFQs, pricing agreements, and other sales documents and transform them into an electronic format that can be delivered into their organization’s ERP system with 100% accuracy. As the fastest and most accurate automation solution, Conexiom is uniquely positioned to prevent costly keying errors, improve productivity, reduce costs, and accelerate order-to-cash cycle times. For distributors and manufacturers, manually keying in documents like purchase orders wastes considerable time and offers no incremental value to their business. By digitally transforming these operational inefficiencies, companies can lower their cost to serve while improving productivity and customer satisfaction. Conexiom helps organizations across the globe maintain a competitive edge and focus on driving growth. For more information visit www.conexiom.com