Client Profile.
The client is a leading store fixture manufacturer and distributor from CA, USA offering partial and turnkey solutions for interior layout and design to large and small retail stores as well as major design firms
Business Need.
Maintaining accurate and updated records of customers, raw materials, supplies, invoices etc. of thousands of clients across industries and geographies was a herculean task for the customer. It required resources, time, and meticulous coordination – taking away focus from core operational activities.
Uncoordinated and mismanaged document and data processing led to delays and inaccuracies in:
- Sending quotes to potential customers
- Placing orders for raw materials and hence missing out on the benefits of dynamic pricing
- Order fulfillment
- Dues collection from customers
They approached Hitech to streamline their order processing system by collecting, cleansing, validating, and entering order management data into their ERP system.
Challenges.
Maintaining 100% data accuracy and streamlining the entire document processing operations posed challenges such as:
- Clearing massive volumes of backlog data
- Direct entry of data into the client ERP system did not allow for any separate layer of quality checks
- Collecting and collating data from a consistent and huge influx of emails and excel sheets from distributors and customers
- Structuring, standardizing, and validating structured and unstructured data from customer quotes, purchase order, material items, supplier details, and bill of material, invoices, etc.
- Putting in place a resource pool with domain knowledge of furniture and fixtures.
Solution.
Delivered a streamlined and structured order processing system with a workflow that addressed data collection from relevant documents, collation, validation, and standardization before being entered into client’s ERP system using API credentials.
Approach.
Scanned images and documents like customer quotes, purchase order, material items, supplier details, bill of material, etc. received over email and FTP folders. After classification and tagging, they are routed to relevant stakeholders in the order management chain.
1. Procurement Management
- Check for quantity of raw material required from fixture details in the order sheets
- Run a search for price, availability, and lead time for the material to be ordered
- Update the packing list and various other data fields from the invoices into order database
- Track the order to ensure timely delivery; follow up with vendor, if needed
- Coordinate with client POC to ensure timely payment for ordered material to the vendor
2. Job Management/ Order Processing
- Check out customer emails for approvals on job quotes
- Upon receiving approval for the estimate, create a new job task for the production team.
- Notification/alerts sent to production with relevant information to plan for resources, raw material, and availability of the assembly line.
- A similar kind of job ticket is entered in QuickBooks for generating and sending an invoice to the customer.
- Find out if the customer paid down payment against the invoice sent. If yes – send a notification to the production team to start working on the project. If not – send a reminder to the customer asking for confirmation and payment.
3. Billing Management/ Invoicing
- Receivables: Send bill/invoice to the customer post successfully shipping the order; follow up over emails for payment
- Payables: Receive raw material bills from suppliers, enter them into client’s ERP system; coordinate with client and vendors to ensure timely payments of raw material
4. Reports and Updates
- Pull up data from the ERP system to prepare and send daily, weekly, fortnightly, and monthly reports through dashboards to the client.
- Dashboards included sales, new quote requests, design pipeline, pending jobs, shipping report, open purchase orders, status of new sales leads, item list reports etc.
Software & Applications
- QuickBooks, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, PDF Acrobat, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome
