Efficient Order Processing from Half a Day to Seconds
The client wanted a faster way to process on-demand shipment requests (or “forced shipments”) from customers. Previously, account representatives had to submit orders and check inventories manually, which often led to shipping delays.
A solution was built in just a few weeks using Power Apps, and a custom connector was used to integrate with the central SAP system.
Here’s how it works:
The benefits of automation were dramatic. What used to take half a day to validate inventories and other order data can now be completed in seconds. Along with more efficient processing, the new solution has also resulted in fewer errors, faster delivery times and higher customer satisfaction.
“The solution has helped restore customer confidence which has driven even better sales,” says the Director of Business Solutions at the company.
Automating a Cumbersome 11-Step Manual Process
The client's strategic brand offers a self-serve dispenser that reimagines single-serving beverage sales and provides more than 100 product choices. However, more choice for consumers complicated distribution.
Customer relationship management representatives had to go through a complex and manual 11-step process including cross-referencing customer and material numbers, processing the order, manually pushing it through the system, scanning the invoice, and walking it to the Accounts Payable department.
To automate this cumbersome process, the solution was built by the company’s fusion teams of citizen developers and professional developers, along with its partner, using a series of integrations between SAP and Azure with Microsoft Power Platform acting as the automation agent to automate the entire process.
Power Automate RPA took mundane, tedious tasks and enabled employees to focus on more strategic initiatives. The client can now schedule and trigger events that increase end-to-end automation of high-volume tasks like its suddenly expanded orders for their strategic brand. It also allowed the client to automatically process orders received from multiple channels without requiring an agent to work on each order.
As a result, the client could immediately free up one full-time employee to work on more strategic activities. Better yet, they could profitably scale to execute a strategic local campaign that would have otherwise required a maximum of ten full-time employees if done manually.
Since then, the client has gone on to automate other business processes with Microsoft Power Automate RPA capabilities.