Since childhood, the love of reading has endured because of the journey to vivid new worlds through the author and reader pact. There lurked a gremlin though, the usual one – the phobia to change and try new genres, such as legal and crime thrillers. Not anymore though, the footsteps of lawyers and detectives are now compelling.

In the real world, with a 100-year pedigree and growing fast, Helios, the specialist condiment maker of tomato-based products, jams and fruit, noticed their gremlin – current manually intensive practices in accounts payable were holding them back. Invoices were not easy to process, there was little visibility, the multiple and complicated workflows needed untangling and processing independently of their SAP ERP business system. Moreover, approving invoices only from the office were inhibiting to the Helios fast lane.

Once Helios made the decision to change, by automating the Accounts Payable function and freeing itself of current confines, the new horizon quickly yielded its rewards. In a nutshell, Helios got visibility of outstanding supplier and promotional invoices, got better budget control, got swift approvals on the hoof and the team got the ability to work remotely with ease.

The CFO at Helios Group, Mercedes Soto said, “Our finance teams are happier because they are now able to spend more time on higher-value tasks and have greater control over what is happening in real time.”

Fundamentally, pacts or partnership must be symbiotic to endure, as Mercedes Soto’s testimony suggests, “Esker gives us the visibility we need into the supplier and promotional invoices we must account for each day, and this allows us to close accounts faster and provision them correctly and in a timely manner.”

Transformation and change are synonymous to a point, and relative to the one going through the metamorphosis. Usually, transformation implies the major change. However, a small change can transform thinking and habits which can engender further adventure. For organisations this can mean hauling the whole back office of procure to pay and order to cash to complete automation. As for me, it’s time to change genre again and try reading the baffling, complex, confusing but brilliant William Faulkner.

You can read Helios’ customer story here.

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

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Your business is growing, sales orders are pouring in. Happy days are here; or are they? What should you do if the work load, as appreciated as it is, becomes unmanageable?

Consider Routeco, the UK’s leading specialist distributor of industrial automation and control products, which they enhance with value-added services.

Routeco realised their growth had to be managed and optimised. To do this, they adopted Esker’s Order Management solution which lead to 45% of the group-wide orders being uploaded hands-free, 30% of orders were processed automatically, data accuracy shot up and incorrect delivery rates fell. Furthermore, the solution empowered Routeco’s sales team with total visibility, control, and provided them with that most precious commodity, time to spend with customers, which resulted in a huge increase in productivity and morale.

Claire Hancott, Finance Director of the Routeco Group, said, “My favourite feature by far is the ability to completely customise the dashboards. This is brilliant for management to understand if the processing team is on track and see where there may be some issues. It can be really motivating for the team to see the goals they are achieving.”

Routeco’s orders are now fully automated. Users only need to view them in their ERP system to check whether data has been uploaded correctly, without time wasted on manual entry. Esker’s visually impressive, customisable dashboards are a big wow factor. Claire Hancott also said, “When considering Esker, we looked at several systems and they all felt very clunky, like somebody had bolted lots of additional features on over time and they didn’t quite flow. Esker, on the other hand, was very intuitive, is easy to navigate and simple.”

Clearly, the benefits of order automation delivered those happy days in the shape of happier staff and happier customers. Mark Crawford, Group Operations Director at Routeco endorses this and said, “The increased accuracy of order processing results in a better customer journey. As we have utilised Esker more and more, our employees are able to see the time savings, freeing up time for more customer contact and value-added activities.”

Automation has enabled Routeco to enjoy its business growth, especially as extra resources for higher productivity were not required. Morale is high and inter-departmental relationships are stronger, with a collective focus to achieve corporate goals. No question about it, it’s happy days all round then.

If you’d like to achieve a similar management of sales orders for your business, do get in touch. We’d love to talk you through the benefits of our Order Management solution or better still, show you a demo.

You can also find our more on our website.

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

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Imagine, later admitting it was because the order got missed, sorry.

Such thoughts came as I waited for my Covid-19 jab. Dreading, but needing, that needle, supposing, as I sat with bared arm, the practitioner face showed alarm that the expected new box of needles hadn’t arrived.

With peak demand, high stakes, lives at risk, there is incredible pressure to supply goods rapidly, with no room for human error. Fortunately, many essential services, such as the medical device industry, are keen to avoid costly mistakes by deploying technology.

By giving even highly skilled staff the tools to see and control every order, at every stage delivers efficiency akin to magic. For example, Acelity, the world’s largest advanced wound care company reported:

• No lost orders
• Fewer processing errors
• More orders processed more efficiently
• Every order visible from receipt to archive
• Lower backlog of orders
• Lower cost of processing
• Happy customers

In the words of Ruth Davidson, Acelity’s Customer Service Director, after Esker had automated their sales order processing:
“…a solution that eliminates paper, automates archiving, streamlines email management and gives complete visibility of orders from receipt to entry … a significant decrease in errors related to manual handling and we have almost eliminated duplicate order entry…”

Paraphrased, it means, don’t worry, the order wasn’t missed, you’re having your Covid-19 jab.

You can read Acelity’s success story here , or you can read more on our website .

Contact us today to learn more about how Esker can help your medical device or life sciences organisation to benefit from order management automation.

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

Read more insights from Raj Sahota

In law, force majeure is described as an act of God, unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract. Force majeure would be bad if the contracts had been mutually beneficial, and good for the party who had wanted out. In life, force majeure is an irresistible compulsion or superior strength. If in your favour, say helping you in an ordeal, then your victory is assured. However, if it is against you, you’ve lost. Whether in law or in life, whether for you or against you, the power is on a grand scale. The results, the cost or benefit, will therefore also be devastating or grand.

The prevailing global force majeure is the pandemic. Devastating in human cost and grand in short-circuiting the production of not just one, but several vaccines, from 10 years to 10 months. Force majeure, miracles, revelations are life and situation changers.

Behaviours have changed since the pandemic hit. People embraced this digital age’s new tools at home and for work. The more successful enterprises grasped the advantages of digitisation very quickly. They cut the umbilical cord and compulsion of being office-bound and stole a march on the competition. Such acts were transformative in their own right. Now add the benefits of 24/7 control, visibility, remove the manual tasks, the human errors, with intelligent machine learning and factor in speed of processing, so the same staff produce more, and the costs tumble. For example, in customer service, digitised order management becomes smoother and faster. CSRs are freed up to give customers the extra time, attention and service they deserve and nurture their loyalty.

Let’s take an example from June 2020:
“Before we had Esker, a standard order took about nine minutes to process,” said Jesse Sandoval, CSR, Order Management at Lam Research. “But once we had Esker, the process was down to 1-2 minutes. Because Esker can handle PDFs, it was able to fill a gap we had in our process. The beauty of Esker’s solution is its ability to ‘learn’ as we use it. The teaching and auto-learn functionalities were big factors in our ability to reduce overall touches and speed up process time.”

Lam Research reduced manual data entry, cut order processing time by 88 per cent, reduced manual changes per order from 3.7 to 2.8, lowered the possibility for errors and streamlined the workflow to realise greater customer service and see unprecedented order processing efficiencies.

Further, “Innovation is essential in driving the supply chain industry forward, and thanks to these valuable partnerships, companies of all sizes are able to achieve success in projects that matter,” says Marina Mayer, Editor for Supply & Demand Chain Executive. “From business intelligence systems and supply and demand planning, to inventory reduction and procurement solutions, the SDCE 100 offers proof-of-concept that with the right planning and execution, anything is possible.”

“We are honoured to be included in the SDCE 100 Top Supply Chain Projects list,” said Steve Smith, COO at Esker. “Esker is proud to support Lam Research in scaling globally to deliver a refined customer service and order processing experience.”

Today, as the world battles for control over this pandemic, digitisation has emerged king and a kingmaker. We have been challenged, changed and given new, better, cleaner choices about how we work. Hopefully our choices will be smart enough to assure that bright future we really do need.

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

Read more insights from Raj Sahota

Largescale remote working is a new 2020 norm. Yet the concept already feels well-worn, probably because it should have been adopted years ago at the advent of mobile technology. Those old management habits, suspicion that home working equalled slacking, fear of losing control and visibility has kept the workforce in a proverbial strait-jacket and glued to workplaces and watching the clock. The same mindset ensured that the costliest resource, i.e. staff, would become costlier by perpetuating the daily slow, manual, error-prone tasks until it was time to congest the roads again as they had that morning.

A moment’s pause scotches the dinosaurian fears. For example, IT ensures irrefutable accountability, productivity, control and visibility with 24/7 KPIs and dashboards. Overheads suddenly plunge, fears vanish, the planet gets cleaner and work-life balance scales level up.

Those that still need to go on-site, for now anyway until robots become nimbler, can zoom to the workplace and back without falling over those that don’t.

Here’s how.

In order-to-cash (O2C) and procure-to-pay (P2P), the infrastructure, solutions and support are good to go.

In O2C:

• Esker Anywhere Mobile App allows users to monitor KPIs & place/track orders from the palm of their hand
• Self-service customer portal enables customers to place orders, resolve disputes etc. anytime, anywhere
• End-to-end connectivity between all applications, enables collectors, customer service & AR managers to perform critical tasks in real time, without delays.

In P2P:

• Users have access to a supplier portal to enhance supplier/buyer collaboration and supply chain performance
• Esker Anywhere mobile app allows users to track the status of purchase requisitions & expense reports
• Approve, hold or send invoices back to the previous approver
• Monitor KPIs from a customisable dashboard.

Our industrial landscape has changed out of all recognition since LS Lowry’s day. Our mindsets need to do likewise.

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

Read more insights from Raj Sahota

Over the centuries, Conwy Castle played a vital role in several wars until it was deliberately ruined, or slighted, by Parliament in 1665 to prevent it from being used as a stronghold again.

Today, Conwy Castle still stands proudly, cloaked in its past and secrets, on the rock where its first stone was laid 736 years ago. It captivated artists like William Turner and inspires awe in people of all ages.

Yet, some things never change.

Business leaders also need tools to function as castles did for rulers of their day. Businesses constantly face fierce competition and encroachment from their commercial rivals. The one with the best tools and intelligence still wins the day.

Esker provides some of the best business tools available, such as, efficient, intelligent processing in the order to cash and procure to pay cycles, which are essential functions in any business. These tools, like arrows true to target, are Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics. With these tools, dismiss labour intensive tasks and free up staff to hunt for more market share.

AI effortlessly increases speed and accuracy by removing redundant tasks and processing errors so staff can focus on customers and suppliers. New agility comes with no granular knowledge to master, plus rapid on-boarding and improved scalability to handle new growth.

Intelligence, that gem vital to getting ahead and making the best business decisions, comes to your fingertips with analytics and tailored dashboards.

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

Read more insights from Raj Sahota

To raise even more money, I donated some paintings for their summer auction. Hopefully people will be kind enough to part with their cash generously!

Speaking as an animal lover and a vegan, I was struck by how hard animals, such as donkeys, work for us. As living beings, like us, they get old, tired and need to take it easy. Happily, such considerations do not apply when deploying a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) which is designed to work 24/7 if required.

RPA is the buzz word for software that can be easily programmed to do routine, repetitive human tasks, quickly, accurately and tirelessly. Relying on structured data, RPA automates workflows or clerical processes by emulating human interaction within a graphical user interface (GUI) with great benefits. The benefits include consistently swift, accurate data management at a much lower cost than manual processing of any documents, typically sales orders and supplier invoices. Manual processes are streamlined to facilitate business security and increase scalability.

What does RPA do for your most important resource, i.e. your employees? Certainly staff are empowered to be more productive and professionally fulfilled because they are free of the mundane, repetitive and valueless tasks.

What of the other buzz word, Artificial Intelligence (AI)? AI is not to be confused with RPA. True, both deal with automation. However, a key difference is that RPA is not “self-learning” and only works with structured data. AI technologies, on the other hand, respond to changing environments and data and rewrite themselves.

What both RPA and AI have in common is that they automate manual processes and usher in great efficiency. Both technologies work 24/7 so you don’t need to. This is good news for staff, who are now able to work smarter rather than harder. Let RPA, and AI (with its machine learning and deep learning capabilities) take the strain of today’s a fast paced, IT driven environment. For me, that means more free time to serve our clients better and of course, paint more pictures and visit our adopted donkeys in their pasture lands!

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

Read more insights from Raj Sahota

Automating the purchasing cycle is as simple as switching the light on. Suddenly, you would have real-time budget and process control plus an efficient cash flow management at your fingertips. The risk of fraud would diminish and suppliers would be easier to manage efficiently.

The switch away from paper forms to online purchase requisitions would mean an end to trundling paper round for approval which would be automated with the right level of authorisation applied to every request. Imagine the level of efficiency when purchasing becomes aligned to company policies as requesters have access to preferred suppliers.

  Complete Spend Visibility

The link between purchasing and accounts payable couldn’t be smoother as orders are pre-approved, all invoices become PO-based and can be easily matched with the corresponding PO and goods receipts. Accounts payable colleagues wouldn’t need to chase payment approvals in order to pay invoices on-time which would help them to access early payment discounts more easily.

Once automated, spending and payment becomes completely transparent from request to receipt of the goods or service. The tracking capability enables full reporting on requisitions, items purchased, orders processed and payments made. The dashboards give every user the level of information they need for their daily tasks. This means performances can be monitored, problems or opportunities spotted as soon as they arise and make every action smarter and more strategic.

Automation opens the door to better communication internally and improves the buyer-supplier relationship. The supplier self-service portal improves business efficiency and reduces the cost of supplying goods and services. Furthermore, the portal provides transparency, speed and productivity that manual processes fail to achieve. Who couldn’t argue that the move from manual processes to automation is like stepping from night to daylight?

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

Read more insights from Raj Sahota

Our HR Manager, a keen lover of animals, paid for one year’s adoption of a donkey named Walter from The Donkey Sanctuary.

Once the adoption year ended we just couldn’t abandon Walter and his friends. With so many donkeys continually found in a neglected state they needed our help. But what could we do?

The answer lay in the lack of choice with current charity sweetie boxes we had– so we launched ‘Walter’s Treat Box’. Apart from a well-stocked supply of goodies the box is also a good destination for goodies that need eating up before the sell-by date so food isn’t wasted at home.

Fast forward two years and the profits have now allowed us to adopt nine adorable donkeys by donating over £350 a year to help this great cause.

With all these treats we thought we’d better keep an eye on our waistlines too, so for a little added fun we’ve now got our very own weigh in for those who wish to measure exactly how generous they have been in supporting the charity!

You could say the Esker secret Santa gift snowballed to keep Walter and his friends happily rolling in the hay.

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

Read more insights from Raj Sahota

Most traditional things end up having a modern twist. Take the gold wedding ring and its tattoo version, the hug at the airport versus the Skype call, the glossy birthday card in your hand versus the email or text message. We like both, it’s nice to have a choice.

No surprise then that postal mail, insulted as ‘snail mail,’ has a morphed into automated Mail Services. This means:

• Saying goodbye to the high cost of running a mail room – mail services is typically 45% cheaper than manually produced mail.
• Faster processing, meaning a faster business cycle so documents hit your customers’ postal service, worldwide, in under 24 hours.
• You stay put and send Esker your print job securely from your desk, tracked with status notifications.
• Controlling and customising your mail. Choose colour or black and white, single or double sided, pick the envelope size, postage options and despatch times.
• Never fretting about the size or complexity of your mail. Esker’s first class mail production facilities in France, Belgium, Spain, UK, USA, Australia and Singapore can handle the job – and deliver it on time.

You could say the snail strikes back with its electronic magic carpet.

Raj Sahota

As Internal Sales Manager at Esker, Raj looks after customers and prospective customers. She has been part of the Esker family since 2011.

Read more insights from Raj Sahota