Artificial Intelligence (AI), the simulation of human intelligence by machines, has been around for longer than some might think: The actual beginnings of this field lie in the 1950s, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Over the decades, the excitement has alternately waxed and waned. What catapulted AI to the absolute highest hype levels, however, was the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022. ChatGPT — which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer — is a Large Language Model (LLM) that unleashed a new era of usability of AI.

The initial enthusiasm was immense. Speculation about all the problems AI will solve, and what problems it
will create, abounded. Almost a year later, the buzz has died down a little, but governments all over the world are considering legislation as to how AI can and should be used responsibly. For private use, AI capabilities are used for entertainment and, not least because of cost, will probably remain so for a while to come. Businesses, meanwhile, are ready to hit the ground running. It is no surprise that Microsoft has embedded a variety of AI-piloted features in its products.

Although it gets the most attention due to its revolutionary capabilities, ChatGPT is not all that AI can do. There are many different layers, and their targeted and pragmatic use can help organisations in their digital transformation.

Machine learning algorithms are not programmed. Instead, they “learn” from user input to solve specific problems, continuously advancing these learning capabilities. They can, for example, extract relevant data from customer orders sent in a variety of formats: free-text emails, PDFs, images and even, for those still stuck in the 90s, faxes. Sometimes, however, misidentifications occur, and values are not correctly read. This is where human intervention is still required to rectify these errors. The machine learning AI will then remember the correction, and, with the help of historical data analysis, from there on out rapidly predict increasingly correct outcomes.

Deep learning, a subcategory of machine learning, can execute even more advanced tasks. Relying on artificial neural networks that mimic the human brain and on enormous amounts of validated data, deep learning extracts information from multiple data layers, yielding even higher accuracy and optimisation. Ideal business uses for deep learning technology can be found, for example, in email triage for shared inboxes, both on the supplier and customer sides. Questions, invoices and purchase orders can all be filtered out and forwarded to the correct recipient. For the Finance department, deep learning can even pinpoint small changes in payment behaviours, order dynamics and credit ratings. These indicators can have a significant impact on working capital requirements, and thus, the earlier they are detected, the better the business can react accordingly.

And then, of course, there is ChatGPT. In addition to the fun moments it can provide when entering a query,
for example, to generate an article about AI business use-cases in the voice of Yoda, it does have some real-life applications. Customers who email a business with questions such as “Where is my order?” or “When will my reimbursement arrive?” are all living different experiences. While sentiment analysis can identify when a customer might be getting frustrated, ChatGPT can help in generating an appropriate response. This refers to both tone and content: pulling the correct information from the different systems and then suggesting a fitting answer. The emphasis here lies on “suggesting.” A human should always remain in control and make necessary adjustments, rather than relying on ChatGPT for fully automated responses. The potential for errors is just too great otherwise.

The hoped-for result would be an efficient workplace that cuts out repetitive and meaningless tasks by using AI, and brings to light hidden financial details and business indicators. These tools need to remain assistive rather than replacing humans, since no matter how intelligent AI is, the human touch just cannot be replaced. Properly used, with an awareness of potential risks, AI technologies should be used to increase well-being, strengthen our democracies, and improve the shared information environment.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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As a keen amateur cyclist, I ride between 8-10,000 kilometres per year, so I can understand a little about what it must take to plan, prepare and participate in one of the most difficult challenges in the sporting calendar – the Tour de France!

How does this equate to drawing parallels to the use of AI and RPA technologies in the order-to-cash process?

Well, in the exhilarating race of the order-to-cash process, where businesses strive to swiftly convert orders into cash, two powerful allies have emerged to conquer the challenging terrain: artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA). They are the dynamic duo that resembles the teamwork and determination seen in the prestigious Tour de France. Let’s dive into this analogy to understand how AI and RPA are revolutionising order-to-cash automation.

Imagine a bustling start line at the Tour de France, where teams of cyclists eagerly await the race ahead. Just like these cyclists, businesses have teams dedicated to the order-to-cash process, consisting of departments such as sales, finance, and customer service. Their goal is to efficiently process orders, generate invoices, and collect payments.

At the forefront of the peloton, we have AI, the leader of the pack. AI acts as the brain of the operation, leveraging its machine learning capabilities to analyse vast amounts of data. Similarly, in the order-to-cash process, AI can examine customer information, transaction history, and market trends, providing valuable insights that fuel smart decision-making.

AI’s intelligence comes to life as it anticipates customer behaviour, predicts demand patterns, and identifies potential risks. Just like a skilled cyclist, AI navigates the road ahead, enabling businesses to make informed choices that optimise the order-to-cash process. It ensures the right products are available at the right time, minimises inventory costs, and maximises customer satisfaction.

Now, let’s turn our attention to RPA, the trusty support team behind AI. RPA is akin to the support crew that follows cyclists, tirelessly working behind the scenes to provide assistance. With its automation capabilities, RPA eliminates repetitive, rule-based tasks that often burden the order-to-cash process. Just as the support team relieves cyclists from mundane duties, RPA frees up valuable human resources, allowing employees to focus on more strategic activities.

RPA pedals its way through the order-to-cash journey, seamlessly integrating systems and applications. It captures data, validates orders, generates invoices, and even initiates payment reminders. By automating these tasks, RPA accelerates the entire process, reducing errors and enhancing efficiency. It ensures a smooth relay between departments, enabling information to flow swiftly, just like a well-coordinated cycling team.

As the race intensifies, the collaboration between AI and RPA becomes even more crucial. AI’s ability to analyse data, combined with RPA’s automation prowess, creates a formidable force that conquers obstacles in the order-to-cash course. Together, they spot anomalies in payments, flag potential risks, and even propose optimised pricing strategies.

Much like a well-orchestrated cycling team, AI and RPA synchronise their efforts to achieve a common goal: enhancing the order-to-cash process. By reducing manual errors, increasing speed, and improving decision-making, they propel businesses to the finish line faster than ever before.

In this thrilling race, businesses leveraging AI and RPA gain a competitive edge. They harness the power of technology to transform their order-to-cash process into a well-oiled machine. By seamlessly blending human expertise with automation, they can focus on building strong customer relationships, expanding their reach, and accelerating revenue generation.

Just as the Tour de France showcases the triumph of teamwork and determination, AI and RPA bring order-to-cash process automation to new heights. They are the champions of efficiency, accuracy, and agility, propelling businesses towards success in the exhilarating race of modern commerce.

Read more about how you could leverage the benefits of AI and RPA in your order-to-cash process!

Sam Townsend

Sam is Head of Marketing for Esker Northern Europe and has been part of the Esker family since 2003.

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Spanning both the source-to-pay (S2P) and order-to-cash (O2C) cycles, Esker’s AI-powered solutions are built to vastly reduce repetitive and low-value tasks. The patented technology addresses the need for accurate automated data extraction on incoming documents. For businesses with a large customer base, keying information in manually for invoices, orders and other documents is time-consuming and expensive.

Esker’s newly patented AI technology uses traditional and machine learning algorithms to identify data fields, make routing decisions and suggest next actions with the goal of reducing the number of touches during processing as much as possible. The data is read from a document and the AI creates rules that define what data to retrieve and in which format. Through user input, these rules are adapted and the accuracy of the extraction process increases over time. This interplay of AI technology and human supervision reduces mindless and error-prone manual data entry down to almost zero.

The efficacy of Esker’s technology can be witnessed in the order management process. For example, each customer likely uses a different template for their purchase orders (POs) or even changes their layout occasionally. Capturing data from customer orders no matter the channel, format or layout they arrive in, AI retrieves the relevant information on both the header and line-item levels, such as shipping address, PO number, product references, quantities and prices. The machine learning technology then learns from user corrections, increasing the recognition rates after only a few adjustments. “One of the strengths of Esker’s solution is to naturally solve all the complexity of receiving thousands of orders in different formats and with a myriad of different characteristics and particularities,” said Gervasio Prieto, Customer Service Manager at CAPSA Food, an Esker customer. This technology does not only apply to order recognition in Esker’s Customer Service solution suite, but also to vendor invoices, remittances and deduction claims.

Esker has been steadily investing in R&D for utilising AI capabilities in all its solutions for nearly 20 years now. Already at the forefront of AI technology when this patent application was submitted 12 years ago, auto learning is still used in Esker’s solutions today. This technology was expanded on with additional layers of deep learning neural networks.

“When we started on the AI journey at Esker, we focused our efforts on data extraction in order to decrease manual data entry for incoming invoices and orders,” said Jean-Jacques Bérard, Vice President of Research and Development at Esker. “This project has expanded to enriching the extracted data with predictive and prescriptive functionalities such as detecting anomalies in orders, predicting the invoice analytical axis, or proposing an answer to a customer request. This combination of human and artificial intelligence allows for making the work more engaging and efficient.”

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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Is your customer service department providing the excellent customer experience that your customers deserve? Is it possible for your team to provide this, or are processes still mainly manual? Read this blog to learn about augmenting customer service through the use of AI-driven automation, and the impact that automation tools can have on the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, TALENT RETENTION, and OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE.

Does your customer service team still perform repetitive manual tasks? Is this repetitive behaviour hindering your customer service team from providing an outstanding customer experience?
Ultimately, we all turn to the customer service team within any business organisation when we encounter problems with their goods/services. We expect them to have all the answers to our queries on hand, and if not, we get frustrated that our problems are not being solved! If you are left feeling disappointed or frustrated, would you return to this business? On the flip side, we do not stop to think about the customer service representative on the other side of the phone. Maybe it’s impossible for them to answer the query; maybe they do not have the resources or capabilities to do this!

We as customers now demand an easy order experience, fast delivery and quick resolution should an error occur along the way. In essence, “buying something” has become the “customer journey!” This requires back-office customer service to become truly customer-facing. First of all, by ensuring that the orders are fulfilled quickly and correctly, and secondly by being able to access accurate information fast when needed.

How can Artificial Intelligence (AI) help get orders right?
From the start, orders, regardless of the type or format will be identified and allocated to the appropriate queue. Order information will be accurately extracted and orders will be created in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with a full audit trail. Subsequently, order confirmations and shipping notices will be sent directly to customers from the ERP. When customers contact the company via email the AI digital assistants automatically route emails to the right person or group who can handle that request. All round this allows an optimal customer service experience.

How can AI improve TALENT RETENTION?
Handing off repetitive, manual and error-prone processes to intelligent automation technology that encourages collaboration and communication on all levels lowers business costs, creates visibility for everyone and, subsequently, makes customers happy and keeps them coming back. Making use of AI doesn’t mean replacing the humans with robots and algorithms, but instead profiting from the best of both worlds where, humans and algorithms interact: By replacing the tasks that are dull and susceptible to mistakes with intelligent automation, the humans can focus on interacting with other humans again. Various AI technologies can assist in automating routine tasks so the Customer Service Representatives (CSR) team can focus on customer success, making for happier and more fulfilled employees.

EMAIL TRIAGE:
Natural language processing algorithms analyse incoming emails and take over the classification and routing tasks. Orders are forwarded to the appropriate software, while enquiries can be separated out and routed to CSRs for further processing.

CAPTURE ORDER INFORMATION:
AI-based software solutions can leverage multiple learning technologies such as machine and deep learning. These capture the key data on incoming orders, no matter if they are received by email, EDI or even… fax. The algorithms also improve over time by taking user corrections into account.

PRIORITISE ORDERS:
Priority orders, for example those with a tight requested delivery date, from priority customers or for products that need to be delivered with a particular urgency, can be captured automatically by utilising data recognition capabilities, then validated and moved along to the ERP quickly and correctly.

ANOMALY DETECTION:
Delivering and processing returns of incorrect orders drains time and costs. The AI will detect unusual quantities or amounts by analysing historical order data and sending questionable orders back to the CSR for verification.

How can AI improve the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE?
Offering customers a portal where all information related to their order is viewable and enables them to get answers to questions creates an efficient and streamlined experience. CSRs can also perform actions such as creating new enquiries and tracking both internal and external conversations so that they can answer customer questions quickly and accurately. A portal setup empowers customers to manage their orders when they want, rather than having to write emails or make phone calls during business hours. They can:

• See purchase orders, order confirmations & advanced shipping notices
• Track the shipment status
• Place new orders — either directly from a portal, or indirectly from their company’s procurement application that connects to it
• View & pay invoices

All the information that CSRs need is right in front of them so they can focus on the customers, not technology. It also enables them to give input on success metrics and focus on more critical cases, creating happier customers in the long run, too.

• Order automation rates
• Processing time
• SLA compliance
• Enquiries by date/category
• Views filtered by customer/division/region/country

CSRs can work more proactively and think analytically and creatively, leading to a better customer service experience for everyone.

How can AI improve OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE?
Having all business-relevant analytics and KPIs readily available will not only give management peace of mind by knowing what is happening but can also make the Customer Service team operate in a solution-oriented rather than problem-oriented manner. The result? You do not need to pull data together from different sources, you can go straight to problem detection and solving. It’s easy to use and helps you better understand your business and interact more effectively with your customers.
All the information that CSRs need is right in front of them such as:

• Historical data for answering a customer enquiry
• Pricing/availability requests
• Open orders
• Product questions
• Change order, return, signal a claim

Having this information easily accessible allows the CSRs to focus on the customers, not technology. It also enables them to give input on success metrics and focus on more critical cases, creating happier customers in the long run, too.

BUSINESS SUCCESS IS BEST WHEN SHARED At Esker, we believe the only way to create real, meaningful change is through positive-sum growth. This means achieving business success that doesn’t come at the expense of any individual, department or company — everyone wins! That’s why our AI-driven technology is designed to empower every stakeholder while promoting long-term value creation.

Upnesh Grewal

As Marketing Coordinator for Esker UK, Upnesh manages Esker UK's marketing campaigns and events for O2C solutions. She has been part of the Esker family since 2022.

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Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, today announced the issuance of U.S. Patent No. 11494551 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for Esker’s Document Coding Prediction technology.

Spanning both the order-to-cash (O2C) and procure-to-pay (P2P) cycles, Esker Synergy AI is built into the solutions to vastly reduce repetitive and low-value tasks. Manually entering data for invoices and other documents is time-consuming and often leads to accounting errors. Esker’s Predictive Coding feature addresses this problem by utilising a powerful set of AI technologies to automatically match data from existing records.

Having focused its investment strategy on how AI technology can enhance business process automation for over 10 years, Esker has engaged in extensive research on deep convolutional neural networks. As an example, the newly patented Predictive Coding feature can anticipate GL account, cost centre and tax code/rate assignments on incoming invoices. The “brain” embedded in Esker’s solutions identifies data from similar existing documents and recommends detected information in order to complete the data-insertion process. The suggested action can then be either approved or rejected. Esker Synergy AI allows customers to benefit from high recognition rates from day one.

Esker’s efforts to build new AI capabilities such as auto-coding, email triage, improved document recognition as well as anomaly and fraud detection have resulted in solutions that streamline business processes and empower employees. “It is often challenging to obtain AI patents because it is increasingly difficult to apply traditional patent approval rules to machine and deep learning inventions,” said Jean-Jacques Bérard, Vice President of Research and Development at Esker. “However, since Esker packages the algorithms into dynamic and comprehensive solutions that manage and analyse both structured and unstructured data to create efficient, simplified business processes, we are continuing to be successful in obtaining patents.”

“The fact that Esker Synergy AI makes use of the best of human intelligence and cutting-edge AI technology represents our approach to product development: The technology is not there to replace but to augment the work humans do, thereby making it more efficient and engaging,” said Jean-Michel Bérard, CEO at Esker. “The benefits of this symbiosis are experienced by the entire business ecosystem — from the customer, to the employees to the planet — creating positive-sum growth.”

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, announces that it has been selected by Sanden International (Europe) GmbH, a manufacturer of automotive and electrical equipment to some of the world’s leading companies, to automate the processing of its accounts payable, accounts receivable and procurement documentation through AI-driven technologies.

Implemented as a cloud service, Esker’s Accounts Receivable (AR) Accounts Payable (AP) and Procurement automation solutions have given Sanden International (Europe) GmbH the ability to streamline its accounting and procurement processes and benefit from eliminating manual inefficiencies.

Sanden International (Europe) GmbH was keen to streamline its AR processes and wanted to create a web portal to help facilitate communications initially between themselves and their customers. This would allow real-time joint visibility and access online to any invoice status, plus, freeing up internal financial and IT resources dedicated to managing this process. 

Also, having the ability to automatically send invoices in customer-preferred formats (either paper or electronic), reduce internal support for AR invoice delivery, archiving invoices and associated documents, would all be of benefit, as well as the advantages gained by being able to easily adapt when more customers adopt electronic invoicing.

Having implemented the solution quickly and realising the benefits to be gained, Sanden International (Europe) GmbH soon turned its focus to the AP function to see if this could also be improved through automation. Like many organisations, Sanden International (Europe) GmbH experienced slow invoice processing times because of manual routing and sign-off requirements, reduced accuracy with manual data entry, a lack of visibility as to whether an invoice had been received, processed or paid, and the difficulty of retrieving manually stored invoices.

Esker was able to allow Sanden International (Europe) GmbH to automatically capture, route and prioritise its invoices according to predefined rules matched to particular attributes on the invoice, such as supplier, amount, buying entity, etc. Intelligent data capture would then extract the information for multi-level approval across multiple European countries, including mobile approvals. Upon the data being validated, this was then pushed into their SAP system automatically. Once the invoice was paid, the invoice status was updated before an electronic copy of the original document image, corresponding audit trail and history of modifications were created, should the information be required at a later date. 

The Finance General Manager, Sanden International (Europe) GmbH, says, “The benefits of having a single platform to manage three key business processes were huge. We gained faster response times to invoice status calls, improved accuracy of our data entry, less time required to process invoices with automated and mobile multi-level approval, as well as increased visibility and heightened security with electronic archiving”.

Sanden International (Europe) GmbH will also use the Esker Procurement solution which allows different departments (e.g., purchasing, accounting, marketing, etc.) and different users (e.g., requester, budget owner, buyer, manager, etc.) to better manage indirect purchasing through an automated workflow. Every spend gets the required authorisation and every invoice can be matched with a purchase order (PO) all of which generally takes place outside of the ERP system. Any business, regardless of order volume or number of employees, can automate its entire purchasing cycle in a relatively short period of time.

“This allows us to control our budgets in real-time with greater process control and more efficient cash flow management. It’s great to have these key processes automated, using a single cloud solution”.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, today announced the issuance of U.S. Patent No. 11132407B2 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for Esker’s automated batch-cutting technology.

Spanning both the order-to-cash (O2C) and procure-to-pay (P2P) cycles, Esker’s AI-powered solutions are  built to vastly reduce repetitive, low-value and time-consuming tasks. For accounting staff, this often meant having to scan paper invoices to create a digital file that then needed to be separated out by individual invoice. Esker’s AI-driven batch-splitting solution handles this process automatically.

These, and other process efficiency issues that arise in the financial cycle can be adeptly addressed by AI-powered automation. Esker’s global AI investment strategy was initiated more than 10 years ago and places its focus on exactly these kinds of concerns. After extensive research on deep convolutional neural networks, Esker efficiently handles document batch-cutting operations, thereby accelerating the processing of supplier invoices. This, in turn, improves the relationships with suppliers while simultaneously increasing internal productivity and job satisfaction.

For over 10 years, Esker has been steadily developing and broadening its expertise in utilising AI technology to streamline business processes with capabilities such as auto-coding, email triage, improved document recognition as well as anomaly and fraud detection. In concrete terms, this innovation eliminates the hours spent manually managing document batches and contributes to shorter payment periods. “This is in line with our goal of simplifying business processes by facilitating invoice management without disrupting established collaboration processes with suppliers and customers,” said Jean-Jacques Bérard, Vice President of Research and Development at Esker.

“Innovation is an integral part of Esker’s DNA, which is substantiated by the fact that we currently have two more AI-engine related patents pending with the USPTO,” said Jean-Michel Bérard, CEO at Esker. “The focus on automation technologies is one of the keys to our success, because at a time when the finance department plays an increasingly important role in a company’s digital transformation, it is essential that they can focus on the most strategically valuable activities.”

Esker’s AI-powered solutions equip businesses with technology that creates positive-sum growth, which enables companies to create value for every stakeholder — employees, customers, suppliers and the planet.  “We strive to prepare businesses to be a driver of meaningful change by enabling the entire business ecosystem to flourish,” continued Jean-Michel Bérard.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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Global leader in flavour and fragrance manufacturing drives growth and expansion plans with comprehensive digital transformation

Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, today announced that Givaudan, the world’s leading manufacturer of flavours and fragrances for the taste and wellbeing and fragrance and beauty markets, has selected Esker to automate its accounts payable (AP) and order management activities. Several years ago, during the design of the Givaudan Business Solution journey, Givaudan decided to implement Esker’s cloud-based solutions globally.

Givaudan sought an automation solution that could meet its current needs and scale alongside its growing portfolio, as it continues the journey to becoming a Certified B Corporation. These are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance. Givaudan initially engaged Esker to address order entry inefficiencies, and after seeing a positive improvement on order processing time, the company also looked to Esker for its AP needs. By eliminating the need for manual data entry through automation, Esker’s solutions will support Givaudan in improving operational efficiency while allowing staff to focus on building and nurturing customer relationships.

“Adopting best-in-class technology is paramount in driving our forward-thinking methodology and providing an unmatched customer experience, which is the foundation of everything we do at Givaudan,” said JanWillem Scheele, Solution Expert, Customer Care and Demand Planning Service Manager at Givaudan. “Even in today’s unique circumstances, and with newly distributed and remote workforces, our standard for quality work and quick turnaround is unwavering. We look to Esker as a trusted provider to improve and scale our operations with its turnkey and reliable solutions.”

Givaudan is currently rolling out Esker’s AI-driven Accounts Payable and Order Management solutions to its teams worldwide. With shared services centres in Kuala Lumpur, Buenos Aires and Budapest, Givaudan is continually growing and needed to maximise its capabilities on a global scale.

Automating Order Management

Givaudan receives 60,000 orders every month and, before implementing Esker’s AI-driven solution, each order required several manual changes and selections. Now, Givaudan’s customer care team improves on processing orders without manual intervention every week. In some regions already up to 20% of the orders are without manual intervention. This has allowed the company to reduce bottlenecks and time-consuming tasks, which in turn improves speed and ensures the quality of order processing—without increasing headcount as Givaudan grows.

Automating Accounts Payable

To further propel its growth and value, Givaudan turned to Esker to support its AP overhaul. Although SAP® offered Givaudan a highly customised solution, the process behind invoice data entry was still highly manual. Integrating Esker’s intelligent invoice capture with SAP® plays a pivotal role in meeting Givaudan’s evolving needs, by providing substantial time-savings.

“Givaudan at heart is a manufacturing company, and given the nuances of handling raw materials, we required a solution that supported the needs of our purchasing channel from end to end,” said Marton Nagy, Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay at Givaudan. “On average, we’re processing 2,300 to 2,500 invoices every day across the globe, and the benefits of deploying Esker’s solutions is already clear. Their team took the time to fully understand our needs, quickly outlined how to most effectively improve our AP processes and helped us deploy a new system that serves to simplify our team members’ jobs—so they can concentrate on the aspects of their roles that require human creativity and care.”

Through AP automation, the company is empowering its accounts payable team members to invest in providing more of the unrivalled customer service for which Givaudan is known.

“Our goal for automation is not to make our people redundant, but to make them more valuable,” continued Nagy. “We need our employees to be creative, to think, to make sure we go further than where we are today. Automating the tedious, repetitive tasks lets them use their time for more valuable purposes.”

Leveraging Automation Through Change

Givaudan started down the path to automation and the “Esker Touchless Journey” well ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet its embrace of process automation helped it adapt smoothly to the new way of working. Givaudan attributes a key part of its success during the pandemic – and its ability to adapt to future radical changes in the global business environment – to the implementation process and working closely with the Esker team.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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• Retrieving invoices or documents from customer or supplier portals
• Processing transactions
• Passing documents to other systems, e.g. sending invoices for approval or logging them in an ERP system

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is the theory and development of computer systems to perform or enhance tasks normally requiring human intelligence. AI improves speed and accuracy within document processing by completing tasks such as:

• Perceiving and interpreting documents
• Matching PO invoices with corresponding PO lines and goods receipts
• Identifying anomalies and predicting outcomes

Machine Learning
Based on input from users, a solution such as Esker’s learns how to process new document formats and expand its knowledge base. The more it learns, the more the recognition rate increases and the system can process documents of the same format without any input from users (touchless processing).

Deep Learning
Taking machine learning one step further, deep learning is a neural network using algorithmic software to train itself to perform tasks based on a large set of data. Put simply, the software analyses data to find patterns in the data so it knows what to expect and what to do with a new document when it comes in. Esker’s own deep learning technology, Synergy, has been trained by the millions of documents processed by its solutions over more than a decade, allowing businesses to benefit from high recognition rates from day one.

The Benefits
A digital solution such as Esker uses a combination of these technologies to automate manual inefficiencies and low-value tasks in the P2P and O2C cycles. This frees up teams to focus on more value-adding tasks, increases efficiency and reduces cycle times, benefiting not only your business, but your customer and suppliers too. Businesses set their own pace, choosing to automate one process at a time (Procurement, Accounts Payable, Order Management or Accounts Receivable), or automating entire cycles to unite their operations across a single, integrated platform.

Find out more
If all this technology talk has you buzzing to update your systems, take a look at the following resources for a more in-depth look into the benefits of process automation for the procure-to-pay and order-to-cash cycles:

AI & RPA: The Technology Powering P2P Digital Transformation

New Technologies for Order Management – Increase Your Competitiveness

Jennifer Ball

As Marketing Co-ordinator for Esker UK, Jennifer manages Esker UK's marketing campaigns and events for S2P solutions. She has been part of the Esker family since 2019.

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Trophy Foods turned to Esker for a solution that would streamline AP processes, eliminate the use of paper, and prepare the company for future growth. Prior to the company’s implementation of Esker’s solution, operations involved manually routing paper invoices, often leading to inefficiencies and delays.

With Esker, invoices will be automatically entered into an electronic workflow — eliminating the manual
printing, scanning, coding and routing activities that had previously been part of Trophy Food’s AP invoicing process. The new solution positions Trophy Foods to be able to grow top-line sales without increasing overhead costs. It also enhances internal controls for the company and improves the auditing process.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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