Baker Ing, renowned for its expertise in receivables management for high-value and sensitive accounts, provides bespoke international debt collection, from ad hoc support to acting as an integrated service partner. Credit managers run searches on debtors and create a log of any possible reluctance for timely payment. Esker AI-driven Collections Management fits in perfectly with systems Baker Ing already have in place to enhance the offering to its customers.

The team will be referring Esker’s suite of Order-to-Cash solutions to include Collections Management, Cash Application, Credit Management, Invoice Delivery, Claims and Deductions, and E-payment solutions.   

To help businesses adapt swiftly, Baker Ing and Esker are launching a package designed to offer immediate countermeasures to inflationary pressures. This is the opportunity for companies to fortify their financial operations, ensuring they stay competitive in an inflation-ridden market.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

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

Read more insights from Esker UK

Proservartner creates cost efficiencies, standardises and optimises processes and enables agile back-office functions to give clients the competitive advantage they need. The company has a long heritage in setting up shared service centres, and its experienced team will take companies through every step of its automation journey. Proservartner will be both a reseller and implement Esker Accounts Payable and Order-to-Cash solutions.

The team is receiving training on Esker’s solutions and will be fully up to speed to execute the automation journey of its customers soon.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

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

Read more insights from Esker UK

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

Read more insights from Esker UK

848 Group is based in Stafford with a nationwide network of IT specialists delivering IT managed services, modern workspaces, cloud collaboration platforms and more, making this partnership an ideal fit for Esker.

848 Group will be offering all of Esker’s solutions to its customers, with a particular focus on Order-to-Cash to include: Order Management and Customer Enquiry Management, as well as Collections Management, Cash Application, Credit Management, Invoice Delivery, Claims and Deductions, and Payment solutions. 

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

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

Read more insights from Esker UK

If you understand cash flow techniques, you can get ahead of the market. You’ll even be able to predict cash flow, because you understand the revenue cycles of customers, vendors, suppliers and contractors.

According to a 2022 CBInsights survey, 68% of small businesses have an outstanding debt and 29% fail because they have run out of cash. Managing cash flow is therefore crucial to a company’s success.

Every business has high and low seasons; understanding upcoming expenses for employee overtime, replacement equipment costs and customer payment delays, all go a long way to ensure your business is well positioned to handle any bump in the road.

The first step is to determine the cash flow that your business needs. This is because cash flow enables growth, funds development and ensures that liabilities are met, avoiding insolvency.

What is Esker Pay and how can it help?

Esker Pay is an extensive set of integrated payment capabilities and strategic Fintech partnerships to help businesses unlock cashflow.

Fully integrated with Esker’s Procure-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash solution suites, Esker Pay helps businesses better manage cashflow by eliminating manual, complex, and inefficient processes for both accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP).

Esker Pay’s end-to-end payment automation goes even further by reinforcing sturdy supply chains by providing early payment discounts and supply chain financing options, while also addressing fraud prevention, late fees and negatively impacted cashflow concerns.

Facilitating and Expediting Payments

“The axiom that ‘cash is king‘ has been reinforced over the last 2 years. When times are tough for many businesses, getting paid and paying suppliers on time can be a tall order”, said Catherine Dupuy-Holdich, Product Manager at Esker.

“With Esker Pay we offer the technologies and partnerships to facilitate and expedite payments.”

Esker enables companies to achieve true positive-sum growth at a time when business success depends on it by facilitating an ecosystem where companies, customers and suppliers create value together — instead of at each other’s expense.

What is Positive-Sum Growth?

For suppliers, prompt payment from customers results in secured cashflow. And for customers, paying suppliers and maintaining good relationships is key, as onboarding new ones can be costly and risky.

Esker has partnerships with leading Fintech companies like Stripe, Corpay, Wind River Financial, Jack Henry, SisID, Pytheas Capital Advisors, Payroc and SlimPay, and more; offering a range of payment capabilities, including:

• Domestic and international payments
• Supplier payment automation
• Supply chain financing (reverse factoring)
• Dynamic discounting
• Integrated payment methods (e.g., cards, direct debits, transfers, etc.)
• Factoring
• Early payment discounts
• Payment information verification

“And this is just the beginning,” says Jean-Michel Bérard, CEO at Esker. “We will continue to enrich Esker Pay through technology developments and future partnerships to further optimise customer and supplier B2B payments, reduce risk exposure, and improve back-office efficiency.”

Esker Pay is available across the globe to all customers and prospects.

Supplier Payment Automation

To delve into each part of the Procure-to-Pay cycle, payment automation operates as the final stop along the supplier invoice automation journey.

This means that there is a faster invoice cycle time; suppliers are paid on time without errors, cementing businesses’ relationships with their suppliers; ensured compliance and more time for Accounts Payable teams to focus on other objectives and value added tasks.

Automating your vendor payments process is an essential step towards completing an effective end-to-end AP automation process and can offer your organisation a range of benefits both tangible and intangible.

“We’ll no longer be missing out on early payment discounts. That’s a huge value,” Novatech.

“30% in additional savings each month thanks to more early payment discounts captured,” Partstown

Customer Payment Automation

All along the Invoice-to-Cash cycle, payment automation facilitates the process of getting paid, making things easier for both the supplier and its customers and thereby enhancing the Customer Experience.

Customers can schedule or auto-pay their invoices online; ensure correct and on time payment; suppliers benefit from reduced DSO, and faster invoice settlement.

“Offering an e-payment tool went hand in hand with our use of Esker and e-invoicing delivery.” Toshiba Business Solutions

“Lowered past-due percentage by 4%, reduced average DSO and improved cash flow.” Trek

Key Takeaways

• Esker Pay is part of Esker’s global positive sum growth vision to facilitate supplier and customer payments
• Esker Pay offers a unified user experience that integrates seamlessly into the customer journey and strengthens relationships
• Esker gives our customers a new set of payment capabilities thanks to new strategic Fintech partnerships

Learn more on the Esker website, or contact us today for more information.

Sosennah Every

As Advocacy Marketing Specialist for Esker UK, Sosennah is responsible for our customer programme, including the Esker All Access Community Hub, customer testimonials and partner collaborations, and customer webinars and events. She has been part of the Esker family since early 2022.

Read more insights from Sosennah Every

We are over half of the way thorough 2022. It’s nearly a year since I wrote my last blog which looked at new features in O2C. 2022 seems to be going faster than ever, and I feel that the world is getting back to some sort of normality. My diary has certainly been filled with web meetings but I have ventured out on the M40 motorway on a couple of occasions. I enjoy meeting people for real and taking a break from the web cam. It’s a shame however, that the traffic has returned to its terrible pre-Covid levels.

Cashing in with new automation features

2022 has been a busy, interesting, and sometimes challenging year. We continue to go-live with a number of projects but I have certainly found that the popularity of our cash solutions has increased across Credit Management, cash Collection Management and Cash Application processes. My last blog talked about the number of ‘under the hood’ features that I have found with our Order Management solution. The same is true for our ‘cash solutions’ which are now fully integrated, giving our customers an end-to-end O2C solution. The list below is certainly not exhaustive, but I have seen some key changes and improvements in the following areas;

Credit Management – Enhanced workflow rules and mobile approval capabilities for customer onboarding.
Collections Management – Salesforce integration, improved views of historical (and future) ageing information and a projected view of future collection activities.
Cash Application – Enhanced discount handling, seamless SAP connectivity and enhanced templates for more efficient customer communication.

The above features are certainly creating a buzz and I’m excited to see further changes. Customers can check out the ‘What’s New’ section in our product documentation.

On a personal note, I am delighted to be starting a new position within Esker. From the 1^st July 2022, I have taken up the position of Sales Manager and have responsibilities for our expanding UK team and a handful of key customers. I look forward to a new challenge after over 15-years of direct sales.

If you’d like to learn more about using Esker’s solutions to improve your O2C processes with automation, please contact me and my team – we’d love to help.

Paul Stevens

Paul is the Sales Manager for Esker UK. He has been part of the Esker family since 2006.

Read more insights from Paul Stevens

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

Read more insights from Esker UK

A new year is a natural time to plan ahead, isn’t it? To look back on the past year, but also to think about what could be improved and what could be done differently. On the other hand, it can be a difficult time to be motivated. Those grey skies and cold mornings and the post-Christmas lull certainly don’t help.

But then comes the Spring. Bright sunny mornings, blue, clear skies on the horizon and warmer weather, buds, shoots and green leaves are definitely far more inspiring! Perhaps this too, then, is a great time to take action, to make a change and to work to transform those things which are ripe for improvement.

This time of year certainly inspires me. Since the sun came out and started to warm the ground properly, it didn’t take me long to get outside and start back in the garden, clearing, planting and painting. Transforming the garden from its grey, sad and rather abandoned look that it had developed over the cold winter months, to a richly planted, brightly coloured sanctuary for birds and wildlife once again.

However, this time, I’ve made some improvements. I’ve added in plants more suited to the bees. I’ve added more bird feeding stations (I’ve never seen so many birds in our garden!), I’ve improved the protection for my tiny seeds and bulbs with netting, to stop other animals from destroying them before they have a chance to bloom. We’ve also added in some new garden chairs so that we can actually sit and enjoy it more. Overall, it’s improved, transformed, more functional.

So what about your business? Could it too, like my garden, benefit from a bit of a Spring make-over? Because that’s where Esker can step in, with its expertise and know-how, developed over more than 35 years.

In an increasingly uncertain world, business success is multi-faceted. Beyond cost-cutting, it’s about relationship building and long-term value creation. At the heart of Esker’s global cloud platform are intelligent technologies that enable our customers to achieve their larger business goals.

Esker offers a suite of solutions across both the P2P and O2C spectrums. These aren’t though, just designed to transform a single process, they are designed to transform the wider business and promote positive-sum growth. The benefits speak for themselves:

• Empower staff & departments with a sense of purpose
• Provide customers with the best possible experience
• Treat suppliers fairly & strengthen relationships
• Generate value even in time of extreme crisis
• Increase sales revenue & generate new opportunities
• Contribute to local economic development

If you are inspired to look into business process transformation, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

Amy Rees

As Digital Marketing Administrator at Esker Northern Europe, Amy spends her time working on the website, writing and publishing blogs and social media content, and publishing collateral. She has been part of the Esker family since 2014.

Read more insights from Amy Rees

Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, today announced a partnership with Fujitsu Asia, the regional headquarters for the Fujitsu group of companies in ASEAN. As part of the agreement, Fujitsu Asia will provide consultation, implementation and support for Esker’s Procure-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash suites to their customers in Singapore. This alliance fully aligns with Esker’s growth strategy and will enable Fujitsu Asia to further develop its service offering.

Fujitsu Asia has identified key areas on which to focus their efforts to drive market digitalisation, which include the migration of business applications to the cloud. This approach helps organisations of all shapes and sizes to become more agile, profitable and efficient in even the most volatile commercial environments.

“Fujitsu’s expertise increases our opportunities to enable businesses in achieving positive-sum growth through technology adoption,” said Albert Leong, Managing Director, Esker Asia. “Together we help businesses efficiently speed up their cash conversion cycle, particularly in today’s hybrid working model.”

This partnership strengthens Fujitsu’s vision of sustainability by building trust in society through innovation and with Esker’s AI-driven automation solutions, Fujitsu Asia empowers businesses to achieve even more. By leveraging technologies such as AI, machine learning and robotic process automation, they can achieve efficiency, collaboration and visibility.

“We are happy to partner with Esker to help businesses automate their financial processes and undergo their own digital transformation,” said Goh Kok Tiong, Head of Application Services, Fujitsu Asia. “Through the automation of tasks, companies will be better able to prioritise their commercial opportunities and innovate with agility.” 

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

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

Read more insights from Esker UK

Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, today announced the launch of its Customer Enquiries Management solution add-on to help customer service departments address enquiries faster and free up staff to focus on customer-facing activities. Seamlessly integrated with Esker’s Order Management solution, this add-on serves as a digital assistant for the customer service email inbox by classifying and routing messages to the right recipient or the right process.

Traditional email applications often cannot handle the email volumes that crowd the customer service inbox. Emails eventually get dumped into a few different folders, requiring someone to spend hours sorting and forwarding them to the appropriate recipient. Performance is further hampered because there is little to no visibility over which enquiries were answered and a lack of flexibility for other customer service representatives (CSRs) to take over, if necessary.

To improve the process, Esker’s Customer Enquiries Management solution uses AI capabilities to classify emails, such as RFQs, orders, status requests, remittances or claims into categories. Classified enquiries can then be answered using predefined email templates or routed via email to the appropriate person, department or process. Requests are addressed promptly, preserving good customer relationships. Thanks to automation, CSRs have more time to spend on added-value tasks focused on customer satisfaction.

Esker’s intelligent dashboards provide full visibility over the entire process, displaying real-time counters and KPIs to monitor and analyse customer enquiries by type, date or customer, enabling CSRs to quickly identify necessary process improvements.

Esker’s Customer Enquiries Management solution has made the CSR team’s job at Palmer Holland, a North American chemicals and ingredient distributor, noticeably easier. Using automated enquiry classification and routing, Esker’s solution provides CSRs with a collaborative platform to triage and analyse all 5,000 of its monthly customer requests quickly and easily. “It takes maybe a second or two to validate an enquiry now. The time savings is one of the biggest benefits,” said Aiza Toor, Customer Service Manager at Palmer Holland. Routing emails now only takes four hours a week, as opposed to four hours a day, thanks to Esker’s accurate AI-based enquiries classification.

“The addition of our Customer Enquiries Management solution to our Order-to-Cash suite aligns with our positive-sum growth strategy, as it helps both suppliers and customers build stronger relationships and improve the efficiency of their business processes,” said Aurélien Coq, Order Management Product Manager at Esker. “We help empower customer service departments with more strategic, fulfilling work and at the same time provide their customers with an improved experience — everyone wins.”

Esker’s Customer Enquiries Management solution is available worldwide.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

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

Read more insights from Esker UK