Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for Finance, Procurement and Customer Service functions, today announced that Lactalis Iberia Group, the Spanish subsidiary of the world’s leading dairy foods company, is automating and optimising its Customer Service processes with Esker. Thanks to AI-powered automation, Lactalis Iberia Group has significantly reduced the time it takes to manage customer orders and, as a result, has achieved greater organisational flexibility and improved supply chain efficiency. 

In 2017, the company began its digital transformation of key business areas, including Customer Service, with the goal of moving from a purely administrative management structure to delivering value to customers and employees alike. In 2021, Lactalis Iberia Group partnered with Esker to automate customer orders for three of its companies: Lactalis Forlasa (cheese), Lactalis Puleva (milk) and Lactalis Nestlé (yoghurts and desserts). And this year, a fourth company was added, Lactalis Food Service Iberia, serving the hotel, restaurant and café (HoReCa) channel.

The objective of the project was two-fold: increase efficiency and unify the processes of the four companies while maintaining the specificities of each one.

“Esker’s solution provides us with visibility and analysis capabilities via customised dashboards, where we can easily monitor results and progress for each manager,” said Ángel Ventoso, Head of IT Applications at Lactalis Iberia Group. “Each company has its own dashboard and the security and confidentiality of the information is 100 per cent guaranteed.”

Esker Order Management, part of Esker’s Customer Service solution suite, has made it possible to digitally process and integrate all orders regardless of format (spreadsheets by email, orders in the body of the message, PDF, HTML, etc.).

Lactalis Iberia Group is already reaping the benefits of automation. Today, over 85 per cent of orders are automatically integrated into its SAP® system. As a result, it takes the Customer Service team only one minute to process an order, down from eight minutes previously, totaling 1,300 hours saved per month. Additionally, the elimination of manual order entry errors coupled with faster order handling time, has led to greater productivity in the supply chain — reducing stressors in each of its elements (stock, transport, warehouses, etc.).

Lactalis Iberia Group also benefits from greater organisational flexibility. The centralisation of processes and procedures means that any user trained in the solution can take over at any time.

Thanks to automation and the elimination of paper, Lactalis Iberia Group saves approximately 54,000 sheets per year, 14,300 litres of water and 1,300 kg of CO2 that will no longer be emitted into the atmosphere. Additionally, the company has freed up the need for physical archiving space.

“Automating our order process has generated significant time savings and, consequently, important cost savings for our order department,” said Patricio Corrales, Head of Customer Service at Lactalis Nestlé. “Esker has helped us improve processes and generate value, not only for us and our customers, but also throughout our supply chain, an area where we continue to invest through various partnerships.”

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

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

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This was a customer visit like no other!

Not only did we get good news about how the team are happy using Esker’s Order Management solution, but also a delicious lunch, and to top it off a tour of their state-of-the-art cardboard box factory.

Jaap Hellemons, Sales Improvement Engineer, at the Smurfit Kappa ELCORR factory in Etten-Leur, Netherlands gave us a terrific welcome. Smurfit Kappa first signed with Esker five years ago. Now four different plants use Esker’s Order Management solution and several more are interested in implementing it.

“I have so many employees asking me, when they can train to use Esker as they can’t wait to use it! Also when new customers come on board, they are eager to get them onto Esker as quickly as possible to enable touchless processing,” says Jaap.

Smurfit Kappa’s ELCORR factory has very short delivery times from paper to box!

Currently two of Smurfit Kappa’s customers’ orders are completely touchless, with others in the ‘touched less’ category, meaning the order input process is down from approximately 20 key strokes down to 2, which still saves the customer service team an immense amount of time.

Luuk Schrijver, Functional Application Manager, from the Smurfit Kappa TWINCORR plant, says, “Esker has been fantastic in reducing the number of manual typing errors – we just don’t have any now. Any user can work with Esker, it is so easy to understand and the IT support is excellent.”

Andrew ten Broek, Application Manager at Smurfit Kappa Benelux, adds, “The Esker dashboard and set up is so intuitive. It takes me just 15 minutes to teach a new team member to use Esker now.”

Factory Tour

The cardboard box factory tour was completely fascinating. We started by the 3 tonne paper rolls that are made from wood harvested from Smurfit Kappa’s own sustainably farmed forests. These are sent to the corrugator to make four different thicknesses of cardboard. Once through the corrugator, three or five sheets of paper are stuck together using a starch based glue. This is a difficult process and drying needs to be at a precisely controlled temperature, otherwise the cardboard starts to buckle and become misshapen.
Then it’s onto the drying store before going to an inline, rotary or flat-pack die cutter. Precise production planning is required to minimise waste, so often customers’ orders are combined together to reduce waste. All boxes at Elcorr are custom-made and custom-sized.

Cardboard boxes are printed using water-based ink with a maximum of six colours available with printing only on the outside. Printing is available on all sides of the box once it is put together. All of the cardboard made is FSC certified. The machines cleverly make cuts and perforations as required and indentations for folding, making it easy for the end customer to put the boxes together. Any trims and off cuts go to shredders and are recycled in one of Smurfit Kappa’s global recycling plants, to be used all over again!

We were extremely privileged to have such an extensive tour of the factory with the highly knowledgeable Jaap guiding us through each process.

It was great to see how Esker’s Order Management solution was a key factor in enabling Smurfit Kappa to fulfil its orders smoothly, accurately and on time.

When we asked the Smurfit Kappa Customer Service team what 3 words they would use to describe Esker, they answered:

• User-friendly
• Innovative
• Intuitive

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.

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Customer Service automation should not look like this…

It should look like this!…

What are the driving forces of automation?
Quite simply, they are customers’ preferences and expectations. In today’s digital age, customers do not want to wait, they expect instant help with their issues 24/7. They also expect nothing less than a personalised and specific approach, and mostly through messaging. Most cases will involve the use of bots and automated messages but what automation really enables is freeing up time of Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) to respond to enquiries a lot quicker. Today’s Customer Service teams must master the human element while meeting the expectations of their customer base.

These days, customers flat out expect more throughout their entire journey. Live chat, social media and mobile functionality are all channels that enhance Customer Experience (CX) and boost advocacy. If only you had the time and resources for it …

There are two ways to serve customers: proactively or reactively. Customers prefer the former — CSRs who can respond to email enquiries quickly and accurately, and always know why, when and where orders are being processed.

This is all fine in an ideal world but how are they supposed to do this if they simply don’t have the time and need to spend their time carrying out repetitive, tedious tasks day in, day out. AUTOMATION is the answer! Who wouldn’t want to improve quality of data, increase flexibility, increase consistency and identify process improvement opportunities faster?

Not only does automation radically reduce the amount of unfulfilling day-to-day tasks for CSRs, it opens the door for new career-pathing opportunities by necessarily redefining some positions. What’s more, customisable dashboards make it a cinch for managers to better identify top-performing CSRs by tracking metrics tied to individual performance.

Enter Esker…
Esker’s Customer Service solution suite automates routine tasks associated with managing customer requests, orders and claims so the CS team can perform more fulfilling tasks that directly impact your customers and company, while weeding out the root causes of failure in Customer Service processes such as:

Customer Enquiry Management

Acting as a digital assistant for the shared inbox, automation within the customer enquiry management process frees up your Customer Service team to address enquiries faster and improve CX by fixing issues such as:

• Lost or deleted emails
• Limited collaboration
• Lack of clarity & context when addressing customer enquiries Wasted time & talent by forcing staff to search & sort through shared inbox
• Cost impact of low productivity, higher turnover & customer dissatisfaction

Order Management

By enabling all incoming customer orders (fax, email, phone, website, portals, EDI, etc.) to be managed in a single, centralised solution, automation creates a value-added ripple effect, addressing common pains like:

• Order processing errors & slowdowns (leading to high DSO & sluggish cashflow)
• Lower levels of team collaboration, productivity & overall morale
• Narrow range of analytics, reporting & audit trail capabilities
• Excess paper, postage, transport & physical archiving expenses
• Increase in disputes & dissatisfied customers

Customer Claims Management

Another important duty of Customer Service teams is reducing the number of customer claims — something which AI-driven automation solves by addressing common claims management bottlenecks like:

• Inability to analyse claims by type, date or customer
• Limited collaboration with coworkers from multiple departments on the verification, approval of dispute of claims
• No way to automatically post claims as a credit note or to a G/L account in the ERP

Find out more here!

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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A critical component of success for today’s businesses is the ability to integrate and synchronise all of the various applications powering your digital initiatives.

That’s why Esker is excited to announce an addition to its already robust integration capabilities — enabling both its Customer Enquiry Management and Order Management automation solutions to natively integrate with Salesforce.

This expansion of Esker’s Customer Service automation ecosystem means that, whenever a customer order or enquiry is processed through Esker, a Salesforce case can be automatically created or synchronised using secure API authentication. This enables sales reps to gain full visibility over enquiries or orders on their customer accounts.

“Esker’s ability to act as a ‘single pane of glass’ for all customer communications related to enquiries and orders is a significant benefit for today’s B2B Customer Service teams,” says Aurélien Coq, Product Manager at Esker. “By integrating with Salesforce — and this on top of the ERP integration Esker has offered for years — our clients have access to a critical element of synchronisation to better manage their customers.”

A privately held American global food corporation is expected to be the first Esker customer utilising the new native integration with Salesforce.

To learn more about Esker’s Customer Service solution suite, its integrated communication platform, and its transformational impact on B2B Customer Service teams, visit our website.  

Esker UK

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

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The team at AB Sciex first learnt about Esker’s solutions at an Order Management led webinar run by Esker. AB Sciex had approximately 10,000 consumable orders per year all processed manually and all invoices were processed manually too. The team saw real benefit in automating both processes using a single platform.

Following a competitive pitch process, the project team implemented Esker for both the accounts payable and customer service teams as a joint initiative with key stakeholders. This allowed for streamlining of the processes in the European customer service and AP centres, allowing employees to be released from tedious manual jobs to concentrate on higher level customer service and AP tasks.

The accounts payable team has a shared service centre in India and the ability for the Esker solution to handle multiple company codes across different global sites within Sciex was key in it winning the business.

AB Sciex liked Esker’s flexible approach and the ability to expand the services within the AP solution. The team are also looking at taking on the Esker Supplier Management solution which will manage supplier information and automate processes across the supply chain. This allows suppliers to directly update their information at any time, giving the AP team visibility and real-time analytics, as well as ensuring that all collected data is synchronised with ERP vendor master data so duplicate supplier records aren’t created.  

The Customer Service teams are also looking at touchless processing, with 60% of orders already going through as touchless after 8 months.

This all-encompassing suite of solutions means that Esker will help transform the visibility and control of AB Sciex’s accounts and orders. Esker’s solutions will remove all manual touch points and reduce maverick spend, meaning staff can concentrate on more value-added tasks, such as enhancing customer relationships.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

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

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There’s more to business than the bottom line. That’s why Esker believes in equipping you with technology that creates positive-sum growth. What is it? Just a fancy way of saying that when your company succeeds, it never happens at the expense of any team, individual or enterprise in your business ecosystem — everyone wins!
Read this blog to learn how Aliaxis Latin America (LATAM) achieved exactly this by automating Order Management with Esker.

What is Positive-Sum Growth?

Esker believes that the growth of a company shouldn’t just be the volume of customers or the money made, it should be looked at with a holistic focus where all shareholders are considered. Let’s look at some of these stakeholders:

• Your Employees – removing some mundane tasks and allowing for more value added tasks will boost the morale of your employees over time
• Your Customers – increased efficiency will inevitably ensure your customers are happier which may encourage them to purchase more
• Your Suppliers – changing suppliers will be in some instances an arduous task, so why not keep them happy in the first place. If your Customer Service Representatives (CSR) are able to do their day to day job more effectively, suppliers needs will be met
• The Planet and Community – automation will decrease your carbon footprint and an overall busier company will create more jobs for the surrounding community

Meet Aliaxis

Aliaxis are experts in fluid management solutions, creating sustainable, innovative solutions for water and energy. With this in mind, they’re clearly a forward-thinking company. However, they do still have pain points. They were struggling with order management, dealing with around 460,000 manual orders per year. They knew in order to keep their employees motivated with more value-added tasks that they had to find a way to improve efficiency within their orders.

Specific objectives were:

• To eliminate the time consuming and tedious tasks associated with order management
• Reduce order entry errors, which would contribute to higher costs and lower productivity for employees
• Deliver an improved customer experience through digital order management

Aliaxis was motivated to find a digital solution that would expedite the order management process; it was a very tedious job entering orders manually into their ERP business system.

Enter Esker – We pride ourselves on providing technology that promotes positive-sum growth

Companies worldwide have gained the following benefits with Esker’s Order Management solution:

• Much lower order processing times, as it eliminates the time CSR’s would be using to manually enter details
• CSRs focus on customers to provide better service and potentially increase sales; as we know that personal touch is what brings customers back
• Human error is removed, more orders are processed per CSR to allow business growth without more staff, reducing company costs
• 24/7 control and visibility of team KPIs through user friendly reports and dashboards.

Aliaxis are very happy with the dashboards provided in Esker’s solution. Their large order numbers means that a streamlined situation is ideal for them.

“Thanks to Esker, our customer service personnel have more time to closely monitor orders and provide timely responses to our customers.” Marcela Castillo Ugalde | Regional Business Process Owner, Aliaxis LATAM

Due to the success of the Order Management implementation at Aliaxis, they plan to roll it out to each of the 10 countries in LATAM. The confidence they have in Esker will see them look further into an EDI capability solution too.

Improving and growth may come in different forms, whether that be eliminating mundane tasks where mistakes can often be made, or achieving focus on more meaningful tasks, or to save time and efficiency; it all makes a difference. It has been a ‘win win’ situation for Aliaxis and opened their eyes to more solutions too. Positive-sum growth will permit other subs to grow including a more fulfilled workforce and a happier economic environment.

Sophie Sidhu

Sophie is an Internal Sales Consultant for Esker UK. She has been part of the Esker family since 2022.

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Learn how Stelrad achieved fast and accurate Order Management with Esker’s AI-powered touchless processing. We shone the spotlight on Stelrad and created a video testimonial to celebrate its success.

We couldn’t be happier with the video testimonial that we worked on with the team at Stelrad and media agency, Open House Pictures.

Going back a step, the idea all started following a customer success story that we wrote with Cherie Bradford, Customer Service Manager, and Chris Harvey, Head of Marketing UK & Ireland, at Stelrad, as part of the customer advocacy programme for Esker customers.

The customer success story involved a couple of online interviews to discuss why Stelrad chose Esker in the first place and the challenges the teams were experiencing with the previous manual order management process. We also talked about the team’s objectives for automation.

“We wanted a solution that would make it as easy as possible for our team and our customers, and one that aligned with our strategic values,” said Chris.

We discussed the implementation process of Esker’s Order Mangement solution; how automation has made a difference to the day-to-day lives of the customer service team and what it means for Stelrad’s growth prospects.

Working together with our Customer Experience (CX) Team, we were able to run Power BI reports that clearly showed us the results that Stelrad has achieved since it started its automation process, and particularly since it implemented touchless processing at the start of 2021.
Cherie has worked tirelessly with the Customer Experience Team to ensure more and more orders are placed through touchless processing requiring no human input from order retrieval to processing. This has dramatically reduced errors and customer complaints and given the team some great results to shout about!

You can read Stelrad’s customer story here.

“Esker’s solution functionalities are key to helping Stelrad grow. I have worked closely with Esker’s CX team to reduce and eradicate errors and warnings and to enable the switch to touchless processing. This considerable investment in time has allowed our customer service department to operate more efficiently,” said Cherie.

All the elements of the customer success story were put together to create sound bites for our video testimonial. I worked closely with Sarah Baker, the Communications Manager at Stelrad, to put together a running order of the day’s filming and to ensure all health and safety requirements were planned for. We are very grateful to the whole team at Stelrad who were extremely welcoming and professional.

On the day… excitement and nerves were palpable in the air in the Stelrad showroom. Whilst Dan and Joe from Open House Pictures set up their cameras and lights, I went through the questions and answers with Cherie and Chris. After a few retakes and tips from Joe to look at him and not directly into the camera, to relax and talk naturally, Cherie really got into the spirit and was rattling through the questions like a professional.

We filmed for about 2 hours with plenty of breaks for water and coffee, which was when we got to find out little nuggets about factory life at Stelrad, the newest radiators being made, and also about Cherie’s African Grey Parrot; she’d practised her lines so many times in front of him, he can now say Esker!

Following the interviews, we donned our high-vis gear, protective eyewear and ear plugs and followed the camera team around the Stelrad factory. It was fascinating to see sheet metal being bashed, heated, steamed and painted to end up as a radiator! (Obviously there is a lot more to the process!)
The team also filmed the Customer Service Team using the Esker Order Management solution, and some external shots too.

Then it was over to Open House Pictures to edit the day’s filming into a 2.30 minute piece!

After a few additional edits and full approval from the Stelrad team, we are delighted with the result!

We are so grateful to Cherie and Chris for giving up their time for this incredible testimonial, but also for being fully invested in achieving the best results with us.

Enjoy the Stelrad video testimonial here

If you would like to talk to me about doing a customer success story and/or a video testimonial about your automation journey with Esker, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

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

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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In this blog, Ryan Stevens, Customer Experience Specialist at Esker, highlights the top 5 order management reports that could help to drive positive-sum growth in your organisation.

Numbers don’t lie, and reporting can be a powerful tool to gauge a performance of a business. I’ve always had a keen interest in numbers, and statistics are none too different. From my time reporting on statistically significant data at university, to assisting order management customers in reporting metrics, I have always understood that reporting metrics can divulge surprising information, which may not be clear at first glance.

Without measuring key performance indicators (KPIs), a business will find it ever more challenging to grow and develop, and especially when trying to manage resources to specific areas of the business. Esker’s in-house reporting software has the capacity to report on several metrics related to an order. This could include, volume of orders by customer or country, data input time by customer, and average processing time per order.

As a Customer Experience (CX) Team, we empower our Silver and Gold customers to utilise and customise Esker’s reporting software, enabling our customers to export their bespoke information, which can be scheduled regularly or reported within Esker’s dashboard. Our CX philosophy is ensuring our customers feel Valued, Understood and Engaged, and we take pride aiding our customers’ operations.

Here are five key metrics, which I would recommend to any Customer Service Manager:

1. Average processing time by customer.
From my experience with order management customers, after the implementation of Esker’s solution, our customers notice a significant decrease in order processing across the board. However, once the initial optimisation has been completed, the question to ask is; how can we push the solution further to reduce processing times and how can we do this with the ultimate goal to increase the capacity to process additional orders per Customer Sales Representative (CSRs)?

Looking at processing times by customer, allows the user to clearly identify vendors which are taking the CSR an additional amount of time to process. This will allow managers to put in additional resources to help reduce the time. This could include ensuring staff are capturing the correct data for auto learning to be correctly applied, or additional teaching rules to take place.

In some industries, for example medical and pharmaceuticals, many suppliers use similar purchase order templates, which could mean a fix to a specific supplier may positively affect other suppliers.

2. Service Level Agreements Compliance
Many companies will have custom service level agreements for their organisation. Esker’s Order Management Solution can collect data to calculate order processing time. Collected data also helps determine whether orders meet service level targets. These targets can be changed, and take into account time zones, staff starting times, lunch breaks, finishing times, and closures at the weekend. For example orders received 4pm (GMT) on a Saturday, which haven’t been processed until Monday, could potentially still meet a 1 day service level agreement.

The SLA compliance report, demonstrates the percentage (or number) of times an organisation has met, or not met, their SLA Agreement. This report can be filtered by sales organisation, country and date, to name but a few.

Depending on your specific filters, it could potentially highlight key issues within a business, either that a specific sales organisation are dealing with a high amount of traffic, a specific day of the week may be highlighted as a challenging day, or may highlight backloads within organisation, or areas where additional resources need to be implemented.

3. Number of changes by field.
Esker has different layers within its AI engine, including Synergy, first time recognition, auto-learning and teaching. What this report shows is the number of manual changes a CSR has made, by field name. This report can be easily customised to filter by supplier and/or a period of time. What we can extract from this report is certain issues with specific purchase orders which Esker has received. With some poor quality images like a scanned purchase order, the OCR engine may have trouble reading the text, resulting in the wrong field being extracted.

One thing to note with this report, is that Esker learns which correct fields to extract with each order approved (known as auto-learning). So with a new supplier, you might find that the solution picks up the wrong order number initially but with several manual changes within multiple orders, the Esker solution will narrow down the correct field to populate for the future.

4. Top-Selling Item
A simple report like this can show more than just what is selling most within a single period. You can customise the report, displaying multiple months and years to see how seasonal a specific item is. This could determine stock levels in the future, and potentially could be upsold with additional products.

Similar to other reports, we can look in detail between each large volume customer, to understand which items they are purchasing, and how this changes over a period of time.

This report can also ascertain when a product is reaching the end of its life-cycle, or when a more superior product has surpassed in sales.

5. Automatically processable orders by customer.
Within the Esker Order Management (OM) solution, customers have the ability to auto-process orders if required. Meaning that when an order is retrieved through the OM solution, it has the potential to be posted without human interaction, provided any preliminary checks have been successfully passed. This function can be switched on and off, but also can be switched on partly by the customer.

This particular report describes the amount of orders which have the potential of being auto-processed, without the order being auto-proceed or not. Different customers decide on their own if they want to auto-process order functionality, as many like to have some form of human interaction for each order approved. With many orders being auto-processed, CSRs can focus on more complex tasks within the organisation. Either way, getting to a position of auto-processed orders means orders can be approved without any manual changes from the CSR required.

For customers looking to utilise auto-processing, this report can identify customers which can benefit from auto-processing, while also highlighting orders which aren’t able to be auto-processed.

Overtime, customers which see an increase in auto-processable orders, will also notice a decrease in average processing times, due to the reduced amount of human input necessary.

To sum up, OM metrics are business critical operations, which can have a huge impact on how to allocate resources, and to manage customer orders more effectively. A cloud-based solution like Esker can manage, automate and analyse supplier orders, which can be complimented with other modules within Esker’s O2C solutions, such as Cash Application and Collections Management. For more information, contact us today.

Ryan Stevens

Ryan is a Customer Experience Specialist at Esker UK. He has been part of the Esker family since 2022.

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Happy Customers and Employees

Companies, now more than ever, must focus on their most valuable assets: their employees. Automation is often thought of as something that “replaces” workers, when in reality, it can be used to:

• Eliminate manual tasks
• Empower your team with analytics
• Nurture collaboration with digital tools

Furthermore, expectations of excellent customer service are now the norm. They can be the make-or-break factor that determines whether a company thrives or dives. Speed, personal connection and digital competency are no longer hoped for when making purchasing decisions, they’re quite simply expected.

Givaudan, a worldwide provider of flavouring, scent, and health and beauty products, looking for ways to apply automation to various manual aspects of business operations while allowing for scalability and utilisation of their valued human resources.

Givaudan realised to scale up their business they needed to implement the following

• Create more strategic, fulfilling work for staff
• Reduce manual scanning & redundant data entry by automating manual tasks
• Eliminate human errors & inefficiencies with automated processing
• Improve customer satisfaction

Marton Nagy, Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay at Givaudan said, “Our goal for automation is not to make our people redundant, but to make them more valuable. 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.”

The Solution

Just as in their business, specialising in complimentary scents to produce the best fragrances, they needed a complimentary solution to their already installed Esker Order Management solution. They chose Esker’s Accounts Payable (AP) solution to realise their vision.
Esker’s AP solution was implemented to eliminate the manual scanning and digitising of invoices, as well as capturing and recording payments, thereby increasing both speed and accuracy. It was implemented quickly thanks to Esker’s use of Agile methodology, and seamlessly integrated with Givaudan’s single instance global SAP system.

“We selected Esker’s Accounts Payable solution because of the trusted working relationship Esker had with the demand-to-cash team,” said Marton Nagy, Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay at Givaudan. “Esker has been delivering on its promise ever since.”

Part of Givaudan’s strategy for automating order entry and AP included making interaction with the solution simple for both customers and vendors. B2B customers place orders and send invoices in a variety of ways. With Esker, Givaudan has a flexible order processing solution that can adapt to the different ways B2B companies communicate without requiring complex integrations to accommodate Givaudan’s internal systems and data formats. Alessandra Mello, Global Head of Customer Care and Demand Planning at Givaudan, said, “We considered using EDI connections, but we found this quite limiting, as few customers are willing to invest the time, money, and resources to implement it,” said Mello. “Esker solutions don’t require our customers to build complex integrations to send us orders or invoices.”

Givaudan can now teach the solution (using Eskers Artificial Intelligence) the invoice formats its vendors use, allowing it to automatically and accurately enter invoices into the system. It also eliminates tedious entry of additional data to meet the invoice processing and tracking requirements in different countries — critical for a global company like Givaudan.
As a result, the AP staff has more time to concentrate on issues that truly require its skill and talent to investigate and resolve.

Vincent Depuis, IT Project Manager at Givaudan, said, “Our Esker journey started with automating sales order entry, and we’re seeing similar efficiency gains with the new AP solution. Our people can now focus their talents on what they do best, instead of tedious manual processes. Givaudan’s 2025 vision will feature even more ways to automate repetitive, manual tasks to add even greater value. Esker solutions will figure prominently in that plan.”

If you would like to learn more about Esker’s Accounts Payable solution, please get in touch, and I’d be happy to provide you with further information or a demo.

Susan Fletcher

Susan is an Internal Sales Consultant for Esker UK. She has been part of the Esker family since 2022.

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