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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Earth Day was founded in 1970, and is an annual reminder to shift our focus to protecting the beautiful planet that we call home. It is a day to focus on educating others about environmental issues, to help raise awareness of pollution, renewable energy, and ways that people can take steps to be greener.

Earth Day – Invest in Our Planet: Positive-Sum Growth

This year, the theme of Earth Day is ‘Invest in our Planet’, and at Esker, we believe in doing just that. In fact, our aim is also to enable other organisations to do the same. Our customers, employees and partners share our convictions: a company’s development must have a beneficial impact on its entire ecosystem, society and the environment. That’s what we call positive-sum growth.

We believe that future business growth depends on environmental sustainability. Esker provides organisations with the tools to achieve real environmental results, such as:

• Less paper used in day-to-day activities, helping to save trees and reduce wasteful practices
• Less equipment needed to support manual operations, promoting long-term sustainability
• Less carbon by using cloud computing, which has shown to reduce emissions by up to 93%¹

“Esker builds innovative and responsible solutions that have a positive impact on society and the people within it, and enable our customers to improve their own ESG performance.”

Jean-Michel Bérard, CEO | Esker

Reducing Esker’s Environmental Footprint

Esker is also strongly committed to reducing the environmental footprint our own business activities.
In 2018 in France, where our Lyon Head Office is based, Esker has established processes for determining its carbon emissions, and has since extended these to all of its worldwide subsidiaries.

You can read more about this in our Impact Report

Furthermore, in 2022, Esker was recognised by both EcoVadis and Gaïa Index for its CSR leadership.

Globally, we have many initiatives to reduce our environmental footprint.

• Replanting: a wide variety of tree species is one of the pillars of the strategy to remove carbon emissions from Earth’s atmosphere and protect biodiversity. With Esker’s support, Reforest’Action, a non-profit organisation engaging in a unique approach they call “crowdplanting”, more than 19,250 trees have been planted in India, Haiti and Tanzania since 2019.
• Data Centres & Energy Efficiency: Esker chooses environmentally responsible vendors whenever possible. For example, all new Esker customers are hosted by default on Microsoft Azure, which uses energy from renewable resources for a significant portion of its data centres, and bases its billing model on server resource usage, thereby encouraging moderation.
• Responsible Product Development: Esker ensures that its R&D teams are attentive to the digital footprint of software operations by building optimised services and energy efficiency into its solutions. Esker also conducts regular internal conferences on the challenges of digital sobriety, led by the founder of GreenIT.fr.
• Life Cycle of IT Equipment: Esker strives to extend the lifecycle of company-owned IT equipment and electronic devices as much as possible, through in-house maintenance, vendor support, or employee buy-back programmes in exchange for donations to charities of their choosing.
• Waste Recycling: We have waste recycling at our mail production facilities, and within all subsidiary offices. In addition, 100% of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in recycled.
• Mobility & Business Travel: To encourage the use of low-carbon modes of transport, Esker offers a variety of incentives: electric car fleets, bike and scooter parking, mileage reimbursement for bicycle use, and public transport compensation.

You can read more about our environmental efforts on our website.

Locally, here in the UK, one of our current focuses is on our Esker goodies. We are trying to source sustainable giveaway items, such as our metal water bottles, recycled cork pens, compostable and all natural ingredient jellybean pouches, recycled paper notebooks and sustainable cotton canvas bags. We also have recycling points around our offices, and electric car charging points on-site.

We can, and must, all play our part to protect our beautiful world. It’s the only one we have. For us, and for future generations.

¹ The carbon benefits of cloud computing: A study on the Microsoft Cloud in partnership with WSP. 2020. Microsoft.

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.

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Automating supplier interactions is a win-win for buyers and suppliers. Read this blog to discover why supporting your suppliers via automation through the complex, multi-faceted process of supplier management is a great move.

Having weathered the supply-chain storm of the pandemic, many organisations have harked back to business-as-usual methods of managing their suppliers: manual, lengthy, paper-based processes that cause inefficiencies, delays and errors, putting at risk the continued supply of valuable components and services.

As volatility continues in the global economy, it’s more important than ever to incorporate business resilience and continuity into every department, and procurement – particularly supplier management – is no exception.

Despite its importance, supplier management is all too often an inefficient and manual process, causing delays and increasing costs across the Procure-to-Pay (P2P) cycle. Automating supplier interactions is a win-win for buyers and suppliers – read on to discover why.

What is Supplier Management?

Supplier management is a complex, multi-faceted process that needs carefully piecing together to create a mutually-beneficial relationship based on trust and accountability. This includes consideration of components such as:

• Supplier Information Management (SIM) – capturing, storing and analysing suppliers’ data
• Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) – evaluating each supplier’s goods & services and their contribution to the business
• Supplier Risk Management – identifying, assessing and mitigating threats by vetting and monitoring suppliers
• Supplier Quality Management – monitoring and managing suppliers’ abilities to fulfil needs on time and at quality

Getting all these processes working correctly and efficiently takes time and effort, but the benefits can be seen both in the P2P cycle and to the wider business. From cost savings and quality control, to improved supply chain transparency, increased compliance and mitigated risks, supplier management is truly embedded in the heart of a business.

The value of supplier relationships

Relationships built with suppliers can benefit businesses in more ways than one. Collaborating with suppliers and involving them in the supplier management process helps build longer-lasting, trust-based relationships that can be leveraged in the future.

Making processes easier from the supplier’s side makes your organisation easier to do business with, nurturing a valued relationship that both businesses will want to be a continued part of.

Here’s where automation comes into its own, simplifying processes and making significant decreases in both time spent and processing errors. This includes areas such as:

• Self-service onboarding and registration forms
• Automated reminders and communications
• Automatic verification of supplier details and IBAN
• Supplier portals to check and submit information
• Supplier enquiry management
• Contract management
• Secure and compliant archiving

Internal Business Value

It’s not just the buyer/supplier relationship that benefits from P2P automation; Esker’s customisable solutions mean that stakeholders across the business can benefit from supplier management automation technology.

From AP specialists and Buyers right up to the CFO, an efficient process reduces time and costs for all concerned, and increases visibility right across the process. Customer dashboards allow each stakeholder to set their own KPIs to track what matters most to their department.

Positive Sum Growth

As economic uncertainty and supply chain issues continue (and for who knows how long), modernising supplier management processes should be nearing top of the priority list to ensure business continuity and minimise risk.

By providing suppliers with an easy-to-complete onboarding process, self-service portals, automated communications and expedited enquiry management through automation, their staff will also benefit from time savings and increased efficiency.

Our Customers Support their Suppliers

Automating supplier management and other P2P processes are often driven by internal needs and goals – but Esker customers are proud to bring efficiency gains to their suppliers too.

Hillarys implemented Esker’s Accounts Payable (AP) solution to assist in processing 50,000 invoices a year. Suppliers were key in their requirements list – with a want to automate the processing of both PO and non-PO invoices, and to overhaul a time-consuming and manual supplier enquiries process.
Read the Hillarys Customer Success Story in full here.

Spanish group Domingo Alonso have been an Esker customer since 2018, when they undertook an automation project to reduce process complexity and automate manual tasks.

Supplier management was again at the core of their objectives; amongst other internal business needs they wanted to improve supplier relationships with accurate on-time payments, timely dispute resolution and direct communication via a supplier portal.

The resulting automation solution streamlines the entire AP workflow, from invoice reception to payment. With easy access to invoice status and payment information via the customised portal, suppliers also benefit from the solution.

Read more on Domingo Alonso’s end-to-end AP solution by clicking here.

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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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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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.

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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

Here’s a quick rundown of how Esker can automate the areas of AR that matter most to your business;

Manage your customer credit risk
Esker’s automated Credit Management solution optimises the entire credit approval and risk monitoring process, empowering credit teams with actionable data to make the best credit decisions possible. By transforming credit management into a more secure and efficient process, revenue is secured and customers are prevented from slipping through the cracks.

Deliver invoices efficiently
Our Invoice Delivery software solution was designed to automate the delivery and archiving of customer invoices via any media (e.g, paper, e-invoices, EDI, etc.) — all without forcing your customers to change or sacrifice compliance and all while providing real-time visibility into invoice delivery status.

Collect cash intelligently
Thanks to automated collections, all your AR-related documents can be automatically generated and sent according to your rules and/or your customer preferences. Meanwhile, tasks requiring action are automatically assigned to the right person at the right time — it’s that easy!
What’s more, enhanced collections capabilities ensure that your customers’ payment habits are permanently analysed to provide predictions on invoice most likely pay dates, priority customers to contact, accurate AR collections forecasts and more.

Quickly process claims and deductions
Esker’s Claims & Deductions automation solution helps businesses efficiently manage their claims and protect margins. Thanks to Al-driven data capture and electronic workflow capabilities, Esker manages both customer claims associated with products (product shortage, damaged products etc.) and customer financial deductions (e.g. trade and promotional invoices etc.)

Simplify payment
To get paid quickly, today’s businesses need online payment capabilities at different steps of the order-to-cash process — pre-order, deposit, at the due date or during the collection process. Thanks to Esker’s advanced online payment capabilities, your customers will have no reason not to pay and can even benefit from early payment discounts by paying before the due date.

Accelerate cash application
Managing multiple payment sources and formats (e.g. banks, lock boxes, emails, PDFs), not to mention the different levels of data in each document, can be a real pain for AR teams trying to allocate cash in a timely and effective manner. Esker’s AI engine automates the manually intensive process of matching payments received from all incoming payment information sources so your team can focus on higher value tasks and control cash flow in real time.

To find out more about how Esker’s automation solutions can optimise your AR processes download our new eBook here.

Here at Esker we know a ‘one size fits all’ approach to process automation doesn’t work, so whether you’re focused on a specific area of AR, or looking for a seamlessly integrated end-to-end automation solution contact us today, we’d love to hear from you!

Claire Barker

As Marketing Specialist for Esker UK, Claire is responsible for generating leads for Esker's business process solutions specifically within the area of Accounts Receivable through a variety of marketing channels. She has been part of the Esker family since 2019.

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Having been exposed to the world of claims and deductions in Order-to-Cash over the last 8 years, the complications and nuances involved with companies that supply to large retailers still never fails to astound me.

Every time I get engrossed with companies that operate in this industry, it reminds me of a childhood TV show. For those of a certain age, you might remember a show that originally started in the US called Supermarket Sweep. For those in the UK, it aired on ITV with the ever enthusiastic Dale Winton.

The aim of the game was to fill your supermarket trolley with as many goods as you could within a certain time frame. If you picked up certain highlighted items, then bonuses were awarded, but if you damaged some of the goods with the trolley dash, penalties were applied.

The similarities between this and Order-to-Cash Claims and Deductions are comically similar. They tend to fall into a number of categories;

• Trade Promotional Pricing – (Dales’ Sales Manager Specials)
  • Legitimate deductions based on Sales and Marketing promotions
  • Agreed discounts based on product placement with retailers
  • Marketing & Rebate promotions contractually agreed in advance

• Trade Deductions – (The Penalties)
  • Preventable deductions
  • Damaged or defective supplied goods
  • Pricing discrepancies between the agreed contract and the invoice
  • Incorrectly supplied products

Those who play the game the quickest and in the most efficient way by minimising mistakes and taking advantages of the promotions will win.

The Impact
Whilst the complexities exist, they are a necessity for doing business with retailers with strong brand exposure to the market and the public.

However, if the process is managed inefficiently and ineffectually, the cost to margins can be high, unexpected and therefore painful.

The cost to research and resolve an unauthorised deduction according to an ARO2C white paper¹ is $200-$300 (£150-£250) per deduction.

Even worse, with average margin in space being around 10%, 3.7% is lost to preventable and erroneous customer deductions.

In addition CRF* reports that deductions can account for 10% of sales revenue.

How can Esker Help?
Esker’s fully integrated Order-to-Cash solution ensures that deductions can be managed and controlled in a much more effective way. It does this by;

• Centralising deduction information and automating from all receiving channels such as:
  • Emails and attachments
  • Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
  • Customer portal
• Automatically extracting key information from any document type
  • PDF, Jpeg, Png, Tiff, Word, Excel, body of an email, and more
  • Auto extraction of data using Esker’s Synergy Neural Network of document types
  • Auto recognition of claims type based on key work recognition
• Facilitate Cross Department Collaboration
  • Customisable workflow to ensure the right document is triaged to the right department
  • Approval limits and authorisation by line level information and ability to append supporting documents such as proof of deliveries
  • Internal conversations with teams to aid resolution times
• Visibility and Root Cause Analysis of Claims
  • Visibility by department, customer and business unit on progress of deductions against resolution targets
  • Configurable Dashboards detailing the average processing time per customer, authorised vs. disputed claim amounts, claim amount by claim type, open claims by customer, and many more.

In addition, the Esker Claims and Deductions solution integrates with our Cash Application solution to raise claims quoted on remittances, and cross check any claims already in progress or processed. This further automates and reduces effort and cost from the process.

The Outcomes
With cost of living increasing and the subsequent impact on revenues and margins, reducing the impact of unauthorised deductions has a direct impact on the balance sheet.
Esker’s Claims and Deductions solution will impact margin erosion, cost of sales and DSO whilst at the same time improving customer service, ensuring a positive-sum-growth for customers and suppliers alike.

¹ Automating the Management of Customer Deductions – An Esker/ARO2C Network White paper

Matt Tipper

Matt Tipper is Partner Manager for Esker UK. He has been part of the Esker family since 2020.

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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.

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