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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raj Sahota

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

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Not that I’ve been there much. As I write, England is still in lockdown. This means that only those whose presence is essential are allowed to travel to work, with everyone else expected to work from home.

Luckily for me, this has been relatively pain-free. Recently I was speaking to my friend who works as an IT consultant for one of the UK’s largest house developers. He told tales of roomfuls of laptops being provisioned as the company hurriedly prepared for its staff to work from home during the first lockdown in March. Luckily, the standard issue PC for Esker staff is a smart Dell laptop. I also have a dock, so it is easy to connect my laptop to the twin monitors I have at home. The Esker IT boffins have set up a solid VPN for us employees to use, so there is nothing I need to visit the office for. I’ve even got an app to allow calls to my work phone extension to be routed to my headset.

It’s not all beer and skittles, though. My desk is in the front room of my Victorian terraced home, so noise from the street can be distracting. And I do miss the camaraderie of the Esker UK office – the occasional Teams meeting isn’t quite the same.

Esker has also equipped many other businesses with the necessary tools for remote working, which has proved essential to many organisations over recent months, enabling efficiency within procure-to-pay (P2P) and order-to-cash (O2C) processes as well as communication with customers and suppliers.

SECURITY

Esker’s Business Continuity and Security teams have well-established support plans in place to give our customers peace of mind. These include:

• Cloud-based platform with 24/7 availability that’s not location dependent, enabling support to all customers and partners from remote environments
• 2 independent operational centres in different locations to continually monitor the operational continuity of Esker’s platform
• Customer support sites in 3 countries, allowing us to maintain global coverage
• Esker Services availability to continue to support and deliver services to all of our customers

P2P

Esker’s P2P platform enables finance departments to remotely continue to approve invoices, effectively manage cash and maintain positive relationships with suppliers. P2P users have access to a supplier portal that enhances supplier/buyer collaboration and supply chain performance, and the Esker Anywhere mobile app allows users to carry out the following actions even while working remotely:

• Track statuses of purchase requisitions & expense reports
• Approve, hold or send invoices back to previous approver
• Monitor KPIs from a customisable dashboard

O2C

Esker’s O2C solution plays a vital role enabling businesses to continue managing all customer interactions in a single platform: the right orders still need to get to the right customer at the right time, and cash collection cannot cease simply because operations are now remote. This is achieved through:

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

MAIL

Esker Mail Services allows organisations to send out large batches of customer invoices and other time-sensitive documents. With the touch of a button and 100% compatibility, documents can be mailed directly from the cloud, from wherever or whenever you’re working — saving time, money and peace of mind.

You can find out more at https://www.esker.co.uk/mobile-business-empowerment/

Mark Johnson

Mark is a Professional Services Engineer at Esker UK. He has been part of the Esker family since 2018.

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

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

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

Here’s how.

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

In O2C:

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

In P2P:

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

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

Raj Sahota

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

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Flexible working

Now more than ever, businesses are recognising the need for tools that enable workplace flexibility. Not necessarily just working from home, although that of course is now a key requirement, but the ability to stay connected whilst travelling, to events or customer/supplier offices is a necessity for many managers and employees. Did you know how automation can address many of the concerns of remote working, enabling AR professionals to stay on top of tasks from almost anywhere?

With data stored in secure cloud-based systems or online portals, critical information can be accessed in a controlled environment by employees from any location without compromising security. Also, with electronic workflows, teams can collaborate in real-time, gain approvals and assign tasks with just a few clicks – and from just about anywhere!

By assigning a checklist of tasks to complete and a dashboard to track progress, managers can rest assured that productivity will not drop, and monitor performance throughout the day.

Improved collaboration

AR automation can dramatically improve the way information is shared within an organisation. This is as vital as ever with more teams employing flexible working practices, but sharing information effectively can also really benefit company performance.

Take the relationship between Sales and Credit Management, for example. It’s one of the most important relationships in an organisation and key to securing lucrative deals with the right customers. The issue here is that it can sometimes feel like these departments are working at odds with one another. Sales can be a highly competitive environment and teams invest great time and effort in identifying and securing new deals. Which is why it can be so frustrating when the credit management department advise stopping a sale in the closing stages. Although when you think about it, is a sale really worth closing if there’s a high chance that you won’t get paid?

AR automation can be leveraged to bring departments closer together, through improved communication and mutual understanding, creating a unified – and formidable – force.

Sales teams benefit from visibility of a customer’s payment behaviour. If a customer is consistently paying late, or not at all, they can hold back from trying to grow a troubled account, or even assist in the communication process to help identify alternative ways to bring cash in more quickly. Conversely, if a customer has favourable credit there may be an opportunity to increase sales without exposure to greater risk. Having visibility of common data means credit teams can conduct initial investigations earlier to ensure that sales are spending valuable time and effort pursuing valid prospects.

Access to customer information 24/7

Customer experience has become the new competitive battleground for business; today’s customers care more than ever about their experience and the ease of which they can do business with a company. Automated AR solutions offer online self-service portals to enhance the customer experience, allowing customers to do everything from view statements and apply credits, to manage online payments or file a dispute.

Having the right technologies in place can ensure organisations can not only meet but exceed their customers’ expectations across the end-to-end AR experience. Instant access to the information that customers need, allows them to serve themselves quickly and accurately, making confusion created by manual processes a distant memory. According to industry research, when customers need support for a product or service, 55% are most likely to try self-service options versus using chat (20%), email (16%) or phone (8%).[i]

End-to-end visibility

Successful AR teams need access to consistent, accurate and real-time information. By moving your customers to e-invoicing you can send invoices regardless of external factors, mitigating the impact of postal service disruption and absenteeism too. In addition, with real time invoice delivery via a portal you can track invoice status from creation to receipt to final payment.
With AR automation, managers and collectors can keep track of critical KPIs with scheduled and custom reports allowing discrepancies and bottlenecks to be addressed quickly. By reporting on specific customer segments (industry, payer rating etc.) dashboards can help assess your own risk exposure and focus your collections efforts where they are needed most.

Savvy sustainability

In an electronic workflow, everything is just that: electronic. No paper, no printers, ink, fax machine, or other costly equipment needed to enable teams to work from home. That means no longer having to rely on all those things being available in order to execute your AR process in the office, either! That’s a huge plus for companies and for our planet. The less material you consume to get a job done, the better for our environment. Plus it’s faster and more efficient!

Watch our 90-second video and discover how AR automation empowers a remote workforce: https://videos.esker.com/watch/eiD5ihMrKQgcJDbYJnPz5S?

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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ENSURING O2C EFFICIENCY REMOTELY
Similarly, O2C leaders have a critical commitment to uphold — the right orders still need to get to the right customer at the right time. Furthermore, cash collection cannot cease simply because operations are now remote. Esker’s O2C solution plays a vital role enabling businesses to continue managing all customer interactions in a single platform. This is achieved through:

CUSTOMER PORTAL
The harsh reality today’s companies face is simple: Satisfy customers’ needs and wants or get passed over for someone else. For this reason, supply chain staff play an important role in driving business success. With a small margin for error, automation is essential to enable fast and accurate delivery of goods while adding value by empowering customers with self-service options. Esker’s self-service customer portal enables customers to place orders, resolve disputes, etc. anytime, anywhere.

ESKER ANYWHERE MOBILE APP
Esker Anywhere supports the sales order process by empowering sales reps and customers with mobile order placing and tracking capabilities for a variety of orders (e.g., replenishment, no-change, standard, etc.).

Here’s how it works:

• Mobile users retrieve items from product catalogue or scan a barcode.
• Product and lot number are automatically populated.
• Subsequent scans of the same barcode increase the quantity of order.
• From there, the order can be completed through the app.

Your O2C business processes don’t stop while you’re away. With Esker Anywhere, business leaders can also access their most important metrics and KPIs all from the palm of their hand. Users always get the same level of information wherever they are.

END-TO-END CONNECTIVITY
Whether it’s providing a 360° view over your customers’ behaviours through customer management or improving global speed and accuracy via AI and RPA technology, Esker’s integrated end-to-end platform is the digital foundation for all your O2C needs.

• CREDIT MANAGEMENT – Send & monitor credit apps while managing customers’ credit risks.
• ORDER MANAGEMENT – Eliminate manual data entry by enabling automated order processing.
• INVOICE DELIVERY – Deliver invoices according to customer preferences with 100% compliance.
• COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT – Reduce DSO with rule-based task lists & CRM-like data centralisation.
• PAYMENT – Allow customers to easily & securely make their payments online.
• CASH ALLOCATION & DEDUCTIONS – Streamline cash allocation & deductions with auto-matching & root-cause analysis.

End-to-end connectivity between all applications, enables collectors, customer service & AR managers to perform critical tasks in real time & without delays.

In every country where Esker is present, we’re equipped with the infrastructure, solutions and support to help our customers and partners effectively manage their unique working requirements and environments.

You can read more on our website https://www.esker.co.uk/mobile-business-empowerment/, or our Order-to-Cash Solution Summary https://info.esker.com/SolutionSummaryO2CAutomation.

Additionally, if you’d like to contact us to discuss your individual requirements, 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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