If your organization provides goods or services, your sales order process is a completely necessary part of your day-to-day activity. Unfortunately, this process can often be a time-consuming drain on employee productivity. Most organizations just see this as a necessary evil that won’t ever change, but by strategically implementing smarter processes, your organization can completely transform what was once a frustrating process.
We’ll be sharing more on what Sales Order Automation looks like, and how DocStar and Mosaic can help implement it for your organization.
What is Sales Order Automation (and why it’s important)
Sales order automation (SOA) specifically focuses on streamlining time-consuming manual pieces in the sales process. By automating these necessary tasks, your sales team can focus on value-adding activities rather than spending excess time on data entry.
A common concern in any organization is whether or not crucial tasks get completed. Specifically, in the sales process, employees may enter incorrect data or neglect to enter it completely. This can lead to inaccurate billing, missing sales, and a loss in time in productivity. Automation ensures the correct data is entered and that it follows the correct steps in the process. It helps simplify the sales cycle, empowering customers and prospects to complete purchases and better understand your organization’s products or services.
The Sales Order process has evolved greatly since the days of filling out carbon sales order forms and manually entering it into a register. Mosaic’s partner, DocStar, has led this evolution by providing advanced automation technology that allows for a streamlined sales process with little to no human intervention.
By taking advantage of this technology, you can improve your customer relationships, streamline employee tasks, and gain a competitive advantage. It may seem like SOA is a massive leap from where your business is currently, but with the right tools and knowledge, your organization can quickly evolve.
DocStar’s Sales Order Automation functionality
An automated Sales Order process starts in one of two ways, either a scanned purchase order or a digital document. By accepting both formats, your organization can best support your customer’s existing way of submitting orders, reducing any potential learning curves or friction.
Once the order is received, it goes through Intelligent Data Capture (IDC). IDC automatically captures and extracts structured data (such as a customer’s past purchases) as well as unstructured data (like written communications). Once IDC recognizes and indexes the order, it can be passed along to the next step. This step eliminates the traditional step of receiving the sales order and then manually entering the data into your ERP.
The order is then automatically received by your ERP, which will then validate the data from the order. Key pieces such as customer name or number, part numbers, and other information are reviewed. If there is an exception or data that requires manual review, it will automatically be sent to the correct employee to validate it manually. If the data is valid, it will create a sales order in your ERP and the purchase is one step closer to being complete.
This entire process can happen with next to no human intervention, except for scanning in an order at the beginning and data validation at the end. Because this process is hands-off, your employees can be more productive, leading to more sales and more growth.
Next Steps
If the concept of completely transforming your Sales Order process sounds overwhelming, don’t worry, Mosaic is here to help you through the entire process.
Give us a call at 800.387.7859 to discuss your current Sales Order process and where you want to go.
