up to
%
Operating Cost Savings
up to
%
Increased Productivity
up to
%
Lead-Time Reduction
up to
%
Process Accuracy
Manufacturing & Distribution
Manufacturers face many challenges including growth pressures, supply chain disruptions, lack of skilled workers, inventory management, and new regulations. While physical roots are commonplace in manufacturing assembly lines, automation has not been deployed in many back-office functions. Manufacturers can deploy RPA, augmented by AI, across their organization, including:
- Procurement-to-Pay
- Order-to-Cash
- Operations
- Sales & Marketing
- All back-office functions
Procurement-to-Pay
By using RPA, it is estimated that invoice processing and vendor management costs can be reduced by up to 35% and 30% respectively. For example, one client saved over 5000 hours annually by automating BOM/BOL document processing. Another company improved operation efficiency by over 50% by deploying an intelligent bot to manage procurement from updating pricing, contracts, product information, and new vendor set up in their ERP system.
Order-To-Cash
Manufactures often face challenges handling dealer orders due to seasonality of volume, catalog changes, and errors in processing. An automation can be triggered once a dealer order is received that validates the order, identifies any exceptions that need approval, notifies the responsible manager for review and approval, and enters the approved order information in the transaction system for final processing. This improves cycle time, processing costs and dealer relationships.
Operations
Many manufacturers experience increases in expedited shipment costs because JIT inventory isn’t stocked up adequately. An unattended robot can be deployed that monitors ERP data daily on critical parts, executes required validations and calculations, notifies procurement planner as needed, and place orders to efficiently manage JIT inventory. This reduces downtime, improves accuracy, and saves on expedited freight charges.
Sales & Marketing
The demands to drive growth can be supported through RPA and its ability to quickly capture, analyze and report on the abundance of available data that brings timely insights and a real competitive advantage to any manufacturer.
For example, a bot can run daily to extract and aggregate target data from an RFP platform, intelligently combine the data with previous runs, and deliver timely and targeted information to a salesperson’s dashboard. This not only saves thousands of hours, but also provides real-time actionable intelligence that drives revenue growth.
