Johannesburg, 18 Sep 2017
SPI, the African distributor for utility software products and services to the Open Systems segment of the IT industry and the Southern African reseller for Esker, a leader in document process automation solutions, today announced that the latter is working with PepsiCo, a world leading food and beverage company, to automate its order processing.
PepsiCo has a portfolio that includes 22 brands that each generate more than $1bn in estimated annual retail sales. PepsiCo maintains its world leading status by being at the forefront of innovative practices and adopting the latest ways to continually improve its business. With this in mind, a project was devised to improve the way certain customer orders were being processed to eliminate any non-value added tasks and reduce the risk of manual keying errors.
The challenge that was identified showed that smaller independent traders who placed frequent orders could perhaps not be set up with EDI, due to the complexity, time and resources required. Therefore, a much simpler but just as efficient process was required. PepsiCo selected Esker as their preferred vendor of choice in order to help achieve this through Esker's document process automation solutions.
The first plan of action was to assess the current order process and simplify how orders were being received, how the information was being captured and finally, how orders were then approved. PepsiCo wanted to offer their customers the simplest way to place their orders whilst considering some of the bespoke customer requirements of their own individual choosing.
Secondly, they wished to free up the customer services representatives (CSR) from non-value added tasks such as the inputting of data from orders, so that they would be able to devote more time to serving the needs of their customers.
PepsiCo uses Esker's on demand solution to first receive the customer orders in any file format (e.g. fax, e-mail, EDI), which are then automatically routed to the correct CSR Team based on product categories contained within the order.
Next, the relevant data is extracted automatically through an intelligent recognition tool to create the corresponding sales order in their ERP system without the need for any manual inputs. This means that the CSRs can simply verify that the data has been extracted correctly or update any missing elements.
If any exceptions occur or approvals are required then the order is automatically placed into a workflow for action. Once approved the order is electronically archived with easy access made available to any authorised user.
"Currently PepsiCo manages approximately 4 000 orders per month (outside those received through EDI) and over 90% of these can now be processed without any human intervention at all," commented Tom Durance, Customer Order and Strategy Manager, PepsiCo.
"The benefits we have already gained have been; increased data accuracy rates, faster order processing speeds and improved customer service productivity leading to better customer satisfaction rates. Also, this would allow us to obtain 100% visibility of order/issue management via a full audit trail and KPI dashboards for monitoring and reporting," explained Durance.
"We are delighted to be working with PepsiCo and have been very pleased that the project has been a success so far both in terms of the benefits achieved and the timescales that were requested," continued Alistair Nicholas, Managing Director of Esker. "We look forward to continuing this success to other PepsiCo subsidiaries as and when required".
Looking forward towards future projects, the solution now in place could be rolled out easily if required to PepsiCo in other countries around the world using the same automated process. Also using Esker's agile development methodology allowed a quick project delivery in less than three months, with minimal delays. In addition, a high level of involvement in defining change and creating refinements to produce an ideal fit for all those involved in the business process could be achieved in line with the requirements of PepsiCo.
For further information, please contact Chris Anderson at tel. +27 11 234 1560; fax +27 11 234 1387; e-mail chris@spi.co.za
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