RPA for Order & Invoice Processing
Did you know that 82% of finance departments are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of invoices they must process every single day?
If your organization deals with invoices on a regular basis, this will likely not come as a surprise to you.
Similarly, processing hundreds, or even thousands, of individual orders on a daily basis can often lead to errors, wasted time, and even lack in customer satisfaction.
Fortunately, there’s a solution – Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
What is RPA?
RPA uses robotic software to fulfill tasks that are traditionally performed manually by human staff. Using RPA solutions, an organization can program its “bots” to perform almost any task that is repetitive and time consuming in nature.
By implementing RPA solutions, business processes can be fulfilled far more rapidly, giving your human staff more time to focus on higher priority, higher value tasks. RPA can also help to reduce operational costs.
Furthermore, when it comes to businesses that process invoices and orders, RPA helps resolve the following challenges.
Common Challenges Related to Order & Invoice Processing
Handling invoices is a tedious process that demands a significant amount of person-hours. When humans are tasked with managing invoices, the process becomes incredibly costly, due to slow processing times and the high risk of errors.
This often results in payment delays and errors in payment amounts, further costing your organization money.
Another challenge you may face is that individual customers and vendors often use their own unique invoice templates. This not only can lead to mismatching of invoice data, but also slows down the invoice process
When it comes to processing orders, this also often leads to costly errors, as mistakes can be made when manually inputting order information. Even a simple typo can produce disastrous results – imagine sending out an order for 10,000 units when you really only need 1,000.
Common Challenges Related to Order & Invoice Processing
Handling invoices is a tedious process that demands a significant amount of person-hours. When humans are tasked with managing invoices, the process becomes incredibly costly, due to slow processing times and the high risk of errors.
This often results in payment delays and errors in payment amounts, further costing your organization money.
Another challenge you may face is that individual customers and vendors often use their own unique invoice templates. This not only can lead to mismatching of invoice data, but also slows down the invoice process
When it comes to processing orders, this also often leads to costly errors, as mistakes can be made when manually inputting order information. Even a simple typo can produce disastrous results – imagine sending out an order for 10,000 units when you really only need 1,000.
What are the Benefits of RPA?
RPA can help resolve these challenges while offering numerous other benefits to your organization.
Below, we’ve outlined some of the most significant benefits offered by RPA:
Reduced Invoice Processing Expenses
RPA can help businesses significantly reduce their expenses related to invoice processing.
This is primarily due to the fact that the cost of deploying bots to perform business tasks is significantly lower than maintaining a full labour force, while also improving the quality of service being offered.
Lower Risk of Errors
Bots have capabilities that humans don’t, making them ideal for performing repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Bots are able to function at maximum capacity 24/7, without sleep, breaks, or vacations. Bots also are far less likely to complete work that is riddled with errors.
Saves Time
As previously mentioned, bots are not humans, which means they are not susceptible to human characteristics. They don’t get tired and can operate significantly faster than the human brain. In fact, RPA bots can perform manual processes at 20 times the speed of any human.
Handles Complex Workflows
When humans are required to gather and input order data into multiple different systems, they often resort to the “swivel chair process” – manually entering data in one place after another until the task is complete.
Bots can bypass this challenge by automating data entry and inputting it across several different systems in the blink of an eye.
Flexibility
RPA is an incredibly flexible technology. Depending on the task, you can determine how many bots you want deployed to that particular process. You can even reassign tasks from humans to a bot when things get busy. Simply put, nothing is set in stone and the possibilities are endless.
Working For Your Business 24/7
As previously mentioned, bots aren’t capable of taking breaks and don’t require sleep.
Once you have defined the process you want executed and have provided the bots with instructions, you can schedule them to perform the task at any time of the day. Therefore, bots can continue performing tasks outside of office hours, long after your human staff have gone home.
This enables you to supercharge your workflow, process more orders in a shorter amount of time, and earn more revenue.
Use Cases For Invoice Processing
Furthermore, when it comes to businesses that process invoices and orders, RPA helps resolve the following challenges.
Monitoring for New Invoices
RPA can automatically scan your systems for invoices, and as soon as new files are uploaded, they’ll be flagged and forwarded along for data extraction.
Invoice Capture
RPA can also extract that important invoice and order data, such as bank account info, order details, pricing, etc. As an extra level of security, in the event that the bots are unable to properly capture the data effectively, or you’d just like some reassurance, the data can be automatically forwarded to a human for verification.
Invoice Evaluation
RPA can also evaluate invoices against order records along with other criteria to ensure its validity. This can include the following actions:
- Cross-checking invoices against purchase orders
- Looking for duplicate records
- Determining if there are any issues requiring manual intervention
Once all the checks have been performed, your bots will automatically send the invoice off to be processed.
Recording Information
When an invoice has been processed, RPA will log all relevant information in your database to create a record of it. Having this information logged is critical in the event that there are discrepancies, or if you have a dispute with a customer or supplier.
With humans, often this step can be missed.
Making Payments
RPA bots have the ability to initiate payments to suppliers, and even send out automated email reminders to customers about late payments.
Use Cases For Order Management
RPA can also streamline most aspects of the order management process.
Here are a few examples:
Order And Payment Processing
Without RPA, processing orders and payments requires a lot of manual work that slows down the entire process and increases the risk of discrepancies and human errors.
With RPA, bots will take care of the entire process, so you can focus on shipping out orders and increasing sales to earn more revenue.
Creating Orders
Taking care of purchase orders and creating sales orders is incredibly time-consuming when performed manually, making costly errors inevitable.
RPA is a great solution to this challenge, as bots are able to process forms and contracts in various formats and verify all of the indicated requirements. RPA can even create an automated approval workflow during the sales order process, which will also help to dramatically improve your team’s efficiency and productivity.
Industries That Can Benefit
Pretty much any business that manages invoices and/or ships out orders can benefit from RPA. However, RPA for invoicing and order management is particularly beneficial for eCommerce businesses. For instance, with online stores, RPA can help automate orders and payment processing, and send order confirmation emails and invoices to clients.
Additional industries that can benefit include:
- Manufacturing
- Trades
- SaaS
- Real Estate
- Retail
- Law firms
- Financial services
- Automotive sales
- Medical
- And more!
Think RPA is Right For You?
Whether you are a beginner to the world of Robotic Process Automation and require some guidance, or you are already familiar with RPA solutions, our goal at Thrive Automation is to ensure your team is fully supported and empowered to implement RPA in a way that helps your business reach its full potential.
We offer the following options, depending on your knowledge and experience level with RPA:
- Automation Readiness Audit (ARA)
- Automation Roadmap
- Automation Pilot
- Automation Centre of Excellence
- Thrive Care