In a recent survey on “Intelligent Automation” conducted by SS&C Blue Prism, NICE and UiPath in collaboration with German media partners, nearly three-quarters of the participating companies (73 percent) considered process automation to be of “very high” or “high“ importance. At the same time, Gartner is predicting that companies will be increasing their reliance on automated processes over the coming years. By 2025, in fact, the manufacturing of 20 percent of all products is expected to be fully automated.
The most important prerequisite for automated processes to run smoothly is reliable, digital process communication. A dependable, transparent interchange of data with suppliers is crucial for setting up an efficient process chain. Ideally, the sharing of documents with Class A suppliers should be entirely automated, meaning that all further processing ensues in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system without any manual data capturing efforts. Often, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is employed to achieve this.
Efficient exchange of data all along the supply chain
On the other hand, interacting with suppliers unable to engage in EDI is often effort-intensive and error-prone. There are multiple reasons for this, ranging from a lack of technical options to low order volumes or insufficient acceptance. Consequently, order confirmations are either not sent by suppliers at all, or they end up in the inbox as unstructured emails. Manually capturing these confirmations results in unnecessary efforts and costs in purchasing operations.
Retarus WebConnect for Suppliers provides a quick, uncomplicated remedy. Suppliers receive your order as an interactive email. A single click takes the recipient directly to the WebConnect portal. There, the supplier can view and edit the order – without having to register or log in as with conventional WebEDI portals. This ease of use ensures high rates of acceptance, resulting in up to 75 percent more order confirmations from Class B and C suppliers. The response is sent automatically in EDI format, meaning that no manual efforts or costs are incurred for capturing the details.
Effortlessly calculate your potential savings
Our handy Business Case Calculator shows just how much you can save by automating your ordering processes in this way. In three short steps, you can determine the savings you achieve per process, the total time saved in hours, and the monthly potential for savings – after which the detailed results can be downloaded free of charge.
Would you like to find out more about integrating suppliers without EDI into digital procurement processes using WebConnect for Suppliers, increasing supply chain efficiency and reducing your costs significantly at the same time? Feel free to visit our website or get in touch with your local Retarus representative!
