Dunning Implementation For US Based Supply Chain Customer
Use Case Summary
The Customer is global leader in designing, marketing and manufacturing of food and beverage solutions. The customer has brands which are over 100 years old and sold throughout the world.
Customer was facing challenge to manage the Dunning process for Accounts Receivables. Dunning is a process of methodically communicating with customers to ensure the collection of accounts receivable. As the process was mostly manual, customer wanted to automate the process to get ready for future growth.
Current Challenges
The process is mostly manual and involves team using MS Excel and Email communication as primary communication methodology. As the process is manual, it results in below issues
– Delayed email communication – The team would prioritise email communication based on work load. Also the promptness of communication is person dependant. Efficient team members send email on time while others delayed sending emails.
– Same rules for all customers – Team applied nearly same rules for all the customers instead of looking at parameters like pending amount, whether new or old customer, history of payment of customer, criticality of customer to business, previous reminder history etc.
– Error in Communication – Manual process using MS Excel was used to calculate pending amount, it resulted in errors in calculation, missing invoices etc., thereby sending incorrect emails to customers.
– Heavy Work load on team – Team has to analyse more than 10,000 invoices on daily basis. Plus the number of invoices are very high on Mondays and first week of every month. This resulted in heavy workload on many days of month thereby resulting in delayed or incorrect Dunning communication.
– Mundane Repetitive Work – The work is very mundane, repetitive on daily basis, because of which the team was losing interest in work, resulting in errors.
Solution Implemented
Predikly implemented Robotic Process Automation solution using Automation Anywhere. The complete process was automated end to end and the bots are scheduled to run on daily basis including weekends, if required.
The Bot logins to Oracle EBS and downloads the aging report. The Bot uses the aging report to filter out the customers whom to send email. It also identifies relevant invoices which needs to be part of the email communication. The bot then sends email to customer. The bot also keeps track audit and errors in Bot database and if some of the process was partially completed, it is picked up by the bot in next run.
The Bot sends Dunning reminders and stores the audit log in database until the customer pays the invoice amount or requests for time to pay the invoice. After the email sent to customer for a particular invoice, the bot update the comment for the invoice in Oracle EBS.
If the customer is unable to pay the invoice due before the 30 days of invoice due date then bot will include sales manager in the Dunning reminder emails.
Business Benefits
Cost Saving – The automation resulted in saving of 4 FTEs (team members) effort as the bot runs the process for 20*6.
Error Reduction – Drastic reduction in the number of errors which were caused because of manual process.
Improved Efficiency – The bot runs on daily basis Vs the manual process used to run 3 times a week. This means that the email is sent to customers as soon as the reminder is due. This would result in early payment from customer in some cases.
Streamlined Operations – The bot follows standard process on daily basis and send summary email to relevant team members at the end of run, thereby brining standardization in the process.
Error Reduction – Drastic reduction in the number of errors which were caused because of manual process.
Improved Efficiency – The bot runs on daily basis Vs the manual process used to run 3 times a week. This means that the email is sent to customers as soon as the reminder is due. This would result in early payment from customer in some cases.
Streamlined Operations – The bot follows standard process on daily basis and send summary email to relevant team members at the end of run, thereby brining standardization in the process.
