Industry
-
Retail
Omnichannel Experience & Intelligent – The Future of Retail
Highlights
- Leading motoring, cycling products retailer in the UK wanted to take a significant step towards modernizing the accounts payable operations by automating the purchase order (PO) process for goods not for resale (GNFR).
- They wanted an end-to-end solution to transform the existing monolithic process for PO generation and thus enhance user experience.
- By simplifying the process, improving the time to market, and significantly reducing the scope for errors, TCS helped the client exceed the demands of their experience-level agreements with end users
Overview: Cumbersome PO process
The customer is a leading provider of motoring and cycling products and services across the UK and Ireland.
Their procurement process for direct sales and indirect spend is done through PO in SAP. Generating PO for goods not for sale (GNFR) requests required manual effort. This meant sub-optimal use of resources.
The challenge: Manual, spreadsheet-based PO requests
PO requests are created manually on spreadsheets and sent over emails for approval.
Once approved, team members raise a PO in SAP.
Being manual, the entire process had many pitfalls:
Creating the spreadsheet was time-consuming
It involved an exhaustive procedure of sending emails for approvals for each PO and revising the PO Excel sheet with the feedback received
Collation of all related email conversations to determine if a PO is approved or not was cumbersome
PO had to be created in SAP manually.
Creation of a PO manually was prone to errors; maintaining all Excel files and following up on pending approvals with the executives concerned incurred time, effort, and cost overhead.
The solution: PO generation made easy with Power Automate
TCS developed a workflow-based solution, leveraging the capabilities of Power Automate, and automated the process of generating POs in SAP, resulting in productive and efficient operations.
We developed an interactive web application using Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate, that automated email flows and allowed integration with SAP.
The solution triggered automatic emails to approvers. The workflows have actionable buttons (Approve, Reject, Send back to requester) in emails as well as hyperlink to open Power Apps form and act on requests.
Once approved, all PO requests are automatically ingested to SAP to create the PO. Additionally, admin functions like audit logs for change in approver details and PO amount thresholds have been provided. In case of unavailability of approvers, PO requests can be re-assigned to other available approvers for business operation and continuity.
As a consulting partner, TCS helped the enterprise reimagine and redesign the business process and, thus, reduce non-productive time and effort.
Stats
The benefits: First milestone in business process transformation
Automation made the PO generation process more robust and resilient.
It provided the following benefits:
Shorter process due to automation
No manual maintenance of thousands of Excel trackers
No human errors in POs
The solution saved efforts required for daily, repetitive tasks. Automating the process ensured the team could dedicate more time to other productive initiatives.
TCS has recently taken the first step to modernize our accounts payable
Contact
Contact
