Improving Your O2C Cycle in Oracle EBS
Your order-to-cash cycle determines how quickly you process your orders for fulfillment, how soon you ship products, how long to invoice customers, how long it takes to get paid, and how much money you can re-invest in your business. A long O2C cycle is a sign that you’re not operating as efficiently as possible. This can be frustrating – especially if you’re already using an Oracle EBS ERP to manage the order entry process. But with a few strategic changes, you can produce better results and beneficial metrics. One way to improve your order-to-cash cycle: Order entry and sales order entry automation, made possible by IntelliChief.
Oracle EBS Order-to-Cash Overview
Any processes that occur after you receive an order in the form of a PO or order form fall under the “order-to-cash” umbrella where an order is received, validated, processed, entered into the Oracle EBS system, fulfilled, and invoiced after which cash is collected from the customer.
In Oracle EBS, the order-to-cash cycle starts when you enter a new order (received from your customer) into your Order Management Sales Order module. At this point, you can also:
- Enter custom pricing and tax information
- Apply discounts
- Update a customer’s payment information
- Update a customer’s shipment information
As you move from order entry to order fulfillment, you’ll also move to the Shipping Execution module. You’ll:
- Put the requested items on hold
- Create a pack slip
- Set departure dates
- Set up secondary shipments for backordered items
- Calculate weight, volume, and fill percentages for your logistics team
- Assign freight charges
- Define container details
Once the order has shipped, Oracle EBS notifies your customer. You can then use the Order Management module to track the delivery and manage returns.
Billing, which is done in Oracle Receivables, is the last step of the order-to-cash cycle. You can use the Receipts Workbench, Transactions Workbench, and Collections Workbench for the final O2C workflows. In these modules, you’ll enter receipts, create and send invoices, post payments, and add transactions to your general ledger.
Automating Key Steps in Your Oracle EBS Order-to-Cash Process Flow
With so many steps to complete, it’s easy to see where delays can occur and where errors can be made. Many companies have issues routing orders and receipts from one department to the next. This is especially true for complex orders that move through Credit, Engineering, R&D, and Quality before they’re eventually sent out.
While you can’t fully automate the entire order-to-cash cycle in Oracle EBS, you can streamline the most time- and labor-intensive steps. In fact, you can even have certain processes completed without any input from your employees. For example, you can have IntelliChief send new orders straight to Credit without Customer Service having to manually pass them along or you can automatically enter order detail into your Oracle EBS ERP for PO orders that match to information contained in Oracle EBS.
Our order-to-cash automation solutions communicate behind the scenes with your Oracle EBS ERP. In doing so, our system can automatically:
With IntelliChief, you’re able to keep your existing workflows in place. For instance, you can have your customers continue emailing, faxing, and mailing you their orders. But, with automation helping you out, you can avoid the routine administrative work that’s needed to move each order through to completion/fulfillment.
For O2C processes that do need a user’s attention, automatic notifications also make sure nothing falls through the cracks. When nobody is stuck wondering what they’re supposed to be doing, your orders are completed faster and with fewer mistakes.
Benefits of an Automated Order-to-Cash Cycle in Oracle EBS
Automating your Oracle EBS workflows with IntelliChief helps you significantly reduce your order-to-cash cycle times, eliminates errors caused by manual entry and improves your cash flow. You can start processing each order from the moment it is received, instead of waiting for a customer service member to enter them in. And, you can send invoices as soon as an order is fulfilled, avoiding collection delays that complicate your cash flow. In all, O2C provides you with full visibility to the order process from order receipt through to cash collections.
Automation eliminates errors caused by manual data entry. By eliminating data entry all together, orders are processed more quickly and data entry mistakes are eliminated, resulting in less returns and collections issues.
Automation also helps you scale your order to cash processes without having to hire new employees. Training costs are reduced and the teams you already have in place can take on new (and more valuable) customer service work as well.
Another benefit: any time you need a document while you’re working in Oracle, you can retrieve it through IntelliChief or directly from Oracle EBS. IntelliChief connects all the documents and information together to make it easier to manage orders. You don’t have to switch over to a different screen, helping reduce disruptions so that you can stay productive. Similarly, when customers reach out with questions, you can access their entire order history directly from your app. Customer service becomes much faster and less of a burden.
Discover IntelliChief’s O2C Solutions for Oracle EBS
IntelliChief is designed as an end-to-end O2C solution for Oracle EBS. This means that you can use it to streamline as much of the process as you like. You can start with one specific area – like sales order entry management. Or, you can automate the entire Oracle order-to-cash process all at once. And, with the detailed reports and analytics that IntelliChief collects, you can have full visibility to the order process to visualize key ways to improve operations throughout your entire organization. This includes everything from improved supply chain management to more effective inventory management.
Ready to improve your order-to-cash cycle in Oracle? Our experts can review your O2C process and introduce you to our Oracle automation solutions. We’ve helped countless Oracle EBS users just like you leverage the power of automation – and we’ll use that extensive technical knowledge to your benefit throughout implementation and beyond.
To learn more about how you can improve your order-to-cash cycle in Oracle EBS, contact IntelliChief today. We also offer customized demos tailored to the needs of your business. To request a free demo, click here.