Would like to get some feedback from people using it and not just the people selling it. We process only 365 SO per month but its taking us too much order entry overhead. Looking to replace labor, reduce missed orders and reduce data entry mistakes. Don’t really see any current value in the ECM itself outside of the sales order automation, but have to buy the whole thing anyway. Some questions I had:
What percent of order flow through with no exceptions? (I understand this will vary based on workflow rules, but just looking for some general numbers)
Does yours read email from O365? (was told only workarounds exist)
Do the 2 pre-baked workflows work for your organization or did you have to re-build them or build new ones to suit your needs?
Better off with EDI on top volume customers?
What do you do for SO’s with no attachment(data in email body)?
How is the training/documentation?
What other easy use cases are there that would help absorb the cost of the full ECM?
Anyone using MS Power Automate to do something similar?(essentially creating workflows from incoming emails)
This depends on if you’re customer is willing to undertake an EDI partnership strictly so you can have more efficient order entry. What benefit is it to them, your customer?
Right, but what part of that cost is the step of sending that order to you and how much time do they spend on that specific task- the task of sending you their order?
If right now, it’s a print preview and then attach to email and send, then that’s what you’d have to optimize with EDI for them. If EDI takes any more time than that (or whatever they’re doing right now) then I’m not sure why they’d switch to EDI.
As far as the workflows, they will always have some form of customization to the sales order to work like your existing E10/Kinetic Order entry.
I would say it depends on the form you get from the customer how much you can rely on it to give accurate data capture, IDC does well with a structured form and high dpi data.
If the customer does not send a quality form or an excel spreadsheet then IDC won’t work with those. if the customer expects a quick order process, I would check with them on what they will provide. Then you can pick your solution.
@Engineer88 I was looking at your situation in 2009 when our bookkeeper wanted to get AP automation for his needs and I took a look at us replacing APM with ECM and found a toolset that I could do a ton with. In 2022 we did an SOA implementation and it was quick to get up and running. I also did an inhouse EDI with one partner at the same time. ftp drop so there are no EDI charges for either of us.
We currently scan and index all of our packing slips and Mfg. C of Cs 90% auto and recently got the barcode module to get that to 100% auto. I have a dashboard that for first articles takes all of the issued lots of material and finds all of the related packing slips and MCofCs so a complete lot tracked First Article report can be prepared for our customers.
We scan in tariff invoices and I use the same kind of lookup to find all of the related receipts and invoices for an audit trail of tariffs charged to a customer with the source document linked in a dashboard.
We currently link all of our job travelers to shipments manually and I am planning an ECM workflow to automate that process.
Appreciate the feedback. Once I see the cost, I’ll see if its even worth pursuing. If we go the whole sales order automation, wouldn’t add anything anyway.
Epicor says the OCR is 85% accurate. Sadly they have no way of spinning up a test ECM for us throw throw a batch of PDFs into to get first hand experience. Basically all of our customers are providing computer generated pdf orders, so I suspect the bulk of the work would be in some type of mapping.
We have AP automation but that 85% is highly dependent on the source. As mentioned by @swilliasc111, a high DPI document from your customer will have a higher rate than 85%. Another thing we’ve found with our AP automation is some of our suppliers have fields very close together making OCR is bit harder.
Check out Conexiom. Much cheaper than ECM. Essentially just converts inbound PDF or text PO’s to inbound EDI so your team doesn’t have to do it manually. I believe they also offer AP automation that works in a similar way. Very user friendly.
Well Greg you beat me to the finish line and that’s where it counts. I have been meaning to try and rally my teams to stop doing physical record keeping and let me throw barcodes on all those docs and scan them in! At some point would love to get rid of paper if it makes sense process wise.
…that you were implementing Conexiom back in November 2022. Based on your post here, sounds now like that you’re pretty happy with the solution! How long did it take to implement? How well does it integrate with Kinetic? Does it require any other software for integration? Did it require any changes by your customers?
@frontierits
Following along with my previous post, wondering if your client ultimately implemented Conexiom, and if so, how well it’s working for them. Can you share anything regarding the outcome?
Me getting the BarCode module was from seeing your Insights presentation.