Management teams are always looking for ways to improve cash flow and delivery times and optimize production lines. Once you achieve faster and more reliable sales transaction processes, it becomes easier to boost customer satisfaction and revenue generated. That’s why giving attention to order-to-cash — the O2C process — is so paramount now more than ever in the digital age of data and logistics.
You may be wondering: why exactly should you follow O2C process automation best practices? Read on to learn more about the biggest benefits the O2C process has to offer your company.
What does O2C do and why does it matter?
Order-to-cash includes all the activities, tools, and processes businesses undergo to fulfill an order from a customer. From initial purchase to delivery and continuous data analytics, there’s a lot that goes into this complex yet essential process.
Companies that master O2C often experience improved customer satisfaction due to fewer payment delays and setbacks. For instance, having a user-friendly B2B payment gateway like Autobilling helps you to automate transaction management and implement B2B checkout widget for B2B customers, where they can place orders without phone calls or credit cards. Fewer potential points of frustration mean better sales figures.
What are the benefits of O2C?
It should be clear as to why order-to-cash deserves attention. It directly contributes to your bottom line, whether you are selling to customers or obtaining invoices for a major purchase from another business. The benefits of optimizing O2C include:
- General management: A business with proper O2C procedures is likely to do well in other important aspects of running the company like sales, fulfillment, shipping, and accounting.
- Fulfillment speed: Nothing is more frustrating than having to wait for delivery delays when you’ve already paid for a product. O2C helps you maintain compliance with set deadlines and boost customer satisfaction.
- Cash flow: Faster invoice processing and approvals result in a better cash flow and more working capital at all times, giving you increased flexibility with what you can do with your money.
- Better financial records: Order-to-cash directly contributes to the way you manage your cash flow. Making sure money is flowing where it needs to is important to avoid delays while ensuring solvency.
- Inventory management: With better metrics and monitoring tools, keeping track of inventory levels becomes natural, and you’ll find more ways to deal with seasonality, as well as sudden drops or spikes in stock. Never end up buying too little or too many needed supplies again.
- Happier employees: A more efficient process benefits everyone. For instance, the automation tools you might pick up on your journey to improve O2C will help cut down on repetitive tasks and give more creative, strategic jobs to human employees.
- New opportunities for sales: By speeding up the paperwork, your company is able to attract and onboard new customers far more quickly and gather information on them immediately. You can then develop targeted promotions for individual customers using that data.
- Impact on other parts of the company: The order-to-cash process directly impacts other aspects of the business, from inventory management to the supply chain. If there’s a bottleneck somewhere, its effects will be felt everywhere.
You’ll certainly see a reduction in operational costs and an increase in revenue as a result of better O2C, but the benefits extend beyond just one-time savings. By taking action regarding your order-to-cash process, you also put yourself in a position to adopt new technologies and trends that will put you ahead of the competition.
Empower order-to-cash with electronic processing from Qvalia
Did you know that many B2B payments today are surprisingly not being done digitally (which leaves plenty of room for process optimization)? But even electronic management can still include plenty of manual work, such as additional paperwork and filling out an Excel spreadsheet. You want to take it a step further by implementing full-suite automation solutions into your O2C process.
We’re providing a broad range of businesses to achieve reliable O2C processes by eliminating menial tasks and facilitating comprehensive visibility, which in turn results in more ways to optimize B2B transactions.
Are you looking to improve your O2C processes? Discover how companies of all sizes are fully automating their O2C processes with Qvalia.
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