Time to talk about the relationships that businesses must cultivate and maintain to run a successful operation, and the automation tools available that can help foster more valuable relationships with customers and suppliers.
Suppler Relationships
Good supplier relationships don’t just happen — they require dedicated time and nurturing to create beneficial and lasting connections. These relationships can have costly impacts on a company’s bottom line, and when they’re managed manually, the more complications you’re bound to encounter when interacting with suppliers. With manual procure-to-pay (P2P) processes, time and money are wasted on slow processing times, lost invoices, missed opportunities for early payment discounts, and data-entry errors.
A strong vendor relationship can also impact another relationship: that of your customers/end users and your company. When you are able to deliver goods and services on time and without error, your customers will enjoy doing business with you and want to continue to do so. This can foster loyalty and trust as they will feel that their money is well spent.
Customer Relationships
The quality of a business’s customer relationships is most determined by the experience they provide. Today, customers expect quicker access to customer support, faster resolution of issues, and easier access to personal information and orders. And if you can’t keep up with your customers’ evolving demands, chances are they’ll find a company that can.
The customer experience is based on customers’ interactions with multiple teams in a single organisation, and any gaps or delays put that experience at risk — and with customers being one the largest assets a company can have, that’s a risk you can’t afford to take.
How Automation Bolsters Customer & Supplier Relationships
The best way to enhance the customer experience and supplier relationships is with an end-to-end automation solution. Think of automation as the base for success. Addressing the root causes of inefficiency throughout the cash conversion cycle can lead to stronger connections with customer and suppliers, and makes future initiatives much easier to implement.
Here are some of the biggest cash conversion obstacles affecting company relationships that AI-driven solutions can help overcome in P2P and O2C processes:
P2P Challenges
- Lengthy or delayed cycle times
- Fraudulent transactions and late-payment fees
- Matching orders and receipts
- Difficult vendor negotiations
- Rushing to place orders
- Disparate systems and processes
- Low visibility throughout the P2P cycle
O2C Challenges
- Slower processing cycles at each stage or the O2C cycle
- Sluggish cash flow and high DSO
- Limited collaboration and low morale within O2C teams
- Complexity of legacy systems and ERPs
- Lack of visibility into customer orders
- Manual data-entry errors
Whether it concerns your company’s collaboration, organisation, training or whatever else, having an automated solution in place paves the way for better communication and collaboration with your valued customers and suppliers — making it a great investment for today and tomorrow.
– Written by Taylor Bucher