Leading medical technology company, Siemens Healthineers, was looking to automate its highly manual order entry process to free up Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) from time-consuming, low-value tasks and facilitate order management, regardless of order type or format. It was also important that the company be able to comply with the Italian e-ordering regulation in the healthcare sector. Companies like Siemens Healthineers, that supply the National Health Services (SSN), are required to manage the reception of e-orders through Nodo Smistamento Ordini (NSO), the Italian government owned platform.
Siemens Healthineers Italy turned to Esker to automate, standardise and streamline its order management process, and ensure full compatibility with NSO.
Automation Supported By AI
The Italian branch of Siemens Healthineers processes 27,000 annual orders, often recurring, and representing 300,000 line items for its Laboratory Diagnostics products. Siemens Healthineers’ 12-person customer service team was spending significant amounts of time manually entering these extremely heterogeneous orders (arriving in various formats and structures), and filling out every single SAP field.
We are now able to solve the problem of manually converting product codes provided by our customers, which are rarely the same as our codes. Esker takes care of it by automatically learning the mapping.
Massimiliano Bonizzoni |EMEA Commerce Director
Esker’s Order Management automation solution inserts itself between the incoming data flow and the SAP system. It captures order data through “smart” acquisition, interprets and models it independently from the source, resolving all critical issues related to incorrect or non-standard data entries and digitally transforming the order process.
Prior to Esker, only 8% of orders were automated. Today, Siemens Healthineers automates 85% of received orders, with 93% of order fields correctly identified by the solution.
The advanced data recognition capabilities of Esker’s AI Engine has enabled Siemens Healthineers to benefit from high recognition rates after just a short period of self learning. In addition to automatic product code conversion and reduced data entry errors, Siemens has been able to efficiently manage internal orders and order routing according to geographical regions, and distribute the workload more evenly among CSRs.
Improving Employee Experience
Esker’s solution was up and running in no time with little customisation required, thanks to its comprehensive feature set and seamless SAP integration. Team training and onboarding only takes three days and for more complex scenarios, Esker offers additional teaching and scripting functions.
Future Plans
Siemens Healthineers is extremely pleased with the excellent results achieved in Italy and plans to extend the partnership and implement Esker’s Order Management solution in the U.S., Western and Eastern Europe, and South Africa.
Eskers AI engine has not only automated our order management process, but has also enhanced the skills of our customer service team by making it easier for them to focus on customer needs and experience.
Andrea Zoppi | CFO and member of board of Directors
