Food Manufacturer

FASTER, EASIER & SMARTER IN EVERY WAY

The reliance on “tribal knowledge” is a common theme among companies that employ manual order management practices — this food manufacturer being no different. With Esker, the company now has a centralized digital solution for handling all of the orders it receives, regardless of format.

“It used to be that everything was manual for every piece of the order,” said the company’s Manager of Projects for Center of Excellence. “Now, every order is automatically created through Esker and an image of the PO is attached to each order in our SAP® system without any additional steps required by CSRs. It’s all in one location, easily accessible.”

“I used to spend hours processing one PO with 100 lines or 100 orders. And now, within minutes — and I do mean minutes — I have everything done.”
Manager of Projects for Center of Excellence

Another notable advantage of using Esker has been the company’s newfound visibility into order processing. Esker’s automated Order Management solution is equipped with intelligent dashboards that provide easy access to KPIs, performance trends and items analytics.

“Gathering information had previously been a very time-consuming and involved process downloading Excel files,” said the company’s Supply Chain Analyst. “With Esker, we’re able to easily examine how many orders we’re creating each day, how many are approved, how quickly we’re meeting SLAs. etc. And we’re using all that information to continue to drive less touches orders in our process.”

OPTIMIZING EDI PERFORMANCE

Presently, as well as prior to Esker, over 80% of the orders received by the food manufacturer are EDI. However, despite this relatively high percentage, many of the EDI-based touch points the company encountered were manual and timeconsuming.

"As we implemented customers over the years, we didn’t always have the right information coming in from our master records,” said the Manager of Projects for Center of Excellence. “Esker provided us with a solution that addressed this gap.”

How Esker Helped

The cloud-based nature of Esker’s automated platform means that the solution could be easily configured with the manufacturer’s IT installations without altering existing infrastructure or impacting customers. This was a particularly pertinent benefit, as many of the manufacturer’s largest customers are heavily reliant on EDI orders.

“In terms of metrics, Esker has dramatically improved our process. We just didn’t have that visibility before.”
Supply Chain Analyst

“Even though our orders come in every format you can think of and then some, it was 100% seamless for our team and customers,” said the Supply Chain Analyst. “We standardized everything with little to no impact.”

SEAMLESS SOLUTION DELIVERY

The food manufacturer went live with Esker’s Order Management solution in late May 2020. This process was facilitated by a period of “hypercare” — a standard practice with Esker’s Agile approach where enhancements are made, and Esker’s team ensures best practices are followed, user adoption is strong and usability questions are answered.

“The team has been very diligent in answering our questions, during implementation and hypercare,” said the Manager of Projects for Center of Excellence. “Overall, we’re just incredibly pleased with the end results."

Adjusting to Remote Implementation

An added wrinkle of complexity to the manufacturer’s order management project was that it occurred in the middle of a global pandemic — limiting the amount of face-to-face interactions. Nevertheless, the solution delivery proved to be a resounding success.

“The communication and ability to adapt from both teams was always there,” said the Supply Chain Analyst. “We touched base at least twice a week, and it really didn’t feel like we needed that one-on-one, face-to-face presence.”

“To be honest, to this day, I’m impressed with how well the remote implementation went. There was no negative impact on the quality of the solution.”
Supply Chain Analyst