P053| TAKE A LOOK WITHIN THE ORDER TO CASH CYCLE

Well I wouldn’t like to insist too much again on this process. However, lately I have been exposed on course of some one-off assignment to the same symptomatology. Order cycle takes too long because business processes were wrongly set up.

Let me quickly revisit the O2C (order to cash) process, from one of most ERP business process oriented, I know: Oracle e-Business Suite

1. Ordering
   • Ordering
   • Scheduling
   • Shipping
   • Bill presentation architecture
2. Collecting
   • Auto-invoice to receivables
   • Invoicing
3. Accounting
   • Receipts
   • Cash management
   • Transfer accounting to GL (General Ledger)

The second bullet point is one of the most classical issues. When the business analyst visited this process he/she just took 2 minutes to assess the situation. Obviously once a day it’s enough to schedule orders to the DC (distribution centre). But let me reproduce a real situation most of distribution centres experience:

• A sales order is coming, after being booked no inventory
• No inventory, implies this SO will remain on the log until next time schedule happens
• But, what is going on if between two schedule processes inventory was created (a batch finished or the vendor arrives, or simply the quality area releases a batch under quarantine?)
• You guessed!

Why not to ensure this process is triggered as many times as possible. The limit when the time between the last trigger makes sense to pick, drop, pack and ship within the day.

The duty of any Customer Service responsible is to short the order cycle as much as she/ he can.