Invoice Automation Project
1/2 PM, 1 Functional Lead, 1/2 Software Developer
Challenge
Problem Statement: Following Order Completion Customers are provided with
Proforma Invoice and Final Invoice. To create these outputs a number of manual
processes has to take place. The manual process takes up 33% of 1 FTE and is
prone to Human error.
The request was to Automate these manual processes.
Solution
The solution involved several steps.
1. Initial Assessment and Planning
In the current state process our client needed too provide customers below documents on a daily basis.
Average Monthly volume: 320
- Proforma Invoice: to share the batch details in advance and get the shipment approval
Average Monthly volume: 718
- Final Invoice: confirming the final invoice amount for the customer to make payment
There were too many manual processes, which were time-consuming, error-prone and inefficient. Normally took about 2-3 hours daily to process it all and it takes more time if there’s credit block or other issues with the orders.
Below were the current process steps.
- Proforma Invoice for Delivery
- Export the delivery status report
- Check the delivery document number
- Create billing document entering each delivery document number
- SAP sends out the Proforma Invoice output PDF file to the creator’s email
- Check the customer name opening the Proforma invoice PDF file attached in the email, as there’s no other indicator except Proforma invoice number and Delivery number on the Email subject.
- Send the Proforma invoice PDF file manually to each customer by email
- Final Invoice
- Export the delivery status/ open order report
- Check the delivery document/ sales order number
- Create billing document entering each document numbers (for delivery feeand service charge)
- Export the billing document details report
- Check the billing document number
- Issue out the billing document to PDF file
- Send the file to the customer through the email
Based on our team assessment of the current state and the requirement to automate the process the following design was proposed and approved by the business:
- Proforma Invoice for Delivery
- SAP to send Proforma invoice for Delivery
output PDF automatically to the customer by email when the document is
created. The email should be sent to customer email addresses maintained in
Bill-To customer master, and also copy the sender’s email
- Final Invoice
- SAP to send Final invoice/Credit/Debit note output PDF
automatically to the customer by email when the document is created. The email
can be sent from the Creator’s email, in line with the existing functionality.
Scope
- Activities In Scope
- Project Planning and Management
- Functional and Technical specifications documentation
-
Unit Test and SIT Execution for enhancements identified in Functional scope
- Informal Dry Run Testing – FUT
-
Operational Qualification (OQ) Design & Execution for enhancements
identified in Functional scope
- Validation of functional requirements
- Installation & Qualification (IQ) Design & Execution
- Dry Run/Validation/UAT Support
- Collaborate with business users for UAT support
- Regression Testing
- Test Script Design
- Hypercare Support
By delivering this project our client was abe to free up their business resource
and allocate them to more critical business tasks
Results
The introduction of new user-specific features and the enhancements to the model's training process led to a notable improvement in the quality of recommendations.
The client conducted an A/B test to compare the upgraded recommendation system against the previous version. The new model demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in performance.
