Global electronics manufacturer streamlined and automated their finance operations

Feb 28, 2023

finance
discrete manufacturing
Microsoft

Global electronics manufacturer implements Microsoft® Power Platform (Power Automate Desktop) to streamline and automate its finance operations. With automated processes in the finance operations, manual effort was reduced by 60% with high accuracy in the processing.

Background

Customer is a leading global electronics manufacturer that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, financial services, and gaming hardware. It has expanded its product line beyond gaming peripherals to include laptops, smartphones, and even gaming chairs. The company has also focused on sustainability, launching sustainability initiatives to reduce waste and carbon emissions. It is likely to continue pushing boundaries and exploring new technologies to create innovative products that enhance the gaming experience.

Challenge

The bank transaction reconciliation and clearing process in the ERP system (SAP) is currently a manual process. The process of bank transaction reconciliation included several bank files which served as input data, with multiple gateways such as Ayden, AmEx, WeChat Pay, EPS, PayPal, Cash Registry, etc.

Receipt clearance and posting was done for individual stores and multiple channels, namely retail, e-commerce and B2B, were included.

Reconciling interest entries such as exchange difference, bank charges, partial payment, advance payment, fee charges, and discrepancy threshold also add to the complexity and time consumption of the process. Errors are common, leading to delayed or missed revenue collection.

Our customer recognized the need to automate this critical process to reduce effort, minimize errors, and improve revenue collection and customer communication.

Solution

delaware with Microsoft, suggests automating the bank posting process using unattended bots powered by Microsoft Power Automate Desktop flows. This streamlines and automates the entire process, making it more efficient.

Implementation included

Downloading various settlement reports and transaction reports from various gateway portals
Complex three-way reconciliation (sales, gateway, and bank entries) built-in the bot for multi-store multi-gateways
Receipt posting (clearing) in SAP system by the Bot
Robust reporting of the unmatched items for further review by the Accounts Receivable department

General framework to add more stores or gateways in the future
Flexibility to execute the bots as attended or unattended

Outcomes

Error free reconciliation and clearing thus saving time/effort spent for repairment purposes.
Prompt reporting and customer communication.
Processing time to reduced to 1 day from 4 days to reconcile and clearing
Turnaround time for bank posting improved from 1 day to 2 hours for bank posting
Reduced manual effort by 75% allowing account receivable executives to focus on customer relationship