Manual Process
Universal Electronics has a lot of customers worldwide that send orders for remote controls. Customers sent their order by faxes. The faxes would be collected by an employee and pass it to a processor, who then feed the order into the ERP system. A copy of the fax is sent to the Sales Representative who is responsible for the customer. Another faxed copy of the order is sent over to the Customer Service Representative (CSR), who is then responsible for fulfilling the order. CSR checks the inventory to see if the order can be fulfilled in time. If the parts are not in stock he contacts the buyer to order the parts. After the parts are received the buyer contacts the CSR to notify that the parts are available to fulfill the order. The CSR creates an associated Sales Order then contacts the customer and Sales Representative notifying them of the tentative ship date.

Most of the process listed above is paper intensive and it involves transporting paper from one desk to another. Cost for lost or damaged replaced documents is very high.

Business Process Automation
Aim of the automation process was to eliminate the paper trail.

Purchase orders are received by the fax server and converted into digital images. These are passed to the OCR engine. The OCR engine compares the incoming image to a set or predefined templates to detect the customer information. The customer information and the purchase order is then archived in the DMS repository.

As soon as the image is archived, a workflow case is started with Purchase Order as associated content.

The following diagram describes the steps of the workflow:

1. The workflow checks if the incoming purchase order is from a new customer. If so, the Customer Service Manager is notified to create new credit information for the customer.



2. The workflow then looks up the email address of the Sales Representative and primary customer contact and notifies them of the receipt of the purchase order.



3. Workflow then waits until a Sales Order is created in the ERP system.



4. Workflow again notifies the Sales Representative and the primary customer contact that a sales order has been generated.



5. Workflow creates a manual step for the CSR to look up Sales Order Acknowledgement form. The CSR can notify the buyer to purchase products or send the workflow to the next step.



6. The workflow checks to see if the order can be fulfilled.



7. If the order can be fulfilled, the workflow notifies the primary-customer-contact about the ship-dates for the order.



8. If an order can only be fulfilled partially, it notifies the primary-customer-contact of the partial shipment. Workflow then waits until the complete order is fulfilled.



9. On completion of the order, the workflow case is archived in the Workflow repository and is accessible for audit trails and to view associated purchase order, Sales Order, Invoice and Shipment Receipt.