Optimizing the Procure-to-Pay Process
GXS Active Orders automates the procure-to-pay process for companies interacting with a global and diverse supplier community. Active Orders makes it easy to quickly and col-laboratively answer questions such as: “Was my order accepted?”, “Which version of the order are you shipping against?”, “Will the order ship on time?” and “What is the status of my invoice?” Buying organizations can cost-effectively gain a powerful, unified view into data from their various ERP instances and securely extend this view to their supplier communities.
Active Orders consists of three business process modules: Order Planning and Execution, Shipping and Receiving, and Invoicing and Payment. It provides support for both tradi-tional order management and vendor managed inventory procurement methodologies. As an on-demand SaaS application, Active Orders offers implementation flexibility and empowers buyers and sellers with actionable visibility into their extended supply chains.
Order Planning and Execution
Efficiency in order planning and execution is a key performance driver in the procure-to-pay process. Despite the significant adoption of EDI and XML by larger companies, many small- and medium-sized businesses continue to rely on faxes, email and phone calls for order receipt and acknowledgement.
GXS Active
SMOrders
BUSINESSES USING GXS ACTIVE ORDERS HAVE REALIZED SIGNIFICANT BENEFITS: • Up to 25% improvement in purchase order issuance by automating the process of transmitting to suppliers and tracking the acknowledgement • Advanced shipment notices and barcode labels reduce inbound warehouse receiving time by up to 75% • Safety stock optimization by up to 15% through better visibility to inbound shipment • Up to 80% error reduction through auto identification technology such as web-based barcode labeling • Automated three-way document matching enables accelerated invoice approval thereby creat- ing the opportunity to negoti-ate early payment discounts Event Signal Event Signal Delivery Schedule Order Goods Receipt Inventory Payment Ship Notice Order Response Invoice
Order Lifecycle Management
Active Orders provides a dashboard that offers visibility to the progression of purchase orders through each step in the lifecycle. The following activities are managed through the order Planning and Execution module:
• Order Tracking and History—Active Orders provides a real-time view into purchase orders and associated changes. All orders generated by the buyer’s ERP application are communicated to suppliers via EDI, XML or a web interface.
• Order Response and Commitments—Upon reviewing the details of the order, suppli-ers can accept, reject or propose changes to the order through comprehensive order acknowledgment capabilities. Buyers can configure Active Orders for suppliers to ac-knowledge the entire order or individual line items. With order acac-knowledgements, suppliers can also provide detailed ship schedules and quantity commitments. • Purchase Order Changes—As buyers initiate order changes, Active Orders automates
delivery of updates to the order and maintains a history of order revisions at the line level. By tracking PO changes electronically, buyers and suppliers can significantly reduce the frequency of exceptions in the order fulfillment process.
• Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)—Buyers indicate their VMI calculation prefer-ences and provide item master data and inventory reports to their suppliers. Suppli-ers then evaluate the replenishment plan proposed by the Active OrdSuppli-ers VMI engine and can subsequently return sales orders or shipping schedules to the buyer to ensure maintenance of appropriate stock levels.
• Email Notification—Suppliers have the option to receive automated email alerts when a new or changed order arrives. Notifications can be sent to end users responsible for order fulfillment, customer service and sales functions. Auto notification enables users to identify changes to order contents, quantities and delivery dates that the supplier might not be able to achieve.
The benefits of automated order planning and execution can be substantial. Businesses using Active Orders have been able to improve buyer and supplier productivity by up to 25% by removing paper from communications and minimizing the use of costly and error-prone manual interactions. Automation frees up time for more strategic activities such as negotiating price and terms, undertaking spend analysis, and optimizing supplier selection.
BUYER Order Response
Purchase Order
SUPPLIER
Shipping and Receiving
The Shipping and Receiving module can significantly improve supply chain efficiency by automating warehouse receiving and digitizing documentation flows. Common shipping and receiving challenges include:
• Poor visibility to inbound materials, shipments, and in-transit inventory
• Incomplete and inaccurate shipment information due to poor data quality
• Difficulty in planning warehouse or distribution center labor schedules due to lack
of data on inbound shipments
• Inability to institute cross docking without visibility to inbound materials and shipments
Active Orders simplifies the shipping and receiving processes for both buyers and suppliers. • Advance Shipment Notification (ASN) Creation—Suppliers can generate ASNs
specifying the details of the contents, arrival date and transportation carrier for an upcoming delivery. ASN fields can be pre-populated from the original purchase order via a “turnaround” thereby reducing the likelihood of data errors.
• Data Quality—Over 100 configurable data quality rules can be adjusted to ensure the buyer always receives an accurate and complete ASN. Business rules allow buyers to control whether multiple purchase orders can be consolidated into a single shipment (or ASN) and to ensure a single ASN is not split across multiple destinations. • Warehouse Management System (WMS) Integration—Ship notices are then directly
transmitted into the buyer’s WMS. Active Orders supports interfaces to leading WMS solutions from Oracle, SAP, Red Prairie, i2, JDA, Manhattan Associates and others. • Barcode Labeling—Active Orders enables suppliers to create and print barcode labels
to be affixed to the physical shipment containers. When a shipment arrives at a BUYER
Sales Order/Shipping Schedule Master Data/Inventory Report
SUPPLIER
Vendor Management Inventory
BUYER Ship Notice
Goods Receipt
warehouse, the barcode label can be matched against the corresponding ASN in the WMS to facilitate rapid check-in.
• Goods Receipt—An electronic goods receipt can be sent by the buyer to the supplier. The proof of delivery (POD) can be used as a trigger for billing or a closed loop signal to track shipment status.
The use of Active Orders with ASNs and barcode labels has been shown to reduce receiv-ing time by up to 75% and reduce receivreceiv-ing errors by 80%.
Businesses also benefit from improved inventory management. With Active Orders, buyers and suppliers have visibility to inventory in-transit and on-order as well as expected arrival timeframes. When there is an urgent need for materials, parts or finished product, buyers can confidently assess whether the inbound inventory will arrive in time or whether an expedited shipment is necessary. Thus buyers and suppliers can optimize their use of safety stock and benefit from lowered transportation costs through a decrease in the reliance on expedited freight.
GXS Active Orders can facilitate complex scenarios such as direct store delivery, distri-bution center bulk pack or mark-for-end-location shipments, and supplier drop ship or direct-to-consumer deliveries.
Invoicing and Payment
The Invoicing and Payment module within the Active Orders application allows suppliers to generate accurate invoices as well as manage the payment status of invoices previously issued. More importantly, buyers can share an accurate, up-to-date view of all outstanding invoices with their supplier community.
Benefits realized through the Invoicing and Payment module of Active Orders include: • Increased Accounts Payable Productivity—Suppliers can view the status of their
outstanding invoices through the Active Orders application. Self service eliminates the need for a supplier’s collections staff to phone the buyer’s accounts payable staff about invoices. As a result, the volume of phone calls to your accounts payable cen-ters decreases and your staff productivity increases.
• Faster Approvals—Electronic invoicing can automate much of the invoice capture, validation and matching processes thereby reducing the time required for approval. When invoices are processed in paper format the workflow and approval process takes much longer. Sometimes payments can be delayed resulting in damaged relationships with suppliers.
BUYER Invoice/Credit Note
Remittance Advice
• Supply Chain Finance—Through automation, invoices can be approved within two to three days after receipt. This enables buyers to negotiate trade discounts with sup-pliers for early payment. Companies may also choose to route invoices to third-party financial institutions that offer supply chain finance services.
• Access to Remittance Information—The Active Orders application displays remit-tance advice from buyers to suppliers, identifying the payment settlement date as well as the payment amount. Additionally, buyers can provide remittance details, including originating bank ID, receiving bank ID, and any applicable invoice adjust-ment information. Using remittance advices, suppliers’ accounts receivable groups can easily identify which payments are related to which invoices and identify any discounts taken.
• Data Quality—Active Orders can eliminate a significant percentage of the manual work required to validate and match invoices by performing buyer-configurable data quality checks and thresholds before the documents are delivered to the buyer’s systems. Examples of this include:
– Population of all mandatory invoice fields (e.g., Purchase Order number, Remit-to-Address or General Ledger Code)
– Invoice price matches purchase order price – Invoice quantity matches actual goods shipped – Invoice quantity matches actual goods received
Visibility throughout the Order Lifecycle
The GXS Active Orders application allows for efficient order planning and execution between both an organization’s internal users and its external supplier community. Active Orders pro-vides a central web-based interface that offers a common dashboard for both business partners. Business users can quickly access important new documents and order changes, as well as manage supply chain exceptions, improving supply chain efficiency through ongoing monitor-ing, faster identification of problems and rapid response capabilities.
Why GXS Active Orders?
Improving the efficiency of your supply chain yields immediate and tangible results. Reducing waste, redundancy and cost translates into better supply chain performance and higher levels of customer satisfaction. Users of Active Orders can realize gains from: • SaaS Application—The Active Orders application is hosted by GXS in a data center
by leveraging existing supply chain integration systems and investments. SaaS ap-plications enable buyers to avoid the capital cost required by internally licensed software. With Active Orders you can pay as you go and pay only for what you use. • Visibility across ERP Applications—Most global companies have multiple ERP
systems for purchasing, invoicing, and supply chain execution. This often results in a lack of enterprise-wide visibility to the supply chain. Each organization executes transactions differently resulting in fragmented, inconsistent processes with no in-ternal control over the information. Active Orders acts as an overarching application into all the various ERP systems a business is operating.
GXS has over 40 years of experience in optimizing supply chains to improve performance and increase customer satisfaction. Contact us today to learn more about how GXS Active Orders can deliver improved visibility and performance to your B2B program.
About GXS
GXS is a leading B2B integration services provider and operates the world’s largest
integra-tion cloud, GXS Trading Grid®. Our software and services help more than 400,000
busi-nesses, including two-thirds of the Fortune 500 and 22 of the top 25 supply chains, extend their partner networks, automate receiving processes, manage electronic payments, and improve supply chain visibility. GXS Managed Services, our unique approach to improving
B2B integration operations, combines GXS Trading Grid® with our process orchestration
services and global team to manage a company’s multi-enterprise processes.
Based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, GXS has direct operations in 20 countries, employing more than 2,400 professionals. To learn more, see http://www.gxs.com, read our blog at http://www.gxsblogs.com, follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gxs and join us on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/gxs. You can also access our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission at http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml.
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