Business Goals
Our client, Frelan Hardware Ltd, formed in 1973, has established itself as one of the leading ironmongery suppliers to builders, timber merchants, architectural ironmongers, and D.I.Y. outlets. They aim to provide quality products at competitive prices to suit consumer needs, whether domestic or commercial.
Frelan aimed to seek automated solutions for the entire order processing workflow, from extracting data from purchase orders to validating pricing against its MySQL database and seamlessly entering verified orders into the ERP system. The Hardware Ltd wanted to completely eliminate manual data entry, enhance accuracy, and reduce human errors. The objective was to create a scalable system to handle bulk orders effortlessly.
Technology Challenges
- Frelan receives orders via email in PDF or CSV format with no standard template and differs from customer to customer.
- Time-consuming data extraction as the team has to download and review each file manually.
- The cross-verification process was complex, as the team had to manually check every item line against customer and pricing schedules stored in a MySQL database.
- Orders were manually entered into the ERP system, causing human errors.
- Loss of opportunity cost due to the manual efforts limitation to processing orders in bulk – reducing efficiency and delay in order fulfilment.
- Frequent manual errors caused by extensive human effort in data processing lead to inaccuracies and inefficiencies in order validation and entry.
- The significant time and effort required on routine tasks reduced team productivity and the ability to focus on other priority tasks.
How NeosAlpha Helped?
To help the order processing team at Frelan maximize the business value of the engagement, NeosAlpha’s discovery team observed the function of the order verification process and understood the nature of orders to deduce a solution fit for our client. Frelan liked the potential offered by our solution, which was to implement Boomi integration services in conjunction with our OCR Engine.
Our OCR engine converted the differently structured PDF and CSV files into editable and searchable data, essentially allowing the system to recognize, interpret, and verify text within the emailed PO files.
To address these challenges, we implemented a solution using the Boomi platform and our OCR Engine. The key steps and solutions provided are as follows:
1. Reading PDFs from Emails and Sending them to Local System (Email to Disk Integration)
- Challenge: Ensure only PDF attachments are processed, excluding other documents, signatures, and images that could add unnecessary load to the system.
- Solution: We developed a Boomi process that filters emails to extract only PDF attachments and saves them to the local system.
2. Extracting PO Information and Converting to JSON
- Challenge: Standardize the template for data extraction across different customers to avoid creating separate Boomi processes for each customer.
- Solution: Our NeosAlpha OCR Engine, executed within Boomi, processes the PDF files to extract SKU, quantity, and unit price information and converts it into the required format with 100% accuracy. This standardized approach ensured consistent automated data extraction irrespective of the customer’s PDF template.
3. Validating Prices and SKUs
- Challenge: Ensure the extracted SKU and pricing information are accurate and valid according to the client’s database.
- Solution: After our OCR Engine converts the data into JSON, a Boomi process validates the SKU and pricing information against the client’s database. Any discrepancies, such as mismatched prices or invalid SKUs, are flagged for review.
4. Converting PO to EDI and Sending Files
- Challenge: Different customers had different requirements for receiving the processed POs on disk or via email.
- Solution: We designed the process to convert the validated PO information into EDI format. Based on customer preferences, the final EDI files were sent to the required destinations. We emailed the client detailed error reports with any validation issues.
Results
The implementation of this automated solution provided the client with several significant benefits:
- Increased Accuracy: The manual data entry process was fully automated, significantly reducing the chances of human errors.
- Enhanced Efficiency: The automated data extraction and validation process leads to faster processing times.
- Cost and Time Savings: The client experienced considerable savings in both time and operational costs due to the reduced manual workload helped satisfaction levels in the client
- End-to-End Integration: A fully automated system streamlined order processing, ensuring seamless data flow between emails, OCR extraction, validation, and ERP entry.
- No Manual Intervention: Eliminated the dependency on manual data entry, reducing errors, improving accuracy, and enhancing overall operational efficiency.
