LPO processing for Retail Back

Customer

Our customer is one of the largest retail distributors in the region interested predominantly in trading and distribution of Fresh Fruits, Vegetables, and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG). Founded in 1972, our customer began as a wholesale fruit store in Dubai. Over the last 45 years, they have expanded its horizons progressively, diversifying into various other sectors.

Challenge

When dealing with fast-moving customer goods (FMCG) as often as in the case of retail, there’s no denying that details are crucial to retail's success. Here the details lied in the local purchase order (LPO) that the client received from their customers which could be numerous. After receiving the LPO, client designated team would start filling in the details in their SAP portal. This process would take a lot of time considering that numerous LPOs were received daily and error by humans was always a possibility.

Solution

Gaining a full insight into the client’s needs, we proposed a solution that would be automated using RPA (Robotic Process Automation). This online solution was created in SharePoint and integrated into the client's SAP portal with Power Automate. Now, whenever an LPO was received by email, the email would be read by the system. It would gather the crucial information and the SAP system would be fed the data accordingly. The information would then be matched and allocated in specific folders of the retailers. Thus, the information was consistent and with no errors.

Benefits

The client was able to achieve the following with this Power Automate project:

  • The whole process became smooth and efficient
  • Elimination of manual processing allowed employees to focus on higher-value tasks and reduce workload stress  
  • 100% effort was automated and less than 2% error rate
  • 35 hours saved in terms of manual labor