AVANTGARD. BPM for Deductions and Chargebacks

Transcription

1 AVANTGARD BPM for Deductions and Chargebacks

2 Business Process Management with Control and Auditing Many corporations struggle with the complications and process workflows around managing deductions and chargebacks that occur in the order-to-cash cycle. When a deduction or chargeback takes place, the process that follows often involves many different points of contact across the supply chain including manufacturing, shipping, sales and customer service. Further, the routing process can also be incredibly complex and based on multiple decision points. Compounding these issues, the associated data is often poorly organized or difficult to find, and typically there is not a standard system or procedure in place to identify and route deductions and chargebacks for timely processing and resolution. Business Process Management for Complex Deduction Routing Deductions generally stem from customer product returns but can also include errors in price or discount, quantity, tax and freight charges among others. Each of these situations often involves a complex routing scheme in order to resolve the dispute. The process often includes many decision points and variables such as: Product Line Amount of Deduction Region Sales Area Type of Deduction Approval Routing and Thresholds To minimize the costs associated with deductions, corporations need to institute a blend of best practices and technology, which can help mitigate the impact of deductions, optimize processes, lessen processing time and reduce associated costs. Business Process Management for Complex Chargeback Routing Similar to deductions, it is equally as important for corporations to have a plan in place for strategically managing chargebacks. There are three main types of chargebacks, which consist of: intentional chargebacks, or the deals, advertising and promotional allowances that occur between a vendor and a retail organization; preventable chargebacks, including those that involve operational and compliance issues, such as early or late shipments and missing goods; and unauthorized chargebacks, or those that arise from circumstances that are not planned and may not be preventable, such as an unexpected return of a good. Limiting the costs associated with varying types of chargebacks can be difficult. Key to this is for vendors to address chargebacks as early in the process as possible and keep track of them by the reason for return (reason code). Analyzing deductions by evaluating the customer and reason code can help with root cause analysis and continuous improvement initiatives such as Lean Six Sigma. Tailor Workflows to Match Your Business Processes The challenges described above have led many companies to adopt Business Process Management (BPM) solutions that are specifically configured to manage deductions and chargebacks The AvantGard BPM solution for Deductions & Chargebacks is specifically designed to address common types of process management that would occur during invoice settlement while allowing for additional workflows to be built.

3 Key Challenges High volume, low dollar deductions often seen in CPG/FMCPG and transportation Industries Complex deduction & chargeback process Major accounts with high volume of deductions Require multiple decision process points across the resolution cycle Lengthy deduction resolution cycle benefits Create complex business processes to match to deduction workflow Integrated with core AvantGard Receivables solution (GETPAID) for streamlined collections Consistent execution of business process Common modeling environment Pre-configured Workflows Many companies in industries such as consumer goods, transportation and medical devices experience a large number of complex deduction issues. This is particularly true when companies have large retail customers with a Vendor Compliance program in place. Adherence to this program (or any set of complex customer policies) can help reduce revenue leakage and improve cu stomer satisfaction. In fact, these rules can be very difficult, and expensive, for a company to follow and the overhead of additional procedures, computer systems, and personnel around resolving the infractions increases the cost of goods sold. Catching problems early and expediting resolution can have a significant impact in customer profitability. AvantGard BPM can help mitigate costs by introducing more stringent workflows to deal with these complex deductions and chargebacks. Configurable functionality will help you to enhance the quality of your internal procedures, while also providing you the visibility to make operational adjustments as needed for improved compliance. The following workflows can be tailored within the AvantGard BPM solution to meet your specific requirements; and additional workflows can be built. Promotions: Business Process that addresses Marketing and Coupon promotions claims. Some companies may also use this workflow to address a variety of promotion claims such as rebates and premiums. Using an extensive rules engine companies can determine owner assignment for each activity and to ensure requisite data was captured before advancing to next steps. Returned Merchandise Authorization (RMA): Poor support and slow returns processing lead to a dissatisfied customer base. For this reason, AvantGard BPM offers a workflow that can be tailored to specifically match a company s RMA policy. By introducing BPM, corporations can streamline the RMA process, helping to improve the overall customer experience. The flexible workflow will help you organize and consolidate all aspects of your RMA in one tool; including the ability to attach documentation and images. Using this configurable functionality will aid you in uncovering the hidden costs and untapped revenue streams in support of returns management. The tool will also facilitate faster returns processing, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction rates. Delivery: This business process is used to validate valid delivery claims including and not limited to Damaged Goods and Proof of delivery. Activities are put into place to verify Return Orders and Credit Note creation. Pricing: This process is used to handle a broad range of pricing issues. For example, an extensive rules engine can be leveraged to

4 determine owner assignment for each activity and to ensure requisite data was captured before advancing to next steps. The workflow can also initiate the credit memo process. Companies can use this process to enforce usage of Closure Codes that may be different from initial Reason Codes and to allow for extensive escalation notifications based on specific variables that are in place. Sales Tax: This business process is used to address the capture and validation of a sales tax certificate. The workflow allows for automatic correspondence to a customer based on approval or denial of issue. Complex Credit Memo Process with Authorization: Efficient and effective management of credit memos is integral to a company s ability to manage the credit & collections process. To facilitate this process, AvantGard BPM automates the approval of credit memos electronically. The solution has the capabilities to configure hierarchical approval levels as a function of amount and reason-codes, and leverages built-in workflow for routing. Developing a Sound BPM Model Developing a sound BPM model depends on incorporating the right set of data, rules, workflow formulas and other relevant factors. SunGard can help you establish a robust BPM by simplifying the creation and management of enterprise and business process solutions specific to your companies needs. With out-of-the box functionality for process modeling, execution, analysis and integration, SunGard is an industry leader in scalable, standards-based BPM. We provide a unified platform to help transform existing operations into consistently managed, enterprise processes. The platform s automation, integration and monitoring that adhere to the proven J2EE, XML and BPM standards, help organizations reduce implementation costs and increase return on investment. Integrating BPM with Deduction and Chargeback Management By taking steps to identify deductions early in the process, corporations can save time and money. Integrating BPM with your AvantGard GETPAID solution will help you gain real-time visibility into the source of deductions and chargebacks, and then providing automated routing functionality to bring these issues to resolution. Insight into deductions and chargebacks aids management in establishing process changes that can remedy recurring issues. By leveraging deduction information, corporations can also identify key customers and from there develop deduction recovery and prevention strategies. For example, strategies may include preparation of settlement meeting packages, negotiation training and standard methods for identifying and resolving key issues. Reporting can also become more meaningful when BPM is introduced. Enhanced reporting can provide management with visibility to root-cause information, which is necessary to understanding recurring issues, or tracking and evaluating deduction performance. Integrating BPM with Cash Application Deductions are often first detected during the cash application process. AvantGard GETPAID capitalizes on this by integrating cash application with deduction management in order to minimize revenue leakage. Using configurable rules, AvantGard GETPAID automatically detects both deductions (shortpays) and chargebacks, and then directs these outstanding items directly through the BPM workflow. AvantGard will immediately assign ownership to evaluate the validity. From there, the BPM workflow will guide the relevant employees though the appropriate steps of resolving the issue in a timely manner.

5 Leveraging SunGard s Infinity Process Platform The AvantGard BPM for Deductions and Chargebacks leverages SunGard s Infinity Process Platform, which uses the industry standard J2EE frame-work for enterprise integration. J2EE facilities, such as JMS, JCA, Web Services, JAAS and others, are natively supported and accessed. The platform uses JAAS to work seamlessly in standards-based Single-Sign-On installations, while LDAP compliance helps the platform to access centralized user repositories and permissions. The Infinity Process Platform is built with a platform neutral philosophy. It supports a wide range of J2EE application servers, as well as SPRING, Relational Database Management Systems and Operating Systems. It also integrates with many popular user interface technologies, including JAVA,.NET and Windows client. Event-Based Monitoring Agent Framework The Infinity Process Platform s process engine and agent framework can be used in combination to help discover, monitor and adapt native business processes within legacy systems or current technologies. Existing processes in the legacy system environment are graphically presented using the Process Definition Desktop, which serves as the basis for the software agent s monitoring capabilities. BPM Standards The Infinity Process Platform helps support BPM standards by offering capabilities for building enterprise solutions. It can interoperate with other BPM tools by exchanging complete process definitions, including people and systems, in XML Process Definition Language (XPDL). The combination of these BPM standards with J2EE integration features offers a unified view of process design including user workflows, application integration and systems orchestration. Process Repository An XPDL repository helps support model versioning, where branches reflect both the evolution of the model and the private versions currently checked out by process designers. A difference analysis helps allow merging of the versions at check-in. Other BPM process formats can also be imported and exported using XSL. Runtime Environment Business processes modeled and deployed in Infinity Process Platform are executed in the process engine, which runs within an EJB container. Enterprise configurations for clustering and failover are supported for any size environment. The software agent reports event occurrences back to the process engine, thereby helping to provide a monitoring capability to verify structure, workflow accuracy and process progress status. Without changing the existing process execution, different systems may now be integrated and more cost effective solutions may be introduced to help perform process tasks more effectively.

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