Sydney, Australia — April 9, 2015 — Esker, a worldwide leader in document process automation solutions and pioneer in cloud computing, today announced it has been selected by Kern Pharma, a specialist in the development, manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceuticals, particularly generics, to automate its sales order management process. Esker’s Sales Order Processing solution has enabled Kern Pharma to cut order processing and customer response time in half, resulting in on-time product deliveries to recipients.
Kern Pharma, an Indukern Group company that’s headquartered in Terrassa, Spain, receives 75,000 orders a year via EDI, fax or email, 40,000 of which are manually processed into its SAP® system. Thanks to Esker, Kern Pharma has saved a significant amount of time and reduced error rates associated with manual sales order processing.
Esker’s cloud-based solution works by receiving all of Kern Pharma’s fax and email orders (an average of 3,000 per month) and automatically extracting any relevant data. That data is then validated and integrated into Kern Pharma’s SAP system electronically.
Benefits Achieved
On average, Kern Pharma can process an incoming order in 50 seconds — a process that previously took up to two minutes — resulting in a faster customer response time. Additional benefits include:
- Processing time cut in half
- Process visibility: every action is tracked
- Simplified search commands: a multi-criteria search engine helps find customer orders in just a few clicks
- Less physical space required for archiving documents
Customisable and Collaborative Dashboards
Kern Pharma’s Customer Service teams use Esker’s dashboards and metrics to access important information such as the number of orders received in a given period of time or the average time it takes to process orders. Solution administrators can custom-design dashboards to best meet the needs of their users, as well as define metrics that align with business goals. Information can be easily shared and analysed in order to identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions.
“Esker’s easy-to-use and engaging environment simplifies the sales order processing workflow,” said Irene Liébanas, Customer Service Coordinator at Kern Pharma. “With relevant and valuable information at our fingertips, order processing and tracking is done seamlessly and enhances customer satisfaction.”
Future Projects
Shortly after solution implementation, Esker has already delivered cost savings and opened the door for other potential opportunities. “Esker has supported us every step of the project and is always available, even after deployment,” said Albert Almajano, Director Systems Business Group at Indukern Group. “Following our successful collaboration, we recommended Esker’s Sales Order Processing solution to other industry players, and we even plan to implement it within other companies in our group.”
About Kern Pharma
Kern Pharma is a specialist in the development, manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceuticals. Created in 1999 by the Indukern Group, the company has established itself in 15 years as a leading player in the Spanish generic drug industry. Historically, Kern Pharma articulates the growth of its business around two strategic axes: the development, manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceuticals under the Kern brand (with a strong emphasis on generics), and providing services for third parties (development, contract manufacturing and chemical production). Kern Pharma has over 650 employees and produces about 100 million units per year.