With order automation, sellers focus on sales, increase the level of service and reduce time and costs)
Santher, a Brazilian company that has been in the market for over 84 years, is dedicated to building brands and businesses in the markets for consumer goods, paper for industrial use and hygiene solutions for industries, commercial establishments, companies and hotels. In 2020, the company was acquired by H&PC Participações S/A, and since then, the Japanese multinationals Daio Paper Corporation and Marubeni Corporation S/A have been in charge of the organization.
With a production of 180 thousand tons of paper per year, a volume that places Santher among the 15 largest in the sector in the world in terms of production capacity. Investment in technology is central to the business model. It has been happening since 2019 with AutomationEdge's RPA and Quality Digital, a specialist in accelerating its clients' businesses with creative and innovative high-value digital solutions, as a partner to enable the process.
“They were chosen after observing cutting-edge tools, well evaluated by Gartner, with simple governance and licensing,” highlights the project supervisor, “in the beginning, until the team feels confident, it is difficult to accelerate. In the first year, we even had doubts about whether we had chosen the best option, but with the support of Quality Digital, we gained speed and understanding, and we felt super confident in developing any new flow”, comments Alexandre Mendes, technology project supervisor at Santher.
Initially, the process was carried out during the pandemic and had automation focused on the financial, logistics and accounting areas, such as granting access to legacy systems, registering discounts, registering bonuses and revoking access. However, with the constant investment in innovation, the commercial areas were not left out, and the ease of placing orders was the new focus of the IT area in 2022. “With a volume of PDFs of up to 80 pages and more than 10 different layouts, we found several problems when analyzing the processes: the delay in updating the order book (KPI), the sellers' time being spent on manual and repetitive activities, human error in entering the order resulting in the customer returning the cargo due to delivery not in accordance with the original order and the shipping cost with re-delivery as a result of returns”, explains the supervisor.
Today, the implemented robot types around 1,200 orders per month, while the salesperson manually types 200. Over a year, 14,400 orders were placed, which generated 12,000 more orders placed per year in an automated way, as they were manually placed, making around 2,400 per year. “RPA has benefited us since the beginning of automation, and continues to benefit us with the KPI being updated almost online, salespeople dedicated to sales, reduction of errors due to human error and, consequently, the return rate avoiding re-delivery costs”, he says Alexandre Mendes, “the success of automation generated demands from other areas, and with that we are evaluating training some key people from other areas to accelerate the development of new flows, RPA is here to stay”.