Some 3.4 out of every 100 orders are messed up through manual intervention, according to a Sterling commerce sponsored survey of more than 300 IT decision makers in the UK, France and Germany.
Despite implementing fancy supply chain infrastructures, 8 in 10 IT managers still rely on mail or faxes to send and receive order and purchasing documents among partners. Only half the businesses surveyed communicated with partners and suppliers electronically.
Integrating with back-end systems was identified as a priority by respondents. Many firms said they were struggling to integrate their IT systems with supply chain partners, impacting their ability to automate document processing.
Errors introduced through re-keying data typically incurred a penalty charge of euro 39 ($56). French companies were the worst culprits, with 5.48 wrong orders for every 100, while the UK came out as the most efficient, with 2.43 orders per 100 and charges of euro 36.3 ($52) per order.
Businesses also need to take into account the hidden, longer term impact of manual document processing. Process inefficiency has a tremendous impact on business agility in the long term, holding back European businesses from exploiting market growth opportunities, said DaveCarmichael, senior product marketing manager at Sterling Commerce.
