Vertical Markets – RPA Logistics

Use Cases in Logistics

Updating international arrivals and departures for air & ocean freight shipments

The bot pulls a report and finds the shipments that should have arrived or departed and for which the information has not yet been updated. It then uses reference numbers to retrieve the related data and updates the operations systems with the shipment details. Unlike a human operator, though, the bot works 24/7 and can check constantly for updates. RPA significantly reduces the time that the manual process takes. It also implements strong process controls and completely accurate output —and all with far greater visibility for the end customer.
Invoice Management Manually tracking and entering invoice data is a labor–intensive yet mission–critical process, making it perfect for automation. RPA in supply chain can make it easier to process invoice documents from vendors and suppliers with less chance of error. RPA speeds up tasks such as extracting information from invoices and validating and verifying information. Read about our Invoice Bot here. 

Inventory Management

RPA can help continuously monitor inventory, notifying you when levels are low. And when new shipments need to be ordered, RPA can perform the job function of an employee by ordering new shipments at the right time. RPA also helps with tracking inventory as it flows throughout the warehouse. Manually tracking thousands of items as they move across service areas is time–consuming and prone to error. RPA can automate this process, deploying software robots to track inventory as it flows from receiving to shelves to production to shipping.

Supply and Demand

Supply and demand planning traditionally involves examining complex records and data sets, such as historical sales data, market indicators, and custom orders. And you have to track down and ingest this data from vendors, customers, and internal teams. This can be time–consuming, tedious and error–prone. RPA provides a more efficient way to ingest and analyze this data through automation. It does this by gathering and merging information, preparing data for manual analysis, and sharing it with planners. According to a specific set of predefined rules , RPA is then able to analyze nuances and trends in large sets of data and customer purchasing activity that are easy to miss. The findings are then delivered in a detailed report.

Purchase Order Management

RPA can run purchase orders through automated criteria such as pricing, quantity, and regularity of purchase. When an approval matches optimization criteria, it gets sent through. When it doesn’t, the bot uses notifications to run the remaining purchase orders through procurement managers for a formal review. By utilizing automated approval workflows, RPA allows you to closely review a smaller number of more important orders. Watch a bot interact with and place orders at Office Depot!

Refunds and Returns Processing

Logistics businesses that rely wholly on human intervention in their processing workflows can quickly be overwhelmed. Refunds and returns are the perfect application for RPA in supply chain. By using rules–based task automation, RPA can reduce the need for human intervention in most cases freeing up labor to focus on processing that relies solely on human decisions. By reducing human intervention and automating processing, RPA accelerates resolution and reduces the risk of errors.

ERP Integration

Handling data entry and migration can become cumbersome, repetitive, and prone to error. With RPA in supply chain, these processes can be handled automatically and at lightning speed, from invoice data entry to data validation and monitoring.