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Manage and optimize orders in the order to cash end-to-end business process

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Applies to: Dynamics 365 Business Cental, Dynamics 365 Commerce, Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

This article introduces the order to cash end-to-end business process. It outlines how Dynamics 365 products can help organizations manage and optimize their order to cash processes. This end-to-end business process has the number 65 in the business process catalog. Learn more at About the business process catalog for Dynamics 365 apps.

Order to cash overview

The order to cash business process flow is a standard term used to describe the entirety of an organization's sales order process. The process is sometimes referred to as O2C or OTC. Generally speaking, the order to cash business process includes everything that happens in an organization from a customer places an order until the payment is received and settled with the invoice.

Important

The process defined here does not include the process for marketing to prospective customers, tracking leads and opportunities and the creation of quotes. Learn more at Prospect to quote overview.

Also note that the order to cash process described here does not include order fulfillment process. The process of fulfilling orders is described in the inventory to deliver process. Learn more at Inventory to deliver overview.

Every organization has variations to the order to cash business process. Here, we define the basic outline for any organization looking to implement a technology solution to support the order to cash business process.

Impact on the organization

The order to cash business process is important for all organizations because it directly impacts your customer service experiences, workforce planning, inventory management practices, and cashflow.

Technology solutions that you implement to support your order to cash business process should be flexible to allow your organization to grow and adjust as both the market and supply chain evolve. Having a periodic review of your order to cash business processes can ensure that your technology aligns with your business goals and objectives.

Stakeholders

Many people in an organization contribute to the decision-making process and design of the order to cash business processes in your Dynamics 365 project. Stakeholders include, but is not limited to, the following list:

  • Sales stakeholders – examples: VP of sales, Sales Directors, General Managers
  • Planning stakeholders – examples: COO, VP of Operations, Operations Manager, Planning manager,
  • Production stakeholders – examples: Production manager, Production scheduler
  • Finance stakeholders – examples: CFO, Controller, Finance director, Accounts receivable, Credit and collections
  • Human resource stakeholders – examples: CPO, Director of Human Resources, Human Resources manager, Recruiter
  • Audit stakeholders – examples: Internal auditors, External auditors

Benefits

When your organization plans to implement technology solutions to assist with the order to cash process, there are several benefits the solution can help provide. Use these key benefits to determine if the solution is a good fit for your business and to drive the specific business requirements for implementing the solution. As a side effect, these benefits can form a baseline for your goals and objectives for the project. This way, you can measure the success of implementing solutions to meet those business requirements.

Increase sales

Implementing a technology solution alone is not likely to increase your organization sales volume or revenue. However, implementing Dynamics 365 can provide the insights and productivity tools to help your business. Users have the right information available to make better business decisions and provide the tools to manage the sales process in a more efficient way. This benefit may be achieved through simpler user interfaces, improved approval processes, automated steps, or better integration with other systems in your technology eco system.

Improve cash flow

For real-time visibility into your cash flow, apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to the data you have in your systems. This way, you get predictive analytics to see what the cash flow outlook is over future periods. Couple these insights with tools to help automate the collection process, and productivity tools to make your collectors and accounts receivable teams more efficient to improve the cash flow.

Optimize customer experiences

When you can use technology to help your sales process, the customer experience can be improved. For example, virtual agents or chat bots can help answer questions about products and services, or you might have an easy-to-use commerce website for customers. Dynamics 365 offers various tools and products to help organizations optimize customer experiences. Many of these tools fall into the case to resolution process. Learn more at Case to resolution overview.

Monitor and analyze sales

Because Dynamics 365 is built on Azure and the Power Platform, you can use tools that are built into the application and the technology stack to meet your organizational reporting and analytics requirements. The Record to Report end-to-end business process describes these capabilities in more detail. Learn more at Record to report end-to-end overview. We have various tools available to help you report on and analyze your data. Learn more at Business intelligence, reporting, and analytics.

Next steps

If you want to implement Dynamics 365 solutions to assist with your order to cash business processes, you can use the following resources and steps to learn more.

  1. Define the goals and objectives of implementing an order to cash technology solution. Learn more at Implementation strategy.

  2. Define the business process scope of your project. Learn more at Process-focused solution.

  3. Request a demo or get a free trial of Dynamics 365 solutions for the order to cash process. Learn more at Request a demo.

  4. Get an overview of the order to cash process. Learn more at Order to cash overview.

Use the following resources to learn more about the order to cash process in Dynamics 365.

Tip

Dynamics 365 Business Central also supports the order to cash end-to-end scenario but relies on third-party apps for the full capabilities. Learn more at Sales overview.

Contributors

This article is maintained by Microsoft. It was originally written by the following contributors.

Principal author:

  • Rachel Profitt | Principal Program Manager, FastTrack for Dynamics 365