This process begins when the system gets a
request from a consumer. Customers can place orders online directly on your
website or by email from your sales staff. Either way, automating your order
management can help you move orders quickly from order entry to cash receipt.
Order fulfillment and delivery follow next in the cycle (Ahmed et al., 2017). This stage of the cycle
mostly pertains to firms that deal with physical items, where inventory staff
should be informed with the correct information of the order to proceed with
fulfillment and delivery. When it comes to digital services or Software as a
Service (SaaS), this might entail allowing access to the ordered product or
service.
In this case, study how the booking to cash process is
occurring in the photography company Fotof
Fotof's
booking to cash or Order to cash provides services in the areas of family
photography, personal event photography (such as weddings and parties), and
commercial photography (mainly corporate events photography). Photography firm
Fotof specializes in family, personal events (weddings, parties), and
commercial photography (e.g., corporate events). When a consumer plans a photo
session appointment, the booking-to-cash procedure at Fotof begins. This
process continues until the customer pays and receives their purchased photos
after making an order. In the preceding year, Fotof received tens of thousands
of business orders and eighty thousand individual consumer orders (Almeida et al., 2019). Upon receiving the order from the customer,
the technician will make any necessary edits (if required by the customer).
Occasionally, special requests necessitate communication between the technician
and the client via email or phone to ensure that everyone is on the same page
and to determine the best way to fulfill the request, as well as whether or not
the special request will result in an additional fee and how much it will
cost.. Images from a photoshoot are available in the session's gallery for 30
days after the fact (a reminder is sent to the customer 5 days before the
expiry date). Customers who have not placed an order within this period will
get an invoice for the minimum billing amount.
Identification
of waste
The
picture goods order is the final product the customer receives at the end of
the sales process. As a result, for that viewpoint, value-adding waste categorization
is utilized. Value-adding steps are any that improve the final result. Editing,
printing, validating, quality checks, and shipping are all services that
customers are ready to pay for. All actions are taken to keep the company
functioning efficiently offer value to the company. There are several processes
involved in this process, including documenting, accounting, and tracking
orders. All the other processes are non-value-adding, such as sending,
receiving, and handover (Bose and
Roy, 2019).
It
is decided who of the studio's photographers will be in charge of photographing
the event. The photographer sends the photos to a file server when the
photoshoot is over. Eventually, a technician removes duplicates and
unsuccessful photos from the images. Later, the technician uses a specialized
photo studio software application to edit and arrange the remaining images into
a picture gallery (Jamnik et al., 2019). The customer gets
alerted through email when the gallery has been completed. The message also
contains a link to the gallery's website address. Customers may go through the
gallery and choose which images they want to be printed (and in what quantity),
as well as which images they want to be downloaded as digital files (full
resolution).
Recommendation
to improve the process
Improving
the booking or order can be done in three ways:
(1)
before the photography session (booking cancellation);
(2)
if the client fails to show up or fails to reschedule; or
(3)
after the photography session if the customer fails to purchase any photographs
within 30 days after the shooting has taken place (no-show).
There is no cancellation fee if you cancel before the photoshoot. A fee of e 50 is charged for no-show cancellations that take place "on-site," rather than in the studio. In the event of a no-show, the customer has the option to reschedule the appointment, but the no-show fee for on-location photographs is still charged to the customer. Photographers charge e 100 for in-studio sessions even if no images are purchased by customers who don't purchase anything.