What's the impact of data entry errors? How much does it cost? Let's assume a company’s employees spent on an average of 5 minutes correcting errors per SAP transaction and they make $24/hour.
Did you know that barcodes scanned has a 99.999% success rate? In other words, as compared to manual keying data, barcodes are reliable, inexpensive, and fast. Often overlooked, barcode technology is one of the most significant innovations.
We may not give it much attention; nevertheless, it is used more extensively with each passing day. Whether it is at a self-checkout at a grocery store or at the back of your driver's license, the white and black stripes provide properly spelled information in a reliable and consistent manner. At Liquid UI, we understand the value of barcode technology and its application across an array of industries, from healthcare to government and manufacturing to utilities.
Why use a browser when you have a native app on your ARM chip devices? The phone on your hand is a few million times more powerful than the computer that guided Apollo 11 to the moon. With such power, it can be more than just the enclosure for a web browser. We have integrated barcoding, OCR, GPS, and camera into our app.
Are you unsure or speculating the real value of barcodes in your industry? We’ve put together a list of 3 unique ways barcodes and barcode technologies are used in SAP by our customers – gaining personnel productivity, process efficiency, and data accuracy.
Barcodes in Automation Industry
ABB was looking for a faster, mobile alternative for their desktop-based SAP system. They used to drag the computer system on a trolley for scanning material across their warehouse.
Before Liquid UI:
Warehouse personnel relied heavily on paper-based processes to track inventory since the data was trapped inside a wired-only SAP system. They were manually keying material information like PO Number, Line Item, and Quantity for generating a PO Receipt. At times, they had to repeat this same process numerous times for each material, which made this process too intricate and time-consuming.
Effects:
The data was touched and worked on twice because of paper-based processes. It made inventory management time-consuming and error-prone. Furthermore, all the manual typing of the information affected data integrity and warehouse personnel productivity.
After Liquid UI:
- ABB was amazed by the fact that how quick they were able to customized SAP with Liquid UI. One of the most complex transactions, MIGO was customized in 5 days.
- Liquid UI's RPA for SAP provided ABB with a customized barcode solution on handheld scanguns. It enabled warehouse personnel to populate multiple details with a single click. For instance, auto-populate PO Number, Line Item and Quantity fields for their PO Receipts process with a single barcode scan – removing data entry errors and enabling automated data capture.
- The whole SAP customization solution for SAP WM with Liquid UI resulted in a 75% improvement in data accuracy and increased warehouse personnel productivity by 40%.
Barcodes in Automation Industry
Welch Allyn has close-to 2,500 employees working in 26 different countries. They wanted a simplified SAP interface on a fun devices like iPods for their users on the manufacturing floor.
Before Liquid UI:
Users not only had to take long walks across the manufacturing floor but also had to go through multiple data entries in SAP for simple processes like moving empty bins to the stockroom. They needed to memorize data entry steps/actions like F3, F5, F8, Enter, Save, etc. and field values for the backflushing process. Furthermore, their users needed to enter all the data manually due to lack of automation.
Effects:
The floor personnel struggled, which made the manufacturing process slow. In case for any wrong click or data entry error, the whole process had to be redone, resulting in a significant expense.
After Liquid UI:
"Liquid UI screens can do amazing things. Reducing a transaction we do 350,000 times a year from 2 screens to 1, from 20 fields to 8, results in tremendous value." says Andy Rindfleisch, Manufacturing Systems Manager, Welch Allyn. "The savings goes back to the business as we become leaders in optimizing our manufacturing supply chain."
- Welch Allyn observed that users were only using about 5% of the standard SAP screens and fields. Using Liquid UI, Welch Allyn created simple inventory transactions such as a single screen MF1B transaction and a single MIGO screen.
- Welch Allyn went from 22 keystrokes to one barcode scan, making the process 10x faster with fewer errors. Floor users no longer had to type in the data manually.
Barcodes in Automation Industry
Graybar obtains nearly 17,000 orders in a day, many of which includes a counter order.
Before Liquid UI:
CSRs would receive the order at the counter and initiate the process of creating a sales order in their SAP GUI. They would manually type in material info and search for the location of that material. At times, when the material was unavailable at a specific location, a CSR would walk back to their desktop and again search for the matching material. Imagine repeating the above steps for multiple materials, until all the material were found. The CSR would complete the sales order process in SAP and then finally hand the merchandise to the customer.
Effects:
All the manual keying the material information along with back and forth walk to gather material made the task laborious and dropped CSRs productivity. Furthermore, CSRs were unable to get material availability information at the right time, which not only hindered operational efficiency, but also increases customer wait time.
After Liquid UI:
- Graybar loved that Liquid UI Apps worked with their existing SAP landscape and appreciated the fact that it didn't require any middleware.
- They eliminated manually keying material info with barcoding where now a CSR is able to enter counter order details by scanning the material UPC code.
- Furthermore, with robotic process automation for SAP after scanning a UPC code, the CSRs now gets alerts upfront for unavailable material while searching.
- The whole SAP customization solution for SAP SD and SAP WM with Liquid UI resulted in improved CSRs' productivity by 70% and enhanced cycle count process efficiency by 66%.
- Out-of-the-box barcode scanning on all SAP (ECC, ERP, or S/4HANA) input fields using a built-in camera
- Add/remove prefix and suffix from the scanned value
- Add functionalities such as auto-populate, auto-enter, or auto-tab
- Creating scanning rules based on specific barcode types
- Populate multiple SAP (ECC, ERP, or S/4HANA) input fields at a time with a single barcode scan
- One-click license installation
- Adding an SAP (ECC, ERP, or S/4HANA) connection with a single QR Code scan
Post written by Punil Shah, Director of Digital Marketing
