GP Batteries, one of the world’s major suppliers of primary and rechargeable batteries, is enhancing its operational efficiency and agility by embedding SAP Robotic Process Automation to eliminate manual and time-consuming business development and customer service processes.
Founded in Hong Kong in 1964 and with an annual output of over 6 billion batteries each year, GP Batteries supplies an extensive range of battery and related products to original equipment manufacturers, leading battery companies and consumer retail markets worldwide.
By serving customers through a mix of traditional and online channels, operations of GP Batteries span across Asia, Europe and the Americas.
In 2021, the company accelerated its company-wide digital transformation by infusing automation into seven business development and customer service processes, delivering comprehensive workflow management, robotic process automation and artificial intelligence capabilities.
Leveraging SAP Robotic Process Automation, GP Batteries’ Business Development team automated its regular search and reformat of data from external sources, which has been done manually in the past.
The solution automatically uploads the data to the company’s business intelligence software for analysis and generates reports that save time and eliminate the potential for human error. In addition, SAP Robotic Process Automation supports easy integration with other SAP applications.
GP Batteries has also fully automated its customer service processes for sharing data between the SAP Enterprise Resourcing Planning (ERP) solution and portals operated by customers and partners.
With SAP Robotic Process Automation, order fulfilment information is now automatically consolidated and updated daily, rather than via a weekly manual process.
Updating orders on client platforms has also been streamlined. Packing lists that used to take three weeks to process, confirm and upload, are now ready as needed, significantly improving accuracy and reducing the need to re-work.
The system also enables GP Batteries to quickly generate estimates to update SAP ERP and other relevant internal systems by automatically processing large volumes of materials costing data from spreadsheets.
“We have made significant headway with SAP Robotic Process Automation which enables us to automate repetitive and mundane processes and scale up our business development and customer service operations,” said Wilson Wong, director of global information technology at GP Global Marketing.
“By strengthening our digital foundation, we are now well positioned to power our digital transformation and elevate our operations to the next level,” said Wong.
