Bill of Material (BOM) is a crucial document in the manufacturing industry as it comprises a detailed list of raw materials, components, sub-components, and other material required for building a product. All the employees in the company refer the document to know what to purchase, how to purchase, where to purchase, and for detailed instructions such as how to assemble a product and pack it. The document is so critical to the manufacturing companies that even a single miss or an error could lead to issues such as inferior material planning, inaccurate product cost, elevated production cost, and even delay in shipment, which is why RPA becomes so significant in the manufacturing industry.

While basic automation tools such as macro-based applets, screen scraping tools, and product-specific workflows are helpful in automating certain activities under BOM, RPA specifically helps in enhancing process automation by completely replicating the steps that a human does in generating BOM. A significant point to note here is unlike the older automation tools, non-technical users can also use RPA. It is less complex and highly agile.

• Customer onboarding: As with vendors, new customers must be vetted and on-boarded and their data periodically validated and updated.
• Supplier pricing comparisons: BOT collects prices and other data from multiple suppliers for comparison and preparation of customer quote accurately in short time.
• Delivery reconciliation: BOT helps reconcile delivery notes with purchase orders to validate orders against shipments and approve all matching orders.

• Data extraction: BOT gathers transactions recorded in journals from all the businesses, departments and divisions, reconciles and consolidates them in the ERP.
• Data management: Business-critical function of aggregating and analyzing financial and operational performance is done by the BOT efficiently and in record time to help gain insight into the business.
• Supporting financial closure: The process requires posting data from sources such as Excel to these sub-ledgers, a tedious undertaking that RPA can mitigate

• Account Management: Setup and maintain processes for paying different vendors. Create workflows for accounts payable approvals.
• Payments: Enter data to complete payment preparation and processing. Process payments and bulk payment files for sub-system journal entries.

• Customer Management: maintain a customer master file and credit approvals. Route and process customer orders.
• Payments: Process accounts receivable cash receipts. Send late payment notifications.

• Download subaccount balances into pre-approved formats.
• Upload transaction data from various sub-systems and different formats.
• Perform data validation and exception research and handling.
• Create and balance journal entries, noting and remediating discrepancies.