Chipone Technology: Automating sales-order creation to enhance speed and support global growth
Processing order requests in mere minutes
Display chip solutions maker Chipone Technology used the SAP Build Process Automation solution to increase the automation rate in its lead-to-cash process. In doing so, the company has accelerated its operations, reduced error rates, freed employees from manual tasks, and increased customer satisfaction with timely order processing and delivery.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| High tech | Beijing, China | >1,300 | Shanghai AcloudEAR Info. Tech. Co. Ltd. |
reduction in average order processing time, to 5 minutes.
accuracy of purchase orders processed.
Project Manager for Sales Operations, Chipone Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd.
Efficiently managing order processing when business surges
Founded in 2008, Chipone Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd. is a world-leading designer of display integrated circuits (ICs), providing display chip solutions for diverse panels and screens. Its products including power-management, system-on-a-chip (SoC), and vehicle-display ICs are used in mobile terminals, wearable devices, indoor and outdoor ultra-HD displays, augmented and virtual reality, and industrial, vehicle, and healthcare applications.
Over the years, Chipone Technology has developed several breakthrough products tailored to the needs of domestic and international customers, demonstrating its strengths in customer-oriented customization.
When 2021 saw a sharp increase in the demand for semiconductor chips in China, Chipone Technology was able to capitalize on this opportunity thanks to its strong shipment capabilities and competitive products. To better manage production and financial data, it deployed SAP S/4HANA to standardize its core business processes with proven best practices, providing a stable foundation for business growth and company development.
However, the processing of purchase orders to create sales orders in SAP S/4HANA was still done manually, consuming substantial amounts of sales support teams’ time. As a result, when business volume grew significantly, Chipone Technology urgently needed to increase automation across sales-order creation to provide long-term support for business growth and product diversification strategies.
This automation would need to solve two core challenges. First, the organization receives order requests in widely varying document formats. A significant portion of requests to be processed comes in unstructured formats such as e-mails, PDFs, or scanned images of paper-based orders. Any automation must also be able to handle structured data formats such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Second, different text specifications can cause errors and omissions. As Chipone Technology serves customers in multiple countries, automation needs to be able to recognize different orders of first name and last name and deal with variations in capitalization, spacing, and other criteria.
Enhancing automation in sales scenarios
Building on the existing foundation of SAP S/4HANA, SAP platinum partner Shanghai AcloudEAR Info. Tech. Co. Ltd. successfully deployed SAP Build Process Automation for Chipone Technology. By automating the creation of sales orders in SAP S/4HANA, SAP Build Process Automation enables Chipone Technology to streamline its lead-to-cash process.
Given the various document formats of purchase orders received, AcloudEAR, along with INTSIG Information Co. Ltd. – an expert in optical character recognition (OCR) technology – developed several specialized OCR models tailored to Chipone Technology’s sales-order request form. It integrated these models with SAP Build Process Automation and an in-house OCR service, enabling rapid extraction of relevant information from different document formats.
To resolve the challenges of different text specifications, Chipone Technology worked with experts from SAP Services and Support. After extensive testing, the team made a breakthrough by developing a customized search system tailored to the company’s unique requirements, significantly improving accuracy.
The automation built using SAP Build Process Automation constantly monitors dedicated e-mail in-boxes and shared folders for incoming purchase orders. It extracts relevant order information, automatically logs into SAP S/4HANA, and fills out the fields required to create a sales-order request. The request is then validated for completeness and, if necessary, sent to the sales support teams to add missing information or for approval. A sales order is created, and the relevant stakeholders receive notifications.
Freeing up sales teams to add value
With SAP Build Process Automation, Chipone Technology has automated the creation of sales orders to streamline its lead-to-cash process. By automatically creating and populating sales-order requests, it has enabled faster processing and reduced submission errors, increasing operational efficiency.
Freeing sales support teams from repetitive, manual data-entry work has significantly improved employees’ work experience and reduced overtime. What’s more, the teams can now focus more on higher-value activities such as sales-data analysis and customer service, enhancing workforce efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Process automation has enabled Chipone Technology to quickly respond to growing business volume, aid timely processing and delivery of orders, and capitalize on market opportunities as they arise.
The company is further expanding its product lines and service areas, including innovative solutions such as vehicle-display and SoC chips. The benefits of digitalization, ranging from ERP and office automation to process automation, continue to emerge as the organization grows.
Featured partner
AcloudEAR provides strategic planning and consulting implementation services for growth enterprises in cloud transformation, focusing on cloud solutions from SAP. More than 200 employees offer a wide range of services from software implementation and development to operations and maintenance support. Founded more than eight years ago, AcloudEAR serves around 280 customers in China and beyond.