Integrated Order-to-Procurement Automation for Foundry Products

Industry:

A specialized provider of high-precision foundry equipment, molding accessories, and consultancy services, catering to core metal-casting operations across automotive, aerospace, and heavy-engineering segments.

Technology Partner:

Elite Tech Global, a certified Zoho Partner, selected to architect and implement an integrated ERP and analytics ecosystem leveraging Zoho’s suite of cloud applications.

Business Challenge:

• Fragmented Order and Procurement Workflow: Sales orders (SOs) and purchase orders (POs) were managed in isolation via spreadsheets, causing frequent stock-outs and idle inventory.
• High Manual Effort & Error Rates: Individual POs per SO led to repetitive data entry, manual cross-checks, and a high rate of invoice mismatches.
• Lack of Automated Approval Controls: No system-enforced thresholds for PO approvals, resulting in compliance gaps and approval bottlenecks.
• Cumbersome Reporting and Data Visibility: Generating reports on pending orders, open invoices, material requirements, and allocation status required manual queries across multiple data sources, delaying decision-making.

Overview:

Provide an automated solution to unify sales order processing, procurement, and reporting. The architecture comprises:

• Zoho Books as the transaction engine for SOs, POs, invoices, and inventory ledgers.
• Zoho Creator for custom UI and bulk operations.
• Zoho Analytics for real-time dashboards and report distribution.

Platform Used & Technical Highlights:

• Zoho Books: Configured books for Sales and purchases process and its automation.
• Zoho Creator: Built a Deluge-driven form to select multiple SOs via a subform, generate POs via Books and handle error logging.
• Zoho Analytics: Sourced data via the built-in Zoho Books connector, modeled query tables for purchase requirements, allocations, pending SOs, invoices, POs, and generated required reports.

Step-by-Step Process:

• Requirements & Configuration: Conduct an in-depth analysis of order-to-procurement needs and configure Zoho Books modules (Sales, Purchases, Inventory, Tax) accordingly.
• Workflow Automation: Define custom actions and business rules in Zoho Books to automatically trigger purchase orders, update sales order statuses, and send notifications.
• Bulk PO Interface: Develop a centralized Zoho Creator form for selecting multiple sales orders and generating purchase orders, complete with error handling and retry logs.
• System Integration: Implement API-based synchronization between Zoho applications for real-time data consistency.
• Reporting Setup: Design real-time dashboards in Zoho Analytics—incorporating key metrics on orders, POs, inventory levels—and schedule automated report deliveries.

Results Delivered:

Conclusion:

By combining Zoho Books’ robust transaction engine, Zoho Creator’s extensibility via Deluge scripting, and Zoho Analytics’ powerful capabilities, Elite Tech Global delivered a technically rigorous, scalable, and compliant solution. The integration streamlined procurement workflows, enforced corporate policies through automated checks, and provided actionable insights—empowering the client to meet growing order volumes and maintain high service levels with minimal manual intervention.