Lights out processing for SunSystems

The concept of “lights out processing” is well known in the supply chain and logistics arena – it is the concept of day to day operations occurring at such a low level of human intervention that for most of the time the lights aren’t even switched on in the warehouse and the machines just go about their automated business in the dark.

This is the goal that Professional Advantage has in bringing an extensive suite of enhancement modules to the SunSystems world. What, however, does “lights out processing” actually mean when applied to the standard company finance department? To us it means achieving an 80% or greater rate of straight-through processing where transactions flow through their lifecycle from inception to completion with the minimum human intervention. The beneficial outcomes to this goal include the increased level of efficiency, the reduction in wasteful administrative costs and the freeing up of people’s time to focus on the 20% (or less) of exceptions that occur in the business and the strategic effort that actually adds value to the business plan and the shareholders returns.

How is this premise applied within our product suite? As some examples:

- raising a purchase requisition through to approving a supplier invoice – what can be done to automate and orchestrate the many process steps and business rules in that transaction path? iPOS for SunSystems delivers on this objective. The alternative invariably includes paper forms, intrays and, no answer to the “where is it” questions and extensive delays.

- Within cash management how can the tedious and administratively repetitive and error prone bank reconciliation process be sped up, automated and performed in an auditable way? Bank Reconciliation delivers huge improvements in balancing the bank account on a daily basis. The alternative is manual data entry and allocation with the associated risks of human error and delays.

- Management reporting demands a consolidated view of the distributed enterprise in a timely enough fashion to be able to respond rapidly to any warning signals. Consolidations for SunSystems builds a rule-set that summarises, normalises and centralises all the necessary SunSystems business units through a visible and auditable framework delivering a consolidated view of the enterprise for on demand management reporting. The alternative usually includes database level SQL scripts, inconsistent “black box” rules and un-auditable results.

Every company can benefit from striving for a "lights out processing" model in the financial administration layer of the business.