Booking to cash process

 Booking to cash process

This process begins when the system gets a request from a consumer. Customers can place orders online directly on your website or by email from your sales staff. Either way, automating your order management can help you move orders quickly from order entry to cash receipt. Order fulfillment and delivery follow next in the cycle (Ahmed et al., 2017). This stage of the cycle mostly pertains to firms that deal with physical items, where inventory staff should be informed with the correct information of the order to proceed with fulfillment and delivery. When it comes to digital services or Software as a Service (SaaS), this might entail allowing access to the ordered product or service.

In this case, study how the booking to cash process is occurring in the photography company Fotof

Fotof's booking to cash or Order to cash provides services in the areas of family photography, personal event photography (such as weddings and parties), and commercial photography (mainly corporate events photography). Photography firm Fotof specializes in family, personal events (weddings, parties), and commercial photography (e.g., corporate events). When a consumer plans a photo session appointment, the booking-to-cash procedure at Fotof begins. This process continues until the customer pays and receives their purchased photos after making an order. In the preceding year, Fotof received tens of thousands of business orders and eighty thousand individual consumer orders (Almeida et al., 2019). Upon receiving the order from the customer, the technician will make any necessary edits (if required by the customer). Occasionally, special requests necessitate communication between the technician and the client via email or phone to ensure that everyone is on the same page and to determine the best way to fulfill the request, as well as whether or not the special request will result in an additional fee and how much it will cost.. Images from a photoshoot are available in the session's gallery for 30 days after the fact (a reminder is sent to the customer 5 days before the expiry date). Customers who have not placed an order within this period will get an invoice for the minimum billing amount.

Identification of waste

The picture goods order is the final product the customer receives at the end of the sales process. As a result, for that viewpoint, value-adding waste categorization is utilized. Value-adding steps are any that improve the final result. Editing, printing, validating, quality checks, and shipping are all services that customers are ready to pay for. All actions are taken to keep the company functioning efficiently offer value to the company. There are several processes involved in this process, including documenting, accounting, and tracking orders. All the other processes are non-value-adding, such as sending, receiving, and handover (Bose and Roy, 2019).

It is decided who of the studio's photographers will be in charge of photographing the event. The photographer sends the photos to a file server when the photoshoot is over. Eventually, a technician removes duplicates and unsuccessful photos from the images. Later, the technician uses a specialized photo studio software application to edit and arrange the remaining images into a picture gallery (Jamnik et al., 2019). The customer gets alerted through email when the gallery has been completed. The message also contains a link to the gallery's website address. Customers may go through the gallery and choose which images they want to be printed (and in what quantity), as well as which images they want to be downloaded as digital files (full resolution).

Recommendation to improve the process

Improving the booking or order can be done in three ways:

(1) before the photography session (booking cancellation);

(2) if the client fails to show up or fails to reschedule; or

(3) after the photography session if the customer fails to purchase any photographs within 30 days after the shooting has taken place (no-show).

There is no cancellation fee if you cancel before the photoshoot. A fee of e 50 is charged for no-show cancellations that take place "on-site," rather than in the studio. In the event of a no-show, the customer has the option to reschedule the appointment, but the no-show fee for on-location photographs is still charged to the customer. Photographers charge e 100 for in-studio sessions even if no images are purchased by customers who don't purchase anything.