What goes wrong today
The quote lives in someone's mailbox, the order lives in another system, and the invoice is typed a third time. When a customer asks where things stand, nobody can answer without three conversations.
O2C · Order-to-cash
A customer asks for something, and you can follow it all the way to the payment.
Order-to-cash covers the path from a customer request through a reviewed quote and an order to the invoice and its payment status.
ReadyAvailable
What Operant is meant to show
Operant keeps the request, the reviewed quote, the order, the invoice, and the payment status on one card—with a named owner at each step that needs a decision.
- Customer requestOperant prepares
- Reviewed quoteA person decides
- OrderState of the work
- InvoiceOperant prepares
- Payment statusState of the work
Selected step
Customer request
Three items arrive by email. Operant reads them into one card.
- Customer
- Northwind Rail
- Requested items
- 3 · 1 unclear
- Quote
- QUO-2041-1
- Payment terms
- Net 30
Sales operations lead
Owns quotes above the review threshold
Suggested by OperantOperant proposes matching item 2 to a catalogue line.
Approved by a personA person confirms the line before the quote can be sent.
Operant workspace · Product preview.
Frame 1 · Request received
REQ-2041 · 3 items
- Item 1 matched
- Item 2 unclear
- Item 3 matched
Frame 2 · A person decides
Quote held for review
- Sales operations lead
- Operant suggested a match
- Person confirms item 2
Frame 3 · Path is visible
Order · Invoice · Payment
- Quote accepted
- Invoice raised from the same lines
- Payment status on the card
The other two paths
- S2Psource-to-paySource-to-pay covers the path from a purchasing need through supplier options and an approval to the purchase order and the supplier payment status.
- S2Csource-to-cashSource-to-cash is the join: the supplier and purchase decision behind an item stay connected to the customer order it was bought for, and to the revenue at the end.