Utilising MSP for Invoice Processing

Overview

One of the leading providers of fiber-based products in North America, stands as a beacon of sustainable innovation and environmental stewardship. With a legacy spanning over 100 years, it has evolved into a dynamic player in the pulp, paper, and personal care industry. However, their Finance and Warehouse Logistics teams were facing major issues with the processing of the invoices they received throughout the month. The presence of multiple invoices poses a threat to data integrity & management, making it hard for any SME to go through each invoice, trail It & make timely payments.

A Finance and Warehouse Logistics team was facing similar issues corresponding to the processing of the huge number of invoices they received from different senders (including vendors, warehouses, general managers, etc.) each month. By harnessing the power of Robotic Process Automation Managed Services Platform (RPA MSP), Accelirate was able to address and overcome this issue. Accelirate helped integrate RPA bots into their existing system, providing a powerful enhancement tool and strategically ensuring streamlined delivery.

Challenges

The finance and warehouse logistics team faced the following challenges while processing the invoices:

Manual Data entry: Before integrating the SME with the RPA bot, everything, from reading & sorting the emails to stamping every invoice & making payment, had to be done manually. This led to a potential rise in human errors & inconsistencies in the scope of costs.
Trailing every invoice: Handling this process manually was a tedious task. Keeping track of every invoice became a challenge since every invoice needs to be given a specific stamp. This led to mismanagement issues regarding invoices, given that notes & stamps come with their own sets of data & are prone to mishandling.

Solution

To address these challenges, Accelirate devised a robust RPA solution that assigns bots to take care of the manual process from the beginning to the end. The solution can:

Deploy bots that receive emails containing the invoice from the approved senders and sort them by using the correct subject line and sender, extract the relevant data from the subject line, and download the invoice attachment.
From the downloaded invoice, the bots can extract the invoice number, invoice date, and total amount leveraging the Document Understanding tool. The bot will then automatically go to the warehouse matrix in Winshuttle and utilize these extracted data to fill in the corresponding fields including primary and secondary approvers, warehouse, vendor, invoice number, invoice date, GL, cost center, currency, and amount.
Once completed, the bot will automatically send a notification to each approver for them to continue the process.
The bots can create a comprehensive summary report at the end of the day listing out all the successful and unsuccessful invoices that were processed and send it to relevant teams.

Monthly processing time reduced to

22 hours

Annual invoice processing time reduced to

264 hours

Average volume of invoices increased to

136 invoices

Automating the Warehouse Invoice Receipt and Storage system with RPA has delivered transformative results to the SMEs, positively impacting workflow and accuracy of invoice processing and management. The solution has:

Eliminated dependency on physical data & reduced data-driven errors:

Bot involvement ensures the right distribution of invoices and zero dependency on any physical data. Bot involvement also ensures the elimination of any physical data like stamps or notes. The algorithms shuffle each invoice in accordance with the warehouse it belongs to, without any error. This has led to seamless management, zero error rate & timely payments.

The bot is always in a loop with each approver, constantly updating them about each invoice, increasing the chances of proper functioning & complete knowledge transfer in case of failures, if any.

Tangible and Rapid ROI:

Transforming invoice management with automated bots has led the firm to reduce its invoice processing cost. The company is able to manage its AP process efficiently and able to handle more volume without an increase in headcount. The automation also allows accounting professionals to focus on higher value work. The customer has already started to see ROI from this automation in a short period after deployment.

The monthly processing time for each SME has been reduced to only 22 hours across all the 22 warehouses.
The annual invoice processing time per SME has been reduced to only 264 hours.
The average volume of invoices being processed across 22 warehouses has increased to an impressive 136 invoices per month from 92 previously wihtout automation would be good to mention what these numbers were before the automation.