Procurement Process and Systems Optimization

Automating 4.4 million supplier invoices across 69 countries

THE CHALLENGE

A Fortune 50 consumer products company received more than 4.4 million supplier invoices a year from suppliers around the world. Each country had its own legal compliance and archiving rules, and processing and troubleshooting costs were high. Slow approvals meant the company was losing millions in early-payment discounts. It also wanted to move away from paper.

WHAT WE DID

Mapped the current invoice process across regions, finding where delays, errors and compliance risks occurred and what they were costing the business

Designed the target process and solution architecture: one centralized e-invoicing flow, integrated with the client's ERP

Defined the compliance requirements with finance, legal and tax teams, covering country-specific rules for invoicing, digital signatures and legal archiving

Specified the validation and workflow rules, including matching against purchase orders, goods receipts and vendor master data, plus approval routing and exception handling

Planned supplier onboarding across every channel suppliers used, from EDI and XML to email, web portal upload and scanned paper, and ran the rollout region by region

Managed the program across multiple internal teams, third parties and the technology provider, with KPIs and reporting to track results after go-live

RESULT

Faster processing, higher accuracy and lower cost per invoice

Captured early-payment discounts that had previously been lost

End-to-end visibility, with issues and KPIs tracked proactively

Faster onboarding of new regions and suppliers

A clear shift from paper to electronic invoicing