Business Challenge
The Accounts Payable team of an Automobile company based out of Australia had the following challenges while processing their inward invoices:
- More than 1000 invoices per week were sent by various vendors
- The Accounts Payable department required multiple approvals before initiating payments, with the nature of these approvals determined based on the data within the invoices.
- There was no clear system to identify the current invoice status.
- Manual processing of high volumes of invoices.
- Invoices are heterogeneous and with unstructured formats from multiple vendors.
- Invoices are received daily through various channels, including email, paper, courier, and other electronic data streams.
- High manual errors in processing invoices, segregating duplicate invoices, extended processing time, and high cost of operations.
Solution
IntelliBuddies IB-X was leveraged to optimize the invoice processing workflow for our client. This solution utilized Automation and Workflow agents for complete transformation. It introduced RPA (Robotic Process Automation) agents to efficiently manage the high volume of invoices and employed AI to extract data from digitized invoices. These agents played a crucial role in validating and verifying invoice data, streamlining the review process for approvers to make swift decisions on invoice approval or rejection. The automated agents also ensured to upload the copy in appropriate folders in SharePoint and link them with approval forms. Moreover, seamless integration with the client's existing ERP system (SAP) was achieved.
The solution was meticulously crafted, defining the invoice processing workflow through the IB-X Workflow Designer. It harnessed the capabilities of Automation agent to automate various tasks and utilized IDP (intelligent document processing) Invoice Extractor Cognitive Services to accurately extract data from digital invoices.
Results Achieved
Overall, the solution successfully achieved the following objectives:
- Streamlined the entire workflow, from initial invoice receipt to the final stages of payment and archiving.
- Facilitated the processing of invoices received through email or other specified channels.
- Leveraged Invoice Extractor Cognitive Services provided by IntelliBuddies for efficient invoice data extraction.
- Initiated approval workflows for each invoice processed, seamlessly integrating them into the Tracker system.
- Depending on invoice amount workflow agent routed the approval via different departments of individuals.
- Enhanced stakeholder communication by delivering task-specific email notifications, containing links to corresponding tasks and associated invoices.
- Upon receiving approvals from all stakeholders, the Agent component submitted the invoice into the existing ERP system SAP for payment release.
- Effectively routed exceptions to human agents for resolution, with the system learning from their actions for continuous improvement