Customer :
A leading Indian FMCG entity with a global presence in 26+ countries.
Business Requirement :
The client had been manually collecting all Invoices from Vendors and processing them for payment after accounting them into SAP.
During the COVID-19 crisis, they were unable to collect Invoices manually. Even if scanned invoices were received in an email, it would require much time to classify and forward it to the respective business to approve and then account them within SAP.
Management also felt that this could increase the risk of Invoices not tracked, and this was critical for timely closure of books for the Financial Year.
We were asked to present the Finance and Business management with a solution to enable managing the issue within two weeks.
Identified Process Challenges :
Limited timeline to Design, develop and implement the application.
There was no predefined rule set that is followed for each Invoice type. Hence the option to choose the approver and reviewer will be with the end-user. If sufficient approver has not to be routed, then the Finance team required an opportunity to send back and obtain necessary approvals from specific people.
Option to hold, reject and reroute the rejected Invoice had to be provided, and this increased the complexity.
A better way for the end-user to view and develop the application was required as the user had to process and update information for 100 Invoices per day.
Training all users during lockdown to get used to the application was a challenge.
Approach and Solution Design :
With two days, we obtained the understanding of the complete process of, proposed a comprehensive solution with an Interactive Proof of Concept and confirmed the requirements.
The proposed solution was developed and implemented within a week after being tested for Stress, Security and UI / UX.
The complete solution was implemented and deployed in a Cloud environment within two weeks.
The solution enhanced the processing capabilities by seamlessly routing the Invoices for multiple custom workflows and captured necessary data to enable reconciliation to the SAP application.
Necessary check and balances, including Possible duplicate invoice alerts, Mandatory data capturing and detailed audit log enabled the business to use the Invoice with confidence.
To UI was designed by our Design team to be User agnostic had simple options to navigate even if it has to be routed at an average of 5-6 user per Invoice.
To ensure that all users were trained, an instruction video explaining each component within the screen was prepared for each role type.
Business Benefit and Result :
Now all invoices are processed directly using the tool and effectively reduced then time to process the Invoice by 30% ~ 50% over a period of three months. This enabled the client to continue using the application and request significant enhancements, including integration to SAP, making it a one-stop solution for Vendor Invoicing.
