An American multinational food and beverage corporation headquartered in New York, with interests in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of snack foods, beverages, and other products was experiencing pain from their existing accounts payable (AP) system.
The company’s outdated system consisted of manual invoice handling and paper-based processing. Symptoms of inefficiency included inordinate delays in vendor payments and costly internal operations. The error-prone process created lengthy processing times, traceability issues, missing documents, and duplicate invoice submissions. Additionally, the limited and costly storage of the paper documents created a problematic manual document retrieval process. It was clear that the existing system was costly and difficult to manage, and due for a significant overhaul
Exela, well-known within the industry as an innovator in automating and streamlining F&A operations, was the obvious choice as a subject matter expert (SME) partner brought in by a multinational technology and consulting organization. This organization charged Exela with providing AP automation process expertise and designing and implementing the technology framework that would meet their customer’s objectives.
Responsible for devising the end-to-end solution, Exela played the key role of effectively digitizing all paper-based records and building the technology framework for the entire AP process which began with a centralized mailroom. Here invoices were securely received, captured and digitized. Once in the system, Exela applied a process for cross-checking data and eliminating errors. Additionally, a custom workflow was applied to then index, process and route all of the clean invoices for storage in Exela’s proprietary repository.
Due to rapid, overwhelming success, the solution was replicated across three other regions.
- 40% overall cost reduction in processing invoices—with no capital investment
- Processing time was transformed from weeks to five days or less
- Complete transparency for improved cash management
- Improved vendor customer service
- Reduced labor –limited manual interaction
- More efficient retrieval of documents for audit purposes
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