Brinker International, a recognized leader in the casual dining industry, serves over one million guests in its restaurants daily. Its 38-year history has seen the organization grow and change from a single restaurant in Dallas, Texas into one that now boasts more than 15,000 locations in 33 countries and two American territories.

Due to its growth, Brinker International was faced with high labor costs associated with handling over 200,000 paper invoices per month from over 1,700 restaurant locations nationwide. With no immediate plans to integrate the stores with the corporate office and no central document repository, Brinker's AP department had limited insight or management of the invoice control process. In addition, there was no formal quality assurance program, with only minimal reporting and reconciliation processes in place.

Exela introduced mailroom operations, including scanning and OCR services to support all restaurant invoice ingestion, indexing, and validation. Exela's Box Office Enterprise Information Management and Procure to Pay (P2P) platform operated at the core of the solution. 

Exela also provided workflow optimization in a centralized image repository. Outcomes would be thoroughly reported via a user-friendly web-based dashboard using Rule14's module called Athena.

Additionally, a formal quality assurance program was developed.

• Brinker realized a savings of 40% in implementing the solutions
• Real-time access to vendor invoices for follow-up 
• Reduced the amount of time required to process invoices
• Enhanced web-based reporting and reconciliation process help the client keep a handle on their AP situation and enabled them to close their accounting in a timely manner

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A top global commercial vehicle manufacturer operating in 38 countries with approximately 1,800 active vendors needed to overhaul its invoice processing workflow. Prior to an upgrade of the company’s existing SAP ERP platform, invoices and payments were processed manually.

Under this inefficient system, analysts were spending valuable time on phone calls, sending emails, confirming receipts, researching missing data, and routing paper to and from vendors. This cumbersome process was causing a significant negative impact on payment cycle times.

An upgrade to SAP ERP provided both EDI and imaging capabilities, so the company elected to transition to paperless processing.

The company’s move to a paperless AP environment would affect PO and non-PO invoice processing. The company turned to Exela to deploy a solution that would automate invoice processing through a digital vendor portal meeting the following objectives:

• Improve supplier satisfaction by providing easy access for self-service
• Reduce staff and operating expense
• Reduce paper submissions
• Transition all vendors to the new web portal

Due to the complex nature of the customer’s environment, Exela recommended a transition plan divided into multiple phases, with the first two phases focusing on the most critical aspects of the solutions, PO invoices and non-PO invoices.

Once the first phase was underway, invoice mail and supported documents, faxes, and emails were routed to Exela’s Troy, Michigan facility for processing. Exela provided the scanning, data capture, validation, and processing of imaged data for use in the new environment.

One of the key challenges of the launch was getting vendors to transition to the self-service portal. In addition to sending out notices and adding portal information to internal documents, AP analysts were tasked with encouraging widespread adoption. The customer set recruiting goals for analysts, offering prizes to top recruiters who hit major milestones, such as being first to get 100 vendors signed on. As the numbers increased, an intern was hired to call lagging vendors and encourage them to join in.

Saving time for both internal customers and suppliers was a primary goal in developing the digital vendor portal. A snapshot dashboard was developed, displaying the status of multiple invoices on a single screen, which made it easy to track payments by vendor ID, invoice date, amount, clearing information, and other data. All data was made available for export to PDF, Excel, and Word file formats. The dashboard enables suppliers to easily view status as well as confirmation of what invoices were in the system.

• 96% AP invoice digitization achieved
• 95% AP invoice automation achieved (from ingestion to authorization)
• Easy-to-use platform resulting in quick adoption and improved vendor satisfaction
• Improved payment accuracy and timeliness
• Workforce reduction of 22 FTEs due to streamlined AP operations
• Enhanced reporting and tracking, providing a comprehensive view of the invoice pipeline

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Prior to an upgrade of the customer’s existing SAP ERP platform, invoices and payments were processed manually. Under this inefficient manual system, analysts were spending valuable time on phone calls, sending emails, confirming receipts, researching missing data, and routing paper to and from vendors – all of which had been negatively affecting payment cycle times. The SAP ERP upgrade provided both EDI and imaging capabilities, so the customer elected to transition to paperless processing. The move to a paperless AP environment would involve approximately 1,800 active vendors and affect PO and non-PO invoice processing. The customer tasked Exela with developing a solution that would automate invoice processing through a digital vendor portal, while meeting the following objectives: improve supplier satisfaction by providing easy access for self-service, reduce internal manpower cost, reduce paper submissions, and transition approximately 1,800 active vendors to the self-service web portal.

Due to the complex nature of the customer’s environment, Exela recommended a transition plan divided into multiple phases with the first two phases focusing on the most critical aspects of the solutions, PO invoices and non-PO invoices. Once the first phase was underway, invoice mail and supported documents, faxes, and emails were routed to Exela’s Troy, Michigan facility for processing. Exela provided the capturing, validating, and processing of imaged data for use in the new environment.

One of the key challenges of the launch was getting vendors to buy-in to the self-service portal. In addition to sending out notices and adding portal information to internal documents, AP analysts were challenged to encourage widespread adoption. The customer set recruiting goals for analysts, offering prizes to top recruiters who hit major milestones, such as being first to get 100 vendors signed on. Group progress was shared during weekly meetings, creating a competitive atmosphere.

Saving time for both internal customers and suppliers was a primary goal in developing the digital vendor portal. A snapshot dashboard was developed displaying the status of multiple invoices on a single screen, which made it easy to track payments by vendor ID, invoice dates, amounts, clearing information and other data, and all data was available for export to PDF, Excel and Word file formats. The dashboard enables suppliers to easily view status as well as confirmation of what invoices were in the system.

• Easy to use system resulting in quick adoption and improved vendor satisfaction
• Improved payment accuracy and timeliness
• Overall streamlining of AP operations led to a reduction of 22 FTE’s
• Enhanced reporting and tracking providing a 360 view of the invoice pipeline
• 95% AP invoice automation from a single digital portal from ingestion to authorization

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The onsite accounts payable (AP) systems used at a chain of hotels was not uniform across numerous individual properties. Invoice processing workflows were completed manually by clerks at each hotel location, which resulted in a costly, inefficient, and error-prone AP system that lacked invoice tracking and process transparency.

Exela transitioned hotel locations onto our automated AP processing system to create a single, centralized AP hub. Information previously entered by clerks was then captured by and processed by Exela’s web-based platform and AP data was made easily available through a unified portal that enabled end-to-end reporting and exception handling capabilities.

• Far more efficient processing

• Reduced error rates by minimizing manual data entry

• Flexible system architecture able to accommodate changing volumes

• User-friendly invoice tracking and reporting capabilities

• Significant labor and cost savings

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