Kruger Products Improves Invoice Processing Efficiency With Automation

CLIENT

Kruger was founded in Montréal, Québec, in 1904. The company has built a solid reputation in traditional industry sectors like pulp and paper, containerboard, and packaging. It is a privately held, fourth-generation family company that transforms renewable resources into sustainable, high-quality essentials for everyday life. In addition to Kruger having multiple production facilities across Canada and the U.S., they own and operate a portfolio of 42 green energy power plants and are considered a North American leader in paper and paperboard recycling.

PROJECT

The Invoice Automation project is an advanced AI and OCR technology that is leveraged to automate the extraction of data from PDF files (vendor invoices) to streamlining the processing of the daily invoices with precision. The implementation of business rules enables automated 3-way matching against goods receipts and purchase orders, significantly reducing errors and ensuring adherence to compliance standards. Additionally, the solution offers a user-friendly interface and integrated approval workflow, empowering the Accounts Payable team to manage exceptions and enforce organizational policies effectively.

RESULTS

From the agreed pilot Go-Live, defined scope and deliverables, the client has been able to significantly reduce the overall processing time of invoices, from the current processing, 40% invoices are processed without any human intervention (% will be increased with the changes currently in process). Increased user performance and efficiency with minimum failure rates.

PROJECT INFORMATION

The objective of the project is to transform the manual management of supplier invoices to a more automated solution. The client intends to standardize and harmonize AP process across Kruger Products locations, which is not limited to Purchase Orders and non-Purchase Orders supplier invoice management processes, for all Kruger Products Corporate office and the Mills.

For future references, easy accessibility, and a single source, the client was also looking for a single source of truth; therefore, Digitization and secure storage of incoming accounts payable (AP) invoices at one single location/database will help to define future strategy for enhanced productivity of employees.

ConvergentIS's intuitive interface, tailored application for managing daily operations for AP users, has acquired attention, which has enabled them to streamline the management of invoices and tracking of discrepancies and exceptions with Real-Time SAP validations.

The Challenge

The client Kruger has 1200+ vendors, with 6000+ types of vendor invoice templates, and approximately 120K+ annual invoices to process; therefore, the client was looking for a robust, reliable, and state-of-the-art application to stay up to date with industry standards regarding modernity and digital solutions.

We’re aiming to do the right thing at the right place. That is why we aim to enable AP teams by giving them a tool that speeds up some of the work to give us time to manage exceptions.

The Solution

ConvergentIS has deployed its Procurement Gateway core application, customized the required Kruger-specific enhancement in a solution named Invoice Automation Application. This solution has been designed to facilitate the Accounts Payable users (AP Users) to reduce the invoice cycle time from receipt to payment, lower per-invoice processing costs through the elimination of manual handling, and free up resources to allocate towards other initiatives.

In addition, it will strengthen controls and audit trails for regulatory requirements and significantly reduce manual tasks.

The solution further helps to minimize the risk of human errors with a faster process. The client was also allowed to use this modern tool to increase cash discounts for vendors, uniformity across the business units, and improve segregation of duty and controls within various teams/groups.

Accelerate Processing:

Digitization of incoming invoices
Modern interface tailored to AP teams.
Easily manage and track discrepancies and exceptions
Real-time SAP validations
Significant reduction in manual tasks

Compliance Assurance:

Error reduction
Audit trails for regulatory requirements.

Cost Reduction:

Increased supplier discounts achieved

Standardization:

Process consistency across the company.
Improved employee experience

The Results

Based on the one week of Go-Live statistics, the client has processed 2200+ invoices, 40% are processed in <1 minute without manual intervention.

Overall user efficiency has improved significantly, and invoice processing time has reduced by 65%. The target is to increase the current percentage of automatically processed invoices from 40% to 60% during the coming weeks.

What's Next

The client, Kruger, & the CIS Team, will work together to identify other scenarios and areas for improvement and prioritize items that address the manual intervention of users.

Will identify items that directly enhance or complement the AP Automation Project’s objectives (e.g., automating as many invoices as possible; cost savings, early payment discount capture, error reduction). Focus on addressing root causes that enable maximum invoice straight-through processing.

Why ConvergentIS?

Our team comes from a variety of different operational backgrounds, meaning we understand how people work. We recognize SAP S/4HANA as an out-of-the-box solution that has successfully solved business problems across several industries. But we realize some work processes are still challenging to learn with so many capabilities available in SAP.

Leveraging the SAP design methodology, we have co-innovated with organizations to build solutions that match the way they work. Since many teams face the same problems, we packaged them and made them available as an out-of-the-box application. This means your business still receives many of the benefits of a tailored application without the cost of a custom solution.

Invoice Automation Solution