Business Challenge – Improve Invoice Processing
As a company leading worldwide in their industry, ASSA ABLOY provides mechnaical door opening products and services for consumer and commercial markets. With over 46,000 employees and business operations in over 70 countries, the company has experienced rapid growth over the years. Unfortunately, the manual processing of invoices was a tedious process that negatively impacted employee productivity. The finance team at ASSA ABLOY needed a better system for invoice processing to keep up with demand.
Initially, the company was using Oracle Imaging and Process Management (Oracle I/PM) for processing accounts. However, it didn’t have an interface for its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne (JDE) platform. So, employees had to spend a lot of time manually inputting each invoice into the Oracle I/PM. This manual process involved individually scanning each invoice, email, and other related documents and attaching them to each specific account. These tasks resulted in a redundant and time-consuming process for the Accounts Payable (AP) workflow. It also cost the company a lot of money.
Eventually, the accounting team at ASSA ABLOY learned that the Oracle I/PM system would be phased out. So, they needed to look for a new software solution to better match their needs. Additionally, the company needed to consolidate all of its AP duties into one location. They planned to transfer each of the acquired group companies into JDE. The finance team compared numerous AP solutions. Afterward, they found that Transform AP from Bottomline Technologies could easily integrate into JDE. It provided workflow features that they needed to operate their business.
Software Solution – Transform AP
Finding an AP solution that’s user-friendly and can easily integrate into the current ERP system was a top priority. The new solution also needed to offer workflow optimization that could support employees by printing and scanning thousands of documents each day. Bottomline Technologies’ Transform AP for Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne provided these benefits while also offering a better user interface.
Transform AP makes it possible to capture incoming supplier invoices while linking this information to EnterpriseOne for exception processing or purchase order matching. Using this software application makes it possible to review as well as approve each invoice online. Transform AP is designed to provide visibility for accounts payable. Meanwhile, it provides invoice data for non-finance approvers within the company due to its simple web interface.
This product also provided substantial improvements. For example, it processed additional invoices much quicker than the other system. Transform AP used the same user interface as JDE, which helped decrease the entire team’s learning curve. Another feature that improved productivity was the optical character recognition (OCR) that captured and validated all of the invoice data while automatically “fingerprinting” these invoices to continue improving data recognition.
Benefits of Transform AP
Using Transform AP had many benefits for ASSA ABLOY. For instance, it improved visibility into cash flow and decreased operational costs. It was able to easily integrate into JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Improving business efficiency, they were able to automate tedious processes, including invoices, with this solution. In addition, it improved their workflows and eliminated their manual processes.
Choosing to implement Transform AP was an excellent choice for ASSA ABLOY, as this software will continue to make a big impact on the entire accounting team.
The Results – Automation for Invoice Processing
Transform AP enabled ASSA ABLOY to eliminate the need for doing time-consuming manual processes. Invoices are automatically uploaded into JD Edwards once it’s scanned, as remote workers can access this information at any time. Due to its user-friendly system, this technology was not only easy to install and implement, without any technical issues, but it also made the entire invoice process much more straightforward.
Addionally, Transform AP enables the team to collaborate and access any account-related information within the system. All these documents are uploaded during the approval stage. It’s simple to attach within the system. Employees no longer have to spend a long time searching for documents individually. Using this simple attachment feature decreases confusion and ambiguity related to copies of invoices.
Another way that ASSA ABLOY benefits from Transform AP’s simple-to-use system is from boosted employee productivity. The Bottomline support team is always available to offer assistance to the accounting team, helping them resolve any problems that arise. This software solution is so effective that the company plans to implement Transform AP into many more of its group companies. They expect similar improvements to workflow and productivity.
