There are many companies that find themselves in complicated situations regarding the management of their invoices for various reasons.
On the one hand, there are multiple situations that end up weakening the relationship with suppliers, such as late payments. This has a direct impact on the company, since a lot of time is spent answering supplier calls, manually reviewing invoices, etc.
This situation, inefficient and unsustainable over time, was the main reason that led Schneider Electric to look for solutions that would give them the opportunity to manage the change they were looking to make: to achieve the digital transformation of their invoice management process and, with it, boost their relationship with their suppliers..
About Schneider Electric
Schneider Electric is a European company operating globally, whose main activities are focused on digital transformation in the world of energy management, automation in buildings, homes, infrastructure and industry. In 2021, their subsidiary in Colombia, decided to take a step forward with regards to digital transformation by betting on the use of the supplier management portal and electronic invoicing Invoway, relying in turn on the connector for integration with SAP developed by Brait.
The challenge
Schneider Electric faced a very big challenge: more than 70% of the invoices they received from their suppliers did not comply with the necessary rules set by the company for the invoice to be valid.
This scenario had a triple impact:
- Suppliers’ dissatisfaction with the rejection of their invoices.
- Large volume of extra work for Schneider Electric employees.
- Decentralization and lack of invoice traceability.
The solution
Schneider Electric opted for two solutions to meet this challenge:
- On the one hand, it opted for Invoway as a supplier management portal. This solution allowed them to offer their suppliers a space where they could consult the status of their invoices and, in the same place, have a 3 way-match tool, which allows them to reconcile the information of their orders with the invoicing data, thus automating the verification of the rules applied by Schneider Electric to accept invoices
- On the other hand, they opted for the connector developed by Brait to integrate Invoway with their ERP, as they needed a solution that would automate the sending and receiving of information.
The connector, completely secure and natively integrated with Invoway through webservices, allows centralized monitoring through a single SAP transaction of everything that has been exchanged with the supplier portal, both outgoing and incoming documents. From this transaction it is possible to resolve errors automatically or manually, navigate to the original documents, view the different SAP statuses of the invoice and inform the supplier of the estimated payment date.
With this, they would have automation of invoice accounting, and relations with their suppliers would improve considerably.
The Result
Schneider Electric went from a tedious model, composed of numerous phases where there was a high degree of manual work, which could lead to errors, to an automatic and reliable process.
All this meant for the supplier:
- Greater speed and simplicity in the registration of their invoice.
- Self-management in the consultation of their purchase orders, entries and approximate date of payment.
- Reception of their payments on time and ability to elaborate more accurate payment projections.
- Easier to reconcile their account status.
And, for Schneider Electric:
- Considerable reduction of errors and delays in payments, increasing internal control.
- Savings in operational process time that allowed investing more time in analytical processes.
- Digital and centralized invoice storage.
- More accurate payment projection.
In Numbers:
- Automation of the receiving process by 90%
- 70% automation of invoice posting.
The key to this solution is that it adapts to the legal regulations of each country, so, after the success of this project in Colombia, it was also implemented in Peru and Ecuador, and it is currently being planned for implementation in Chile and Argentina.
If you want to see a demo of the whole process, contact us.
