Our client
One of the largest and most successful fund managers in the South African investment industry with offices in all major South African centres, as well as London, Dublin and Namibia. Their vast client base includes pension and provident funds, medical schemes, unit trusts, banks, insurers and other fund managers, as well as assets for a number of international retirement funds, endowments and family offices.
The challenge
- Time-consuming processing of supplier invoices
- Loss of income due to inefficient systems
- Slow payments resulting in reduced discounts
- Lack of control and analytics
Our solution
AP automation refers to the use of technology to streamline and automate the Accounts Payable process. This includes tasks such as invoice processing, vendor management and payments. This is essential as it can save companies time and money by reducing manual processing, minimising errors and improving efficiency. It also provides greater visibility into financial data and helps with compliance and reporting. Essentially, AP automation enables companies to improve their financial operations and performance overall.
Using advanced Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and – Metrofile’s Content Services Platform – we were able to fully automate the client’s accounts payable process. Metrofile provided a management console in response to the client’s need for management oversight. The console is designed to provide a view of the RPA Bot in real time. This enables management to react and adjust decision making when required.
By connecting the console directly to the ERP, we are now able to measure performance and data against a true source of master data, as well as manage vendors and financial periods, and perform additional real-time reports against business parameters and exceptions.
RPA also enabled us to completely remove all manual receipts, data capture and approvals of supplier invoices. Invoices are now routed via a managed Digital Mailroom with built-in rules. This makes for easy distribution and control. Auto capture of invoice details ensured a low error rate and high throughput.
This significantly reduced the time taken to process 400+ invoices per month from days down to minutes. Thereby eliminating the inefficiencies associated with manual pro-cessing. Invoices can now be vetted against budget and allocated to GL codes – making it simple and easy to manage. Payment threshold, duplicate payments and other alerts also enable full control of how payments are made.
Using AI and machine learning, we were able to process any invoice within five minutes and validate against ERP and user expectations. Digitising accounts payable made it easy to validate vendors and extend the service to on-boarding vendors, thereby ensuring that an end-to-end view of the process is considered. Furthermore, approvals can be managed via a multi-layer Group from the office or remotely.
Integration into ERP and Archive makes sure that there is prompt and efficient use of all supporting documents for immediate payment and future audit reference. All documents are auto archived in datastor, including a full audit log of how and by who the invoice was approved.
Benefits and value
Fully digitised processes ensure that our client has reports and analytics on hand, giving them full oversight of their processes and time gaps between stages. This reduces supplier invoice processing by 80%.
- Secure auditable processes
- Enhanced staff efficiency
- Faster response times
- Greater supplier discounts
- Increased ROI
How we can apply this solution to other clients
Any client that has a high volume of invoices and staff count in their accounts payable processes will benefit from this solution. RPA works 24/7/365 to provide seamless solutions tailored to your business needs.