Invoice Processing Software Case Study

Handling AP/AR transactions on a daily basis can be challenging, especially if you are dealing with hundreds of invoices and bills of lading from multiple suppliers. Accounts payable is a labor-intensive, document-based function that can hold up talented personnel for days working on mundane invoice processing work. The complexities are compounded by the fact that not all vendor invoices come in a similar format and type. When dealing with several suppliers, you need a strict system of sorting, filing, and data entry from different invoice formats manually. Manual vendor invoicing can take forever and slow down related processes. Thankfully, today we have intelligent process automation (IPA) to manage these document-intensive tasks in one go. Invoice processing software, which is a solution built on top of an IPA platform performs straight-through vendor invoicing including the capture, extraction, validation, verification, and approval routing of invoice data from a diverse set of invoice formats. The software is embedded with AI and machine learning capabilities, which make it possible to work with different layout-out heavy invoices. The fact that an intelligent process automation suite with automated invoice processing is able to emulate human actions to accommodate for document variability means businesses in diverse sectors are more than ever ready to deploy it to tackle various document-intense processes like sales order processing, medical claims processing, and even mail order check remittance handling.

We’ll discuss the results of deploying Artsyl’s intelligent process automation solution with invoice processing capabilities — we’ll specifically study the advantages one of our clients got by using Artsyl’s IPA for simplifying the complex in their AP department.

Hirschfeld Industries specializes in fully integrated fabrication work, dealing with highly engineered structural steel components. Dealing with fabrication of around 100000 tons of steel annually, this North American giant needed a suitable mechanism to digitize and streamline the company’s steel purchases. The end goal for this manufacturer was to cut down on labor and operating costs of managing invoices and bills of lading in the hundreds and thousands.

Before they deployed Artsyl’s intelligent process automation solution to process vendor invoices, a typical work pattern of this company involved a lot of resources and time. On a typical day, a bill of lading from a vendor for an incoming rail car or truck would be received by the company. The company staff would then pull up a purchase order corresponding to the bill of lading, Missing information on the bill of lading would be filled up by tallying with the purchase order and finally updated in the system. This took up a lot of resources and time, not to mention support from part-time employees from another unit. Apart from this, there was the need to systematically review material test reports to verify that the specifications required for a finished deliverable matched the grade of steel purchased. The company needed at least 3 full-time employees (FTEs) to take care of this.

Given the tedium of processing transaction documents, the company decided to streamline inventory control and the handling of documents. Artsyl was their choice for digital transformation of their purchasing & inventory units.

Today, with Artsyl’s intelligent process automation platform, the company has cut down manual effort from 160 man-hours/month to 40 man-hours/month. Added to that, instead of holding up 3 FTEs to handle material test reports, today, the company has employed just 1 FTE — Artsyl’s intelligence-specific workflows ensured that verification of the test reports against purchase/inventory data were automated and streamlined, requiring just 1 FTE to intervene & approve in case of any exceptions.

The best part about intelligent automation of document-intensive processes is that work processes are automatically elevated to the level of best-in-class. In the case of this manufacturer, the staff was able to immediately retrieve bills of lading or material test reports, control inventory, and also rely on an authentic audit trail that is automatically created by the streamlining of operations in the purchase and inventory department.

The Artsyl IPA employs digital transformation technologies like AI, Machine Learning, intelligent data capture, Business Process Automation (BPA), along with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to perform data-and-document-intensive tasks as a human would, but with an efficiency, speed, and accuracy that is unmatched. Artsyl bots rely on Machine Learning as the primary technology to recognize and capture documents. Familiar documents with a standard template format are captured using in-built capture logic and OCR/ICR technology. But the in-built logic does not travel far when it comes to document variability. This is where Machine Learning comes into play. The bot employs Machine Learning to self-learn a new document type for format and field placement, by emulating human actions performed to key-in details from that document the first time. The bots then retrieve this learning and applies the same to process subsequent document templates of a similar format. This way, Artsyl bots add the learnings to the vast database of business logic, enabling the processing of a diverse set of document types while relying less on manual intervention each time. It can be said that the performance of Artsyl bots only improve with the processing of each new document, as it continuously builds upon the capture intelligence it is acquiring through processing each new invoice.

The Artsyl IPA’s self-learning technology is a key differentiator that clients and new customers are keen to explore, simply because of the sheer savings in operating and labor costs achieved from the near-removal of manual effort.

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