Use Case: Logistics and Invoice Processing

Function: Finance

Industry: Retail

Challenge:

The client was receiving paper invoices from suppliers which the logistics team then checked against the PO number, invoice number, ensured it matched the quantity received, checked the unit price and total amount. Once everything was established as correct, the finance team then uploads the document in the ERP system.

The finance team then did a further round of checks with three-way matching, checking the vendor invoice to ensure that the payment is complete and accurate before the invoice is uploaded.

The client receives close to 100k invoices per year. Processing these invoices was time consuming and there were some challenges:

1. Duplicate entries
2. Slow approval processing
3. Inability to manage and store information
4. Vulnerability to fraud
5. Labor intensive

Solution:

We implemented RPA bots to streamline the invoicing process. By automating the tasks, which consumed valuable time and resources we delivered faster and more reliable processing with reduced long-term costs. The bots respond to XXXX which leads to the following process:

• The vendor sends the invoice to a designated mail ID, the OCR tool downloads the mail and using intelligent OCR and natural language processing capabilities, extracts the information that is on the invoice.
• The RPA bots constantly monitor a dedicated folder where Excel invoices are saved by the OCR tool, once robots detect the presence of an invoice in the folder, they extract information from the document.
• After robots extract the required information from each invoice, they login to the ERP system and process each invoice, transferring over the relevant invoice information to the ERP.
• After registering each invoice, the bots then update an Excel sheet and send posting emails to the human employee responsible for the end of processing.
• In case of any exceptions, data does not match, PO does not exist, the bots will send an email to the logistics team for the discrepancy to be dealt with.

Soft Benefits

• Instant information: When invoices are automated, anybody can access the invoice at anytime from anywhere
• Faster transaction speed eliminating bottlenecks during the busy season or times when there was a reduction in manpower available
• Reduced human errors, especially in the verification process
• Easier auditing, paper invoices are very difficult to audit. The RPA platform has an inbuilt audit trail
• Reduced costs: When payments are made on time, penalties are avoided.

Realized Hard Benefits

1. Volume of Transactions – 100K+ ????
2. Number of hours saved – 20k per year
3. Value Saved – 1.25k SAR per year

 

Use Case: Bank Reconciliation

Function: Finance

Industry: Retail

Challenge:

The client was facing significant challenges around visibility and accountability in the bank reconciliation process. The reconciliation was a time-consuming process, requiring the accounts department to find information from multiple sources to balance the final figures.

The previous process involved the finance team logging into the bank portal and downloading the bank statement in excel format before verifying opening and closing balances are tallied, verifying commission and VAT rates of each transaction, check for refunds or manual entries, log into SAP and download credit and debit entries, and finally tally the sums in an excel sheet. If there are particular transactions which do not match, download the transaction slips and communicate with the bank. Unmatched transactions are then used to create reconciling items and correcting journal entries.

Some of the challenges that were faced by the finance team:

1. Duplicate entries
2. Data clean up at the point of entry or data cleansing during a downstream process
3. Post-extract data transformation processes to force each data type to conform a rigid format
4. Human generated data errors
5. Journals created and posted manually to each account and where required, analyzed to the individual store for items not present

Solution:

We implemented RPA bots to automate existing processes with reduced timelines and higher efficiency without disrupting legacy systems.

RPA can quickly handle the first two parts, gathering and consolidating, which typically take the most time in preparing the final bank reconciliation sheet.

RPA can make the reconciliation process seamless, significantly reducing the need for manual intervention. While humans can only process a few transactions per minute, software robots can process thousands, reducing a process that usually takes days to minutes. The bots respond to XXXX which leads to the following process:

• The bot downloads the statement from the bank platform and the transaction data from the Gidea, then matches and consolidates the SAP and Geidea data.
• The bot then checks the opening and closing balances in the statement, checks for STU and refunds.
• The bot downloads SACO books data and credit/debit data from SAP.
• The bot creates the bank reconciliation file in pre-defined format.
• The bot sends a consolidated report of incorrectly calculated transaction fees, missing reconciliation data and unidentified transactions for the human team to address.

Soft Benefits

1. Reducing time to close through RPA driven reconciliation
2. Reduce the time and labor hours it takes to reconcile transactions by 90%.
3. Eliminate costly errors due to human input of manual and rules-based matching
4. Improving quality of data coming into the close process including reducing data errors before the trial close

Realized Hard Benefits

1. Volume of Transactions – 12 instances per year. Each instance has more than 1k Transactions
2. Number of hours saved – 500+ per year
3. Value Saved – 100k SAR per year

Use Case: Daily Sales Reconciliation

Function: Finance

Industry: Retail

Challenge:

The client processes substantial volumes of cash, ACH and credit card transactions across multiple locations every day and the management team needs to interpret these transactions in order to deliver real-time analysis of the organization’s financial performance.

Journal entries for gift card transactions and credit card fee allocations often needed manual processing and spreadsheets were manually passed around for approval and review before posting resulting in a process that is time consuming for the team.

The finance department was receiving sales reconciliation documents from stores on multiple days of the week, either by courier service for shops outside of Riyadh or collected daily for the stores for those in Riyadh and submitted to finance. This was causing significant challenges around visibility and accountability in the financial close process.

Solution:

We implemented RPA bots to automate the existing processes, replacing manual spreadsheet-driven processes and automate account reconciliations, journal entries, transaction matching, task management and variance analysis.

The bots increased efficiency, without disrupting legacy systems and automated and standardize the entire reconciliation process. The bots were able to drive accuracy in the financial close with embedded controls and provide accountants with a streamlined method to verify their balance sheets through the following process:

• Stores send cash data in pre-defined format through email
• The bot downloads credit/debit/AmEx transaction data from Gidea portal
• The bot logs into Outlook and downloads cash data
• The bot posts the data by store and terminal

Soft Benefits:

1. Instead of completing period-end accounting activities in a few days, work is performed in smaller batches. This means accurate information is always available and there’s more time to review, reducing risk of fraud or restatement.
2. The management team can gain clear visibility into business data across multiple currencies in real time.
3. The finance team can spend less time on transactional tasks and instead provide value-added services, interpreting the financial data to improve overall business performance.
4. The bots can detect and correct errors to ensure financial statement accuracy, reducing the risk of accounting irregularities.

Realized Hard Benefits

1. Volume of Transactions – 1Million+ per year
2. Number of hours saved – 5000+ per year
3. Value Saved – 1Million+ SAR per year