A recent study by IOFM found that while 70% of AP departments are automating their invoice processing, only 30% say that those electronic invoices can be posted straight through with no operator intervention. Most AP departments are moving away from the days of piles of paper spilling over their desks and taking up office space, but there is still lots of manual data entry and time spent on low-value tasks that could be used elsewhere.
That’s the situation that Luxasia, a luxury specialist in retail and distribution, found itself in. A rapidly growing company, Luxasia employees were still doing much of their internal accounting processes by hand. To get an invoice approved, employees had to manually create purchase requisitions and print them out. Internal expense claims were also processed by hand, with Excel spreadsheets and scanned paper receipts printed and passed to an AP specialist, who would then process and manually enter data into the SAP® system.
Not only did this create high operational costs and heavy workloads, the overall invoice process was painfully slow, which lead to increased dissatisfaction among both customers and employees. Luxasia knew it could improve on this process, so it started looking for a solution that would help:
- Reduce operational costs
- Increase document visibility and accessibility
- Integrate with SAP
- Facilitate other job functions beyond the AP department
Luxasia decided to go with Esker’s purchase-to-pay (P2P) solution to automate its purchase requisitions and supplier invoices. Today, 561 Luxasia users process documents with Esker, and Luxasia automates its 36,000 annual supplier invoices at its new shared service center. Luxasia has also seen an 80% reduction in its paper use by automating expense claims and doing away with hard copy receipts.
“We are now able to track productivity and better manager our resources thanks to Esker’s dashboard and reporting capabilities,” said Jasmin Ong, Regional Finance Controller at Luxasia. “Esker has also helped us streamline our processes and ensure a consistent work standard.”
In addition to improving its AP workflow, Luxasia added additional processes to meet internal needs like GL account creation and payment advice. Through automating, the company gained enhanced visibility, cross-border support, a user-friendly interface, and improved communication leading to increased efficiency for its AP process.
For more information on Luxasia and the improvements it made, check out the full case study using the link below!
