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Case study: Bank of Ireland (AP)

SoftCo & Bank of Ireland: delivering superior efficiency in Accounts Payable processes

With 17,000 employees across 8 countries, Bank of Ireland Group needs to have as much visibility as possible, in all its business areas, to operate at peak efficiency. With 120,000 supplier invoices received each year, the Bank's Accounts Payable department faced significant operational challenges due to the sheer number of documents that must be handled effectively. Bank of Ireland Group partnered with SoftCo to meet this challenge.

Bank of Ireland Group receives tens of thousands of supplier invoices into its shared services centre each year and efficient management of this information flow is essential for its Procure-to-Pay process. Following implementation of a new ERP solution designed to improve productivity, it became clear that better processes were needed for routing and retrieval of invoices, and the bank went to the market to find a solution.

"After our initial SAP implementation, there were still opportunities to further improve our invoice handling process," explains David Staunton, Procurement Process Manager at the BOI Group. "We had very much a paper-based process for handling invoices which either required approval or needed some exception resolved before processing. In many instances, we even had to return the original invoice to the sender."

The problems of paper-based processes were becoming increasingly complex and time-consuming. These included invoices getting mislaid, the problems of duplicate invoices getting into the workflow and the potential for frustration from customers unable to get timely answers to queries about invoices.

The potential downsides were significant. "Prior to the SoftCo solution, we wouldn't have known whether an invoice was in the building until it was posted into SAP," says Joan Fennell, Operations Manager for the bank's Procure-to-Pay Centre. "If this situation were to result, for example, in late payments in processing invoices, it might prevent us from availing of early payment discounts with suppliers and even potentially damage our reputation amongst our customers.

What the bank needed was a means of easily retrieving a digital copy of any invoice, at any time. The solution also needed to allow the processing and approval of invoices from the moment they came into the organisation, and it must let the bank build on its existing investment in SAP.

The SoftCo solution

After looking to the marketplace, the bank examined a number of solutions in detail and developed a shortlist of three potential providers, before ultimately choosing SoftCo. SoftCo's understanding of the AP process and its long experience with SAP was highly valued by the bank, and made the company the best choice to deliver an integrated AP solution that encompassed a number of elements.

"A key differentiator was knowing that SoftCo already understood SAP and had the necessary experience, partners and tools to integrate a solution with our existing investment," recalls David.

The solution developed for Bank of Ireland Group now includes a workflow system that facilitates the retrieval and routing of invoices throughout the organisation, and seamlessly integrates with SAP:

• On receipt at the company's centralised Shared Service Centre, invoices are scanned using Readsoft's Documents for Invoices. With optical character recognition (OCR) technology, invoice data is read from each scanned invoice, reducing the amount of manual data entry required and the opportunity for errors.
• Data is then posted into Ebydos Invoice Cockpit, which acts as the control centre for the AP clerk within SAP. From here, all data relevant for invoice processing can be accessed.
• Ebydos Web Cycle acts as the workflow solution which allows an invoice to be routed through the bank for review, annotation and approval; the image of the invoice, as well as its data, is retrievable at any time.

The OCR element of the solution, so crucial for the efficient capture of information from tens of thousands of incoming invoices, has exceeded the bank's expectations. "In terms of productivity, the bank was unsure how the OCR component would deal with the wide variety of invoice types that it receives, " says Garret Pearse, Project Manager, SoftCo. "However recognition rates have been very good allowing them to process high volumes of invoices very effiicently."

Reaping the benefits of rationalised information capture and routing

The benefits of the solution delivered by SoftCo for the bank have quickly become apparent. As well as reduced errors connected to manual data entry, it is also much easier now for staff to cross-check records and quickly spot anomalies such as incorrect VAT calculations or missing PO numbers. The system also means corrections to these records take seconds to complete. Up-to-date information is now available more quickly: if an invoice is received before 12.30pm, it is scanned and input that same day.

Better information availability has also improved customer service: staff can quickly retrieve a scanned invoice at any stage, seek approval from all involved parties and reduce overall turnaround time per invoice.

"It's been very positive in terms of the bank's Procure-to-Pay Centre," David says. "It's just much more visible. You can see what's coming and we can now easily prioritise invoices in terms of due date... and it's remarkably easy to use. Now we quickly know whether an invoice is in the system and we can track every invoice at every stage of the process through SAP," he says. "That also means we've addressed issues concerning compliance and risk and significantly improved our productivity."

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