OpenText World Navigator Award - SBB
Swiss Federal Railways (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, or SBB) is the national railway company of Switzerland. To keep the railway running smoothly, SBB procures goods and services from a supplier network. Shared Service Finanzen, the company’s dedicated service organization for accounting, is responsible for managing the invoice-to-pay cycle and ensuring suppliers are paid on time.
Shared Service Finanzen relies on OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Management for SAP® Solutions to automate the invoice receipt and posting process. However, invoice reminders, sent by suppliers in unstructured paper or email formats, were still handled manually. This time- and resource-intensive process requires the finance team to investigate each reminder to determine whether invoices had been received, paid or rejected, and send updates to suppliers.
Shared Service Finanzen extended the OpenText solution, enabling it to digitize all inbound invoicing reminders. Reminders may refer to one or more invoices, all with different due dates. Adapting and using existing workflows, SBB designed additional business rules and functionalities to process reminders without any manual intervention.
Using data capture capabilities, the solution extracts relevant structured and unstructured data, such as vendor name, invoice number and dunning level from reminders, then matches each reminder to the corresponding invoices. Depending on the invoice status, the OpenText workflow automatically carries out the appropriate next action.
The new solution offers end-to-end insights into the invoice-to-pay process. As a result, the service organization can provide business owners in SBB with detailed information on the quality of specific suppliers, contracts, payment terms and more by evaluating invoice quality and internal payment processes.
Today, over 50 percent of invoicing reminders are processed immediately after receiving the supplier request and without any human interaction, saving time and reducing costs. Finance teams can dedicate more of their time to value-added activities, supporting SBB in delivering excellent customer service.
Shared Service Finanzen relies on OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Management for SAP® Solutions to automate the invoice receipt and posting process. However, invoice reminders, sent by suppliers in unstructured paper or email formats, were still handled manually. This time- and resource-intensive process requires the finance team to investigate each reminder to determine whether invoices had been received, paid or rejected, and send updates to suppliers.
Shared Service Finanzen extended the OpenText solution, enabling it to digitize all inbound invoicing reminders. Reminders may refer to one or more invoices, all with different due dates. Adapting and using existing workflows, SBB designed additional business rules and functionalities to process reminders without any manual intervention.
Using data capture capabilities, the solution extracts relevant structured and unstructured data, such as vendor name, invoice number and dunning level from reminders, then matches each reminder to the corresponding invoices. Depending on the invoice status, the OpenText workflow automatically carries out the appropriate next action.
The new solution offers end-to-end insights into the invoice-to-pay process. As a result, the service organization can provide business owners in SBB with detailed information on the quality of specific suppliers, contracts, payment terms and more by evaluating invoice quality and internal payment processes.
Today, over 50 percent of invoicing reminders are processed immediately after receiving the supplier request and without any human interaction, saving time and reducing costs. Finance teams can dedicate more of their time to value-added activities, supporting SBB in delivering excellent customer service.