MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR ESSITY GROUP CUTS COSTS BY 63% & INCREASES PRODUCTIVITY 3X WITH IVI!
OUR CLIENT
Essity is the world’s leading hygiene and healthcare company dedicated to improving well-being through products and solutions essential for everyday life in the businesses of Personal Care, Consumer Tissue, and Professional Hygiene.
Essity has over 46,000 Employees with operations across 150 countries where its hygiene and health portfolio of famous brands such as TENA, Tork, JOBST, Leukoplast, Libero, Libresse, Lotus, Nosotras, Saba, Tempo, Vinda and Zewa; generate approximately 12.2 Billion Euros in Annual Net Sales Revenues and approximately 16 Billion Euros in Annual EBITA.
Essity’s Global Headquarters is based in Stockholm, Sweden; is listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm; and continues to breaks barriers to well-being, as it contributes to a healthy, sustainable, and circular society.
CHALLENGE
With Annual Net Sales Revenues of approximately 12.2 Billion Euros and Annual EBITA of approximately 16 Billion Euros, as a result of the sales of hundreds of brands across 150 countries and multiple Strategic Business Units (SBU’s); Essity required a best in class and industry-leading solution for its Accounts Payable (AP) Operations.
Essity’s existing AP processes were labour, time, and cost-intensive involving large numbers of Finance Department Employees performing many manual and tedious steps in order to process a Supplier Invoice. As Supplier Invoices were sent in a variety of data and document formats, as well as transmission channels; Essity were unable to perform automated and straight-through processing to their ERP System.
Instead, their Finance Department became overwhelmed with the sheer volume of Supplier Invoices resulting in long average processing times; significant time spent managing exception-handling and Supplier enquiries; money lost due to human-error and invoice fraud; and low Employee morale coupled with high Employee turnover.
Furthermore, the various international entities and SBU’s, implemented different AP processes which caused a lack of transparency, visibility, and accountability across the entire Supply Chain Management. While not having access to digitalised and structured Supplier Invoice data meant that Essity were unable to effectively participate in Dynamic Discounting Programs or obtain actionable insights from 100% of their financial data.
OUR SOLUTION
ivi e-Invoicing Services, as the world’s best in class and industry-leading provider of AP Automation and e-Invoicing Solutions; provided Essity with an end-to-end AP Automation Solution that enabled the straight-through processing of all Supplier Invoices, where the 100% digital, accurate, and structured data is instantly imported into their ERP System without any manual intervention.
As a first step, ivi audited Essity’s existing AP Operations for Supplier Paper Invoice processing and developed a solution to digitalize these paper invoices and extract 100% accurate data from day 1. This step was essential in order to guarantee smooth and seamless transition to AP Automation and e-Invoicing without causing disruption to current workflows.
ivi then designed a complete end-to-end AP Automation and e-Invoice workflow configuring our advanced AI and machine learning software robotics and algorithms to perform Supplier Invoice verifications, validations, and routing according to the specific business rules and settings required by Essity; which immediately digitally transformed their AP processes to paperless, touchless, and fully-automated.
RESULT
ivi’s new end-to-end AP Automation Solution resulted in the following immediate and positive impact on Essity’s operations:
* Achieved an immediate Return on Investment (ROI) due to over 80% of all Suppliers being integrated into the AP Automation Solution by ivi’s e-Business Team within only 3 months, ensuring quick results and ongoing further reductions in invoice processing costs.
* Dramatic increase in Employee productivity, efficiency, and accuracy; as the number of Supplier Invoices processed per Employee per month, increases by a factor of 3X.
* Routine, repetitive, and soul-destroying manually-intensive tasks are 100% eliminated resulting in 60% of valuable resources being freed-up to focus on core business activities that positively impact profitability, while improving Employee motivation and reducing Employee turnover.
* Supplier Invoice processing costs are cut by 63% as the manual keying-in of data is 100% eliminated, while the risk of human-error and invoice fraud is completely mitigated.
* AP Operations are digitally transformed from a Cost-Centre to a Profit Centre, as ivi’s fully-integrated Dynamic Discounting Program enables a reduction in the price of Supplier Invoices, in exchange for earlier payment processing which increases Annual EBITA .
* Finance Department Operations are strategically transformed from an Administration Centre to a Management Consulting Centre, as the digitalization and automation of Supplier Invoice data results in 100% of spend under-management and 100% of financial data accessible for analytics and reporting.