Challenge
In a bid to reduce time spent on, and costs involved in the billing process, 10-4 has made a concerted effort to exploit the potential of sending and receiving electronic business documents. To replace manual business processes, the company has also introduced a workflow system to approve invoices they receive, followed by direct entry in the accounting system. However, 10-4 discovered that there were issues in terms of the quality of the electronic invoices they received, coming as they do in a variety of formats (OIOUBL, EDIFACT) and from various operators. That, combined with a poor level of transparency and traceability, meant there was room for improvement.
Solution
10-4 started cooperation with mySupply with a view to establishing a coherent solution, whereby mySupply’s VAX 360 solution could process both traditional EDIFACT documents and OIOUBL documents electronically. A solution now exists, in which documents are received directly from suppliers via NemHandel, BygE or a VANS (Value-Added Network Services) operator. Whenever documents that are received cannot be processed directly, they are converted and then loaded into the workflow system, which approves and processes them before posting each invoice in the accounting system. mySupply has also developed a special presentation of electronic invoices, making it easy for staff who have to handle them to work on them.
What the customer says
There were a few difficulties at the outset. The normal presentation of the electronic invoice did not contain the information we need. But, apart from that, we now have a solution, in which everything is done electronically. The solution works for all our departments and stores, so we have achieved major gains efficiency-wise.
With this solution, the quality of the invoices we receive is now top notch. Errors are detected before they enter our workflow, while the transparency and traceability mean we save both time and costs. We don’t spend time on correcting errors. VAX 360 detects all errors in invoices, and we now have a better invoicing basis from our suppliers, so we can process invoices easily and quickly through our workflow system.
