In pre-sales our philosophy is to show customers how the solution will work in SAP from a users perspective through live demonstrations using the customer's documents and data.
The experience our consulting team has gained implementing the solutions we offer with SAP provides potential customers with a realistic and credible understanding of the potential of each solution and the implementation effort required to achieve this. This is unlike most third party software vendors who deal with multiple ERP solutions and do not have the specialist knowledge or experience required to deal with SAP customers.
Dave Robinson – Head of Business Services made the following comments about the project:
The Invoices Cockpit in SAP performs line item matching and will automatically post documents passing First Group’s 3-way match checks. Documents failing auto-line matching are automatically workflowed to the appropriate business user based on First Group’s business rules.
First Group’s business case was based on achieving a 40% touchless process.
First Group are now posting 65% of their invoices first time, which is a significant productivity gain from the original target of 40% and well on the way to achieving the new 80% target set by First Group.
"Automation levels are steadily increasing; we are currently automating 65% of our invoices and are confident of reaching our target of 80%."
“Having all supplier invoices within SAP and visible for all to see has improved the control and flow of information. We are better placed to advise suppliers of any ongoing issues and when payments can and will be released.”
“The continuing support, development offerings and willingness to consider our ideas is a refreshing pleasure from an IT consultancy firm. The advice offered is always helpful, honest and constructive and I would not hesitate in recommending Cogent Consulting.”
“Cogent are a valued business partner for RS. Their approach to CI has allowed us to make significant improvements to automation. Our automation rate is on average 85%.”
Invoices that fail the checks are automatically routed to the business user via workflow based on rules and Accounts Payable have complete control and visibility of the documents wherever they are in the process.
On Go-Live the automation rate, defined as documents that post first time with no intervention, was 10%. As part of the A-iP service, we work with customers post-production to improve the percentage of invoices that post time. This is achieved through a mixture of system changes to adapt data based on how the vendor invoices versus how the users raise orders and perform goods receipts and process improvements to use the right purchasing process for different goods/services. One of the key process improvements was to remove goods receipting for catalogue items and use a two-way match process. The two-way match process works by matching the invoice items against the PO items and if matched, the invoice is posted with a payment block. The document is sent for approval on a workflow and by clicking approve on a web page the payment block is removed and the invoice is free for payment. The workflow captures an audit trail and links it to the posting in SAP, so Waltham still have the controls in place, but it’s a more efficient process than goods receipting in SAP.
“Cogent consulting have provided Waltham Forest with an e-invoicing solution that has reduced our costs, improved efficiency and provided visibilty to our vendors and to our budget Holders.”
'Cogent consulting have provided Waltham Forest with an e-invoicing solution that has reduced our costs, improved efficiency and provided visibility so that we can inform our vendors and our budget Holders of the status of an invoice/s instantly. Waltham Forest have found the company to be keen to make improvements during the period of the contract to date and Waltham Forest have therefore benefited from changes that have further improved business processes and enabled more efficient resolution of queries'
to arrange a live demonstration of the solution from receipt to post on SAP. We would also be happy for you to visit the A-iP Service Centre to see the process in action in a production environment.
Kent Police implement Accounts Payable Automation processing 60,000 invoices per annum. Cogent Consulting were awarded the tender to implement the solution in the new Business Services Centre, which Kent Police have setup to deliver Finance Shared Services.
Dave Marshall – Head of Business Services for Kent Police
Having gone live with AP automation, Wilts set Cogent the next challenge, which was to help them scan and link signed Proof of Deliveries to the Delivery Note in SAP. Having the signed Proof of Delivery available in SAP means Credit Controllers are able to email a copy of the POD to a customer during cash collection activities.
solution, which enables the scanning, indexing and archiving of any document type to any business object.
Delivery Notes are printed out of Wilts SAP system with a barcode that is the delivery number in SAP. There was no change at the branches as the drivers continued to scanning their signed POD’s at the end of each day and ArchiveAny picks them up in the background and archives them against the delivery in SAP by reading the barcode. The result is that Credit Control have immediate access to the signed POD if customers request a copy during cash collection. ArchiveAny also provides an error handling transaction in SAP to manually index documents where the barcode could not be read.
Wilts decided it would be beneficial to link the POD’s already scanned in the shared drive over the previous 12 months, but this was a significant task as it equated to about 400,000 images. Cogent Consulting provided a
“Cogent Consulting took the time to understand our business requirements and to identify solutions that were appropriate to our business needs. They freely offered advice and guidance that went beyond the scope of the immediate project. The implementation was a simple process with quality and speed assisted by Cogent’s intellectual capital, the excellent SAP knowledge of their consultants and their willingness to be flexible to our timescales and requirements”.
