IDM Capture reduced the time it took for Accounts Payable to process a purchase invoice by over 80%
81% of invoices processed ‘straight through’ on day one
80% reduction in manual intervention throughout the invoicing process
70% of total invoice volume will be processed via IDM Capture, powered by Ephesoft
Customer: Amphenol Ltd.
Industry: Manufacturing
Application: Purchase processing
Partner: Cobwebb Communications Ltd.
Amphenol LTD is a manufacturing site within the family of companies that forms the Amphenol Corporation, a global interconnect specialist generating in excess of $8 billion yearly revenue with over 80,000 employees. Employing around 260 people at the site in Whitstable, Kent, Amphenol LTD offers a full design and manufacturing service for a large range of connectors and interconnect solutions, including cable assembly, overmoulding and electronic packaging. In the age of globalisation, Amphenol LTD is proud to have retained a full end-to-end manufacturing capability for its products in the UK, whilst having opened access to low cost manufacturing sites around the world to complement its offering to customers globally.
Challenges
Amphenol identified the need to modernise and automate their AP function. Michael Polley, IT Applications Manager explained “We were printing invoices and manually entering the data into XA. Physical copies of the invoices were being stored on site which made them difficult to retrieve and file. With the increased demand for remote working, the need for greater transparency and faster reconciliation was essential.” A decision was made to replace existing manual processes with document capture and workflow technologies.
Solution
Amphenol made the decision to adopt Infor Document Management (IDM) Capture, powered by Ephesoft, and Infor OS as their platform for automation. A key factor in the decision was the existence of a pre-built integration with Infor ERP using Infor OS. In August 2021 phase one of the project went live, processing invoices from Amphenol’s highest volume suppliers. Invoices are picked up from a dedicated email inbox and automatically loaded into IDM Capture. Using OCR technology, IDM Capture scans the invoice for key information and triggers an API lookup to Infor ERP XA to validate the invoice and enrich the data. This ensures that only valid invoices are logged in the ERP and reduces the reliance on OCR, as fields can be populated via the lookup. The easy-to-use web interface queues up the invoices that did not make it through the validation process and presents these as ‘exceptions’ for the AP team to review. These are then prioritised and picked up by members of the AP team wherever they are working. Once checked and validated, the exceptions are submitted through to the ERP for processing. Finally, a copy of the invoice is sent to IDM along with required metadata to enable easy retrieval.
Michael commented: “From the first day of going live, over 80% of the invoices being processed went straight through via IDM Capture were logged in XA without the need for manual intervention.” Access to digital copies of invoices and supporting documentation, in context from within the ERP, enabled the AP team to better serve their customers both internally and externally as queries can be resolved and approvals sought in a fraction of the time they used to take.
Next Steps
The Cobwebb solution deployed at Amphenol is a platform for automation and the AP project is just the tip of the iceberg. Cobwebb, a long-standing Ephesoft partner and Infor specialist, and Amphenol are looking forward to working together in the coming years and discovering further opportunities for process improvement and automation.
