A Clear Solution - Transparency in Invoice Processing
MIBAG offers a wide range of commercial property services — from property management and facility services through to the management of construction projects — and currently has around 1,200 commercial properties in its portfolio. MIBAG believes in being close to its customers and so has a total of 43 offi ces across the whole of Switzerland. Its decentralized structure and large volume of managed properties make invoice processing a real challenge: some 100,000 purchase invoices — for orders placed on behalf of its customers or by the company itself — from around 3,500 suppliers have to be logged, approved and archived each and every year.
Key Challenges
In the past, invoices were sent directly to the local offies and checked by the purchaser before being forwarded by mail to Head Office for manual entry into the system and booking to the appropriate account. This was a timeconsuming process and led to considerable delays
in invoice processing. It could take weeks for invoices to be paid, and the company was rarely able to take advantage of early payment
discounts or rebates.
An even greater problem was the fact that the company’s finance managers did not have access to some of the key planning information
they needed. Finding out which invoices and amounts were outstanding or how much cash flow was needed was no easy matter using the company’s existing paper-based processes. So MIBAG decided to switch to electronic purchase invoice processing — opting for a
combination of Basware’s Invoice Processing solution and support from the business process experts, Astron Cominformatic.
Solution: Basware Invoice Automation
Thanks to Basware, MIBAG’s finance team now has access to up-to-date figures on accounts payable, payment dates, early payment
discounts and the current status of invoices almost at the press of a button. This transparency opens up a whole new range of controlling
and planning options as the fi nance team now always has a complete overview of the purchasing and purchase invoice processes. Information that can be used, for example, to quickly and easily identify ways of optimizing the company’s supplier portfolio.
MIBAG outsourced its entire invoice processing system to Astron Cominformatic. Suppliers now send their invoices directly to Astron. Astron scans the invoices, uses OCR to record key information such as invoice dates or amounts and archives the documents in line with statutory regulations. Astron also hosts the Basware application used to automate the entire process in its in-house computer center: all
MIBAG staff have to do is respond to the e-mail they receive requesting authorization of a particular invoice. As soon as this authorization is
received, the data is automatically transferred to MIBAG’s SAP system for processing by the Finance Management team and Accounts department. The advantages of the ASP model for MIBAG: no costly investments in hardware or software, no need to set up expensive inhouse processes and the benefi t of Astron’s know-how and experience.
Following its positive experience with this solution, MIBAG plans to take the next step in the modernization of its invoice processing in 2008. The company is currently preparing to introduce automated matching of purchase invoices to purchase orders to further accelerate the process.
Benefits
- Reliable, relevant information for fi nancial and purchasing management
- Transparency in invoice processing
- Optimal use of payment discounts and rebates
- Accelerated, simplified processes
- Legally compliant electronic archiving
- ASP model means no investments required in hardware and software
- SAP integration