Before Basware, invoice processing at NOV was highly manual. Paper invoices, manual approvals, and direct data entry into ERP systems were common across the organization.
“We were dealing with paper invoices, manual approvals, and keying everything straight into the ERP,” says Brent Cazalot, Director of Financial Shared Services at NOV. “At the time, that was just how we worked.”
When NOV first saw Basware in action, the contrast was immediate.
“It was worlds different from what we were used to,” Cazalot says. “Seeing that level of automation was a big shift for us.”
Basware was initially deployed in the US across two ledgers, followed just three months later by a rollout in Norway to prove the concept. With early success established, NOV rapidly expanded Basware across corporate and regional operations worldwide.
“That early rollout showed us the potential very quickly,” says Cazalot. “From there, it became a global platform.”
Optimization that reduces touches and changes behavior
As Basware scaled, NOV turned its focus to optimization. Some early design decisions no longer matched the volume and complexity of the environment, prompting a structured effort to recalibrate and improve performance.
Over the past year, that work has delivered measurable results.
“Over the last year, we reduced our manual touches by 25%,” says Cazalot. “We did that through Basware’s optimization program and by meeting weekly to identify invoice mapping issues and master data problems we could fix.”
These weekly sessions created a consistent cadence for continuous improvement, with Basware working alongside NOV to resolve issues at the root rather than reacting invoice by invoice.
The impact went beyond efficiency.
“Our teams now understand exactly why an invoice needs attention.” Cazalot explains. “They are not just touching invoices. They are identifying the cause, fixing it where possible, and preventing it from happening again.”
With fewer invoices requiring manual intervention, AP teams now spend more time on higher-value work, including supplier issue resolution and process improvement.
“They are spending less time firefighting,” he says. “And once they see the benefits, they are motivated to keep pushing that number down even further.”
Oracle integration that enforces global standards at scale
Oracle plays a central role in NOV’s ERP landscape, with Oracle E-Business Suite supporting legacy operations and Oracle Fusion Cloud forming the foundation for the future.
Basware integrates across both environments, providing a consistent AP layer regardless of business unit or geography.
“The first integration took some work to get everything flowing correctly,” says Cazalot. “But once that was done, adding new ledgers and business units became very easy. It is a repeatable process.”
Basware also helped NOV address Oracle-specific challenges driven by localized business practices, including blanket purchase orders, after-the-fact POs, and complex distribution structures.
“Basware helped bring those issues to the surface,” Cazalot says. “We were able to standardize them into a global design, and Basware helps us enforce that design as we continue to roll out.”
From a reporting perspective, Basware has become the system of record across NOV’s Oracle landscape.
“Instead of pulling reports from multiple Oracle ledgers and trying to aggregate them, Basware gives us one source of truth,” he says. “That has been a big advantage for us.”
