BASF automates global P2P process in the Cloud

BASF shortens pro­ces­sing time for 3.5 million incoming invoices per year by 50 percent and reduces effort by 40 FTE thanks to AI. smart INVOICE excels in detailed document reading, excellent data quality, deep vali­da­tion, and low main­ten­ance effort.

Insiders imple­mented the smart INVOICE solution for BASF worldwide. This has enabled the chemical company to automate the purchase-to-pay(P2P) process for accounts payable pro­ces­sing to a much greater extent and further improve its quality. Overall, auto­ma­tion with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has more than halved invoice pro­ces­sing time and saved 40 full-time equi­va­lents (FTE) of effort.

Every year, BASF receives around 3.5 million documents with a total volume of about 10 million pages from more than 80 countries. An extensive market review led the company to Insiders Tech­no­lo­gies‘ smart INVOICE solution as a cloud service. In selecting a new solution, it was essential for BASF to use state-of-the-art AI for the best possible data extra­c­tion and to enable rapid rollout and easy scaling with cloud services. Addi­tio­nally, fully automated detailed document reading and vali­da­tion were required for a holistic increase in the degree of auto­ma­tion across the entire process chain.

„Our process was already largely optimized in terms of its flow. It was obvious that to increase effi­ci­ency further, we would have to rely on new tech­no­lo­gies from arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to achieve more auto­ma­tion“

says Rita Lampasona-Hornung, Head of Accounts Payable EMEA at BASF. „The intel­li­gent cloud services from Insiders Tech­no­lo­gies – spe­ci­fi­cally smart INVOICE for invoice pro­ces­sing – quickly convinced us with their inno­va­tive concept and out­stan­ding per­for­mance.“

With year-end closing as a fixed deadline, the design, planning, imple­men­ta­tion, and global rollout of the Insiders solution had to be fully completed within just ten months. Today, around 400 employees at BASF’s three service hubs worldwide are working with this solution. The document reading process has been signi­fi­cantly improved in terms of the scope and quality of the data, which is reflected in a high pro­por­tion of fully automated read and verified documents. This level of quality has also led to a signi­fi­cantly improved ratio of documents with fully automatic posting in SAP. Using the smart ACT business analytics tool inte­grated into the solution, BASF can evaluate extensive usage data in various levels of detail and so are able to improve the entire process in a data-driven manner con­ti­nuously.

BASF is so convinced of the per­for­mance of Insiders Tech­no­lo­gies‘ cloud services that it is already piloting other appli­ca­tion areas in the P2P process, such as order con­fir­ma­tion pro­ces­sing and advanced shipping noti­fi­ca­tions.

Read the detailed project report now!