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Schäfer Werke | Schäfer Shop
Schäfer Werke and Schäfer Shop are two independently operating companies within the Schäfer family of businesses, with different business areas and a shared IT infrastructure. While Schäfer Werke, with more than 1,000 employees, is a leading steel processing company with manufacturing sites in Germany and the Czech Republic, Schäfer Shop, with 650 employees, offers its customers in nine countries high-quality furniture and complete furnishings for offices, warehouses, and industrial facilities.
Both companies rely on Insiders Technologies’ e-invoice pro ( formerly smart INVOICE) and Order (formerly smart ORDER) as a universal platform for the AI-based automation of their document processing. Each year, more than 330,000 incoming invoices and 150,000 orders are processed largely automatically—across all channels and in multiple countries.
Industry
Steel Processing / Retail and Office Furnishings
Product
e-invocie pro | Order
Volume
>330,000 invoices + 150,000 orders per year
“It was important to us to have a flexible platform that would allow us to meet all our current and future document-handling needs. With Insiders Technologies’ product portfolio, we feel very well equipped: it provides us with excellent solutions for both purchase-to-pay and order management—the best of both worlds, so to speak. So far, we haven’t reached the platform’s limits, and we don’t expect to.”
Patrick Schuster,
, Solution Architect for Digital Process Integration, Schäfer Shop Group GmbH & Co. KG
Project Overview
What was the
initial situation?
- Wide range of processes and document types: commercial, administrative, and technical documents in both companies
- High document volume: more than 330,000 incoming invoices and 150,000 orders per year
- General incoming mail with more than 20 document categories—via channels such as email, fax, and paper
- Order acceptance in the retail business is particularly time-sensitive
- International operations involving different languages, currencies, and country-specific requirements
- Integration into SAP required as the leading system for core processes
Why the decision
Insiders?
- A targeted market comparison aimed at finding a universally applicable platform for all current and future document processes
- e-invocie pro and Order provided an optimal foundation for all cognitive process automation requirements—both business and technical
- The conviction that an incoming document should be handled manually no more than once if fully automated processing is not possible
- Strong integration with the SAP system landscape, including approximately 2 million customer master records
How was the solution implemented?
- Phased expansion: Start with incoming invoice processing, expand to Schäfer Shop’s entire incoming mail, and later integrate technical document classes at Schäfer Werke
- Multichannel incoming mail processing for Schäfer Shop in Germany and Switzerland via email, fax, and paper
- Processing of approximately 150,000 orders per year using Order and approximately 250,000 incoming invoices using e-invoice per at Schäfer Shop
- Additional processing of approximately 40,000 factory and material test certificates at Schäfer Werke
- Regular project collaboration through Insiders Technologies’ Professional Services with a dedicated point of contact
How can success
be measured?
- Up to 85% fully automated processing of document fields
- Significant gains in efficiency and quality in the purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes
- Real-time tracking of incoming orders—15-minute reporting intervals enable a rapid response to peak loads
- High user satisfaction: Routine tasks such as data entry, plausibility checks, and validation are reliably handled by the solution
- All projects to date have been completed on time and within budget
What are the next steps?
- Plans to Introduce Full Incoming Mail Processing in Austria as Well
- Further automation of additional document categories—in both commercial and technical areas