With a volume of 180,000 invoices per year, a major challenge for suppliers and a dematerialization tool that had become obsolete, Manitou has launched an invoice digitalisation project in 2013.

Interview with two members of the Finance & Accounting Department at Manitou Group.

What were the context and challenges of your project ?

We have an assembling activity, which is therefore closely linked to the supply of our suppliers (especially components). Invoice dematerialization has been a company choice for many years, but technologies have evolved, as has our ERP Infor M3. We therefore redefined a new project scope : the objective was above all to linearize the workload linked to the processing of all our invoices (procurement, purchasing, warehouses, transport, overheads, etc.) and to make the process more reliable through a global workflow that goes from the digitization of documents to recording and control in M3.

What motivated your choice of the Invoice / AIP solution ?

Our choice was of course based on aspects of reliability, cost and deployment time, but one of the strongest elements was the direct link between AIP and M3. We felt it was crucial to be free of specific developments and version upgrades. Another element in favor of this choice was the fact that the capture is carried out by Invoice, a tool that is already widely deployed.

AIP seemed to us to be a scalable solution in line with our specifications. In addition, we had worked with Authentic within the framework of ERP projects and that also reassured us…

Can you go back over the course of the project ?

Today we have launched phase 1, which corresponds to a sample of 100 key suppliers, and represents approximately 37% of our invoices to be processed. The detailed design stage was relatively complex because the supplier profiles, previously processed manually, were not standardized. We had to streamline their coding, which took us longer than expected.

Today, what is your assessment of this new process ?

At this stage, we automatically integrate 60% of the invoices processed by the solution with immediate reconciliation. The entire team is trained, operational, and capable of handling a process from scanning to control. Users particularly appreciate the speed of validation in AIP; some files are closed within the day, which has a very positive impact in terms of organization and reactivity.

In the long term, we believe that this will allow us to better manage our supplier management.

We still have a long way to go to finalize the creation of all the supplier profiles and integrate phases 2 and 3 (Transportation and Overheads), but the support of Authentic, the quality and honesty of our exchanges, all of this gives us confidence for the future…