Heidelberg/Blieskastel, July 7, 2009 – Leading supplier of electrical installation systems relies on tangro PA-IS for processing payment advices directly in SAP
Leading supplier of electrical installation systems relies on tangro PA-IS for processing payment advices directly in SAP
The Hager Group, a leading supplier of systems, solutions and services for electrical installations, is currently harmonising its SAP systems worldwide. The focus is on optimising those SAP processes that involve a high proportion of manual activity. To speed up the processing of their payment advices in the SAP system, for example, Hager has called in tangro, who provides add-ons for automated inbound document processing in SAP. The tangro PA-IS solution (Payment Advice – Industry Solution) is integrated in SAP, so the automatic data recognition takes place directly in the SAP system. It uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to enable payment advices to be processed with the help of automation.
Each month Hager's accounts receivable department is sent about 150 paper-based payment advices, which often contain thousands of individual entries. Hager Group's customers (wholesalers and buying syndicates in the electrical sector) list the invoice items, along with individual discounts, in these documents and announce a forthcoming payment.
With tangro PA-IS, which enables more efficient workflows and shorter throughput times, Hager can cut its processing time by over 50 %, reduce its error rate and achieve real-time liquidity planning. The tangro solution recognises the items listed on the scanned document, compares these with the outstanding accounts receivable in SAP and enters the recognised items in an input screen in SAP. Staff no longer have the time-consuming job of typing in and checking the data.
Systematic success
The Hager Group is a leading provider of all-in solutions and services for cutting-edge electrotechnical installations such as building control systems or power distribution in residential and commercial properties as well as for industrial applications. The services they offer include security technology in the form of alarm systems, smoke detectors and motion sensors. Before the Hager Group decided on tangro PA-IS, the staff working in the accounts receivable department had to check the data in incoming payment advices item-by-item and enter them in the SAP system. Matching the incoming payments with the outstanding items was a time-consuming and error-prone business, and sometimes very confusing. The accounts staff had to search the SAP system for all the open items belonging to a payment and check that the amount paid, discounts and any deductions were correct. Some payment advices are so large that this process in SAP took several hours and could not be interrupted because of the transaction logic.
High level of automation for matching line item data
tangro PA-IS enters the payment advices in SAP and matches each advice to the customers and their open items. The SAP add-on checks the data in the payment advices, such as invoice number, amount, discount and the sum paid. If the application finds any differences or unauthorised deductions, these are shown up clearly in a graphical ‘traffic light’ control system. The accounts officer can then deal with these items efficiently. When the scanned documents have been processed with tangro PA-IS, they are automatically stored in the electronic archive and can be retrieved directly from the SAP-FI module if there are any queries.
The user interface of the tangro solution is consistent with the familiar SAP environment and displays the documents clearly in a central mask without any modifications being required.
“Only 10 to 20 minutes instead of several hours”
Now the accounts receivable department at Hager uses the tangro PA-IS solution to automatically process more than 95 % of the payment advices they receive by post.
“We opted for tangro PA-IS so that our payment advices could be processed with OCR support. This is the only commercially available solution with an OCR function that is fully integrated in SAP. It's user-friendly and easy for the IT department to maintain. While those working in our accounts receivable department used to take several hours to process extensive payment advices that sometimes filled 40 A4 pages, they now only need 10 to 20 minutes thanks to tangro PA-IS,” explains Willi-Gerd Schmitz, Project Manager in the Corporate IT department of the Hager Group. “This project has allowed us to reach our defined optimisation targets quickly and enable our staff to substantially reduce their workload and save time in the completion of routine tasks. As part of the rollout, the solution was also successfully launched in France, and other countries are planned. tangro also offers further add-ons with which we can automate our inbound document processing for other types of documents.”
“tangro PA-IS works cost- and time-efficiently. It automatically recognises the header and line-item data in a payment advice and compares them with the accounts receivable and outstanding items stored in SAP. Based on a number of plausibility checks, tangro PA-IS generates a ‘parked’ document in the SAP system“, explains Lars Krüger, Sales Director at tangro software components gmbh. “SAP add-ons from tangro are out-of-the-box solutions with standard processes. These result in unbeatably short project timelines of just four to six weeks.”
About the Hager Group
The Hager Group is a leading supplier of systems for power distribution and building control. Its wide range of products and services include electronic and electrical modules, cable management, room connection systems, switches and security technology. The company, which is family owned and run, operates worldwide, currently employing 10,500 people and generating a turnover of over 1.3 billion euros.
www.hagergroup.net
About tangro software components gmbh
tangro software components gmbh is a software development and consultancy firm with headquarters in Heidelberg. Founded in 1998, the company has many years of experience in software development, consulting and project planning. tangro's solutions find application mainly in the industry, banking and insurance and service and trade sectors. tangro supports customers with the optimisation and automation of their business processes for inbound documentation received on paper or electronically via e-mail or EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). The tangro solution uses SAP add-ons as well as solutions and workflow applications outside SAP. The innovative tangro technology is based on graphical business process modelling and guarantees a fast and inexpensive implementation of individual requirements in any current process.
www.tangro.de
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tangro software components gmbh
Lars Krüger
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