Efficiency Boost for Invoice Management and More

Success story tangro at ContiTech: tangro has not only proven to be the leading solution for invoice receipt at the industrial division of the Continental Corporation, but is also the driving force behind the automation of order confirmations and order processing. In a comprehensive process of standardization and harmonization of Invoice Management, tangro was selected as the optimal solution and is now successfully in use in over 30 countries.

"With tangro we achieve high time savings and maximum audit security."

says Michael Bolte from the Competence Center Sales, Logistics & Finance at ContiTech. "tangro also recognizes documents with complex characters such as Chinese, Korean or Greek very well. Right down to the item details." A key criterion for choosing tangro is the solution's embedding in SAP ERP and S/4HANA - in line with ContiTech's guiding principle of "SAP first". Michael Bolte:

"The interaction to SAP standards is much faster with tangro due to the embedding in SAP than with a cloud solution or with an outsourced system."

"Many other advantages of the tangro solution are also derived from the embedding in SAP. Among other things, the direct access to SAP data and the SAP GUI-style interface familiar to users. This makes using tangro enormously easier for SAP users."

Migration to S/4HANA is also no problem thanks to tangro's embedded property. On a Greenfield S/4HANA system, tangro has already been implemented and is being used productively by a ContiTech company. Michael Bolte:

"The implementation of tangro on S/4HANA went smoothly."

In the course of standardization, the company began to roll out the topic of Invoice Management worldwide throughout the company in order to achieve automation in all areas. In addition, the automation of order confirmation processing was also addressed with tangro. And after seeing the efficiency improvements tangro brought to Purchase-to-Pay, another automation project was launched for order processing in the Order-to-Cash process. In all these areas, the tangro solutions have now successfully established themselves in practice and are currently being rolled out globally.

In Invoice Management at ContiTech, tangro now serves over 110 company codes and processes around 800,000 invoice documents automatically every year. Two aspects in particular stand out among the advantages of automation with tangro: Firstly, the solution achieves a high level of audit security, as all compliance guidelines and specifications for release processes are automatically taken into account. The entire invoice processing procedures are transparently stored in the archive and are thus available for audits.

On the other hand, the focus is on the high efficiency gains resulting from the digitization of invoice receipt processing. Manual data entry is largely eliminated. Information is automatically recognized, correctly mapped to the SAP fields and then transferred to the tangro processing interface. Here, the required workflows can be started directly - automatically with correct content, to the appropriate recipient group.

For a small number of invoices, the step of manual posting is even omitted. Invoices from selected suppliers that are particularly trusted are already posted completely automatically up to certain amount limits. So no one has to do anything anymore. Michael Bolte is accordingly highly satisfied:

"We have achieved a high level of automation and can theoretically implement full automation of the entire invoice receipt process. And that at a very good cost/benefit ratio."

The global rollouts of tangro in over 30 countries were carried out partly with supportive consulting from tangro, but mostly independently. "Rollouts are very straightforward with tangro," says Bolte. "In principle, the technical implementation can be done in one day." The e-mail box is simply connected to the existing server, and since tangro is already installed on each system, only the required customizing for the new company code is then added.

Finally, Bolte praises the outstanding collaboration with tangro:

"The support at tangro is uniquely good".

He says he has been in business for over ten years and has also implemented other invoice management systems. "I have not experienced any other provider who delivers such good support and helps so quickly with questions." ContiTech and tangro - a success story that brings efficiency, automation and security in document processing to a high level.

About ContiTech

The ContiTech group sector develops, manufactures and markets environmentally friendly, multi-material, smart industrial and service solutions that make mining, railway engineering, the automotive industry and other important industries safer and more convenient. ContiTech is one of the world’s leading industry specialists. The Continental group sector offers its customers connected, environment-friendly, safe and convenient industry and service solutions using a range of materials for off-highway applications, on rails and roads, in the air, under and above the ground, in industrial environments, for the food sector and the furniture industry. With more than 40,000 employees in more than 40 countries and sales of some 6.6 billion euros (2022), the global industrial partner is active with core branches in Asia, Europe and North and South America.