Purchase-to-pay process fully digital

Atlas Copco IAS, manufacturer of industrial assembly solutions, has fully automated its document processing in purchase-to-pay with tangro. The tangro Inbound Suite includes modules for processing order confirmations, delivery notes and invoices and was therefore the comprehensive package the company was looking for. The system was able to satisfy another key criterion: full integration in SAP. Maximilian Schröder, Business Key User at Atlas Copco IAS:

“tangro is SAP-embedded and therefore integrated directly into SAP. This is a huge benefit for us. It means that document processing has direct access to our SAP master and transaction data at all times.”

Because it is SAP-embedded, tangro was also able to meet another important requirement: it can run on S/4HANA.

“Our short-list didn't include any products not compatible with S/4HANA.”

Atlas Copco IAS processes around 50 000 delivery notes, order confirmations and invoices annually. The documents are received by post, fax, e-mail or EDI and are automatically recognised by the tangro software, compared with the SAP master and transaction data and prepared for further checking or processing. In some cases, tangro processes the documents automatically in the background – without anyone having to intervene. This is true for order confirmations from certain vendors, for example, whose documents are always structured in the same way and have matching content. Some invoices from special vendors are also posted instantly with tangro. The layout of these documents is also always the same and reliable recognition is therefore guaranteed, so they don't need checking again.

All important content in the remaining order confirmations, delivery notes or invoices are instantly visible in the system. For order confirmations this includes, for example, the purchase order number, order number, price, quantity and delivery date. For delivery notes, it’s the document number, delivery quantity and date. And for invoices, the vendor, invoice number and item data. If everything is OK, one click in tangro is all that is needed to post these documents into SAP.

It’s only if tangro then finds discrepancies or that information is missing that an administrator processes the document and adds content or corrects values. But this doesn't take long either because tangro displays an image of the document along with the recognised content and all relevant transaction data on screen. Ultimately, document processing at Atlas Copco has therefore become a much faster and more efficient process. Maximilian Schröder:

“We have cut the time it takes to process order confirmations from three minutes to just one. And we can now process delivery notes at twice the speed we previously did.”

This speed is especially important for delivery notes because the goods receipt needs to be posted in SAP without any delays. And tangro can achieve this because it processes documents in real time. Finally, the checks carried out in advance complete invoice processing. In all phases of document processing, comprehensive transparency and traceability result in yet further optimisation.

“Storing documents directly also means that administrators can view the entire purchase to pay process chain at a glance. Everything from the purchase order, order confirmation and goods receipt to processing an invoice.

About Atlas Copco IAS

Atlas Copco is a manufacturer for various joining technologies. The solutions for bonding and metering, punch riveting and flow drill fastening as well as visual quality assurance are marketed under the product names SCA, Henrob, K-Flow and Quiss. The services provided also include process analysis and planning. Based in Bretten, Germany, the company employs 800 members of staff globally, and has production sites in countries including China and the USA.