Digitalisation simply done

The company edding puts its trust in tangro software for the automated processing of invoices and orders.

“We have simply done digitalisation.”

This says Marina Riemann, who, as head of Business Applications, was responsible for the automation project. “We needed a solution, which would allow us to see invoices centrally at a glance, directly view all the necessary information and electronically share invoices internally.” The same applied to order entry. This process was also to be digitalised, freeing up more staff time for customer support.

The company was looking for an integrated approach and wanted one piece of software for both elements: processing invoices as well as customer orders. And it needed to be integrated in SAP to avoid any interfacing complexities or additional hardware support. Moreover, the tool needed to be multi-lingual so it could be used in several different locations.

tangro was able to provide everything they needed: Invoice and order processing, both embedded within SAP.

The latter was particularly important for edding. tangro processes incoming business documents such that all interpretation and validation takes place within the SAP system. There is no elaborate additional infrastructure. So it’s easy to use the tool without the aid of external system administration. tangro was also able to offer use on a global scale. The tool comes in more than 10 languages and can therefore be used in the countries where edding’s subsidiaries are located.

edding uses tangro to process around 30,000 invoices and approx. 32,000 customer orders in a fully electronic manner, and that applies to all incoming channels. tangro reads off the digital information from scans, PDFs or fax documents, interprets all important values and checks them against the existing master and transaction data for the creditor and/or customer.

There is no need for anything to be typed in by hand, the administrators can see the result of processing instantly in the document entry list and can undertake all further processing steps. Alternatively, they can post the incoming document immediately if everything is correct and complete.

This has therefore greatly speeded up processing.

This is particularly important for customer service, who need to ensure delivery as quickly as possible. All purchase orders which have been clearly detected can be transferred to SAP at the click of the mouse and then posted immediately. The administrator responsible can see in the document entry list if the content of orders needs to be added to, clarified or corrected and responds immediately.

The processes are clearly organised. Even if staff are off sick or on holiday.

Staff in invoice processing can also use the document entry list to see all incoming documents at a glance and view all relevant data. An electronic workflow, which automatically forwards documents to the right contacts, is used to approve invoices or to clarify matters.

Defining these approval processes was the only thing which took up a bit of time when introducing the automation solutions. Otherwise, implementation was quick and easy - because the two software products came from the same company. Marina Riemann:

“It was great that we had one contact for the two solutions.”

tangro is used not only in Germany but now also in France, the UK and the Netherlands, where the subsidiaries are created in the SAP system by the sales organisation. Roll-out was so simple that it could be undertaken by the key users in the specialist departments themselves. The main task was training the various document layouts, which differ depending on country and customer. “We showed the key users how to train various documents in tangro, then off they went and did it all themselves. It was spot on,” reports Marina Riemann.

And now in everyday use, the software is incredibly easy to use because application questions are sent to the key users themselves. “IT has to provide virtually no support whatsoever,” says Marina Riemann. And this applies to software updates too:

“You import a transport and that’s it. It couldn’t be simpler."

About edding

Finding clever solutions is all in a day’s work at edding - the north German company is an expert in applying colour to surfaces and delivering the very best quality. The brand is synonymous with “panache”. Alongside its well-known marker pens with high opacity, it now supplies numerous other product groups, such as permanent sprays and printer cartridges. A few years ago, edding even introduced nail varnish offering the same properties, longevity and high opacity.