Payment advice notes: efficient work processes

To speed up processing of its payment advice notes in the SAP system, the Hager Group, a leading provider of systems, solutions and services for electrical installations, has engaged the services of tangro, provider of add-ons for automated document receipt in SAP. The solution tangro PA-IS (Payment Advice Notes - Industry Solution) is integrated in SAP, so automated data recognition takes place directly within the SAP system.

Thanks to tangro PA-IS, which has provided more efficient work processes and shorter throughput times, Hager cuts processing time by over 50%, reduces susceptibility to errors and achieves instant cash flow planning. The tangro solution recognises the items listed in the scanned document, compares them against open vendor items in SAP and enters the items recognised in an input screen in SAP. For employees, it means no more time-consuming typing out and checking of data.

After processing with tangro PA-IS, the scanned documents are saved automatically in the electronic archive and can be called up directly in the SAP FI module in the event of queries. The interface of the tangro solution matches the familiar SAP environment and displays the documents clearly in a central screen accordingly, without requiring modifications.

The Accounts Receivable department at Hager currently processes more than 95% of incoming payment advice notes received by post with tangro PA-IS. "We opted for tangro PA-IS for processing our payment advice notes with OCR support. It’s the only solution on the market with an OCR function that is fully integrated in SAP. It’s easy for users to operate and simple for IT to support. Where our Accounts Receivable staff used to require several hours to process large payment advice notes with 40 A4 pages, using tangro PA-IS means that it now only takes 10 to 20 minutes," explains Willi-Gerd Schmitz, Project Manager in Corporate IT at the Hager Group.

"The project enabled us to attain our defined optimisation targets in record time and save our employees an enormous amount of work and time in routine tasks. During our rollout, the solution was also successfully launched in France, and other countries are planned. What’s more, tangro offers other add-ons that we can use to automate our document receipt for other types of document, too."