20 AP Automation Case Studies: Analysis of Benefits & Use Cases
AP automation (or accounts payable automation) is automating and streamlining the management of companies’ payment cycles, allowing them to save time, money, and resources.
A research company estimates that AP automation could help companies:1
- Lower per invoice costs by 80%
- Decrease invoices’ DSO (daily sales outstanding) by 50%
- Quicken the invoice process by 75%
AP automation tools
For a detailed comparison of these AP automation tools, check out our vendor selection guide.
Other solutions are:
- Dynamics 365 in Accounts Payable Automation: In-Depth Review
- NetSuite Accounts Payable (AP) Automation in 2024
- Blackbaud Accounts Payable (AP) Automation in ’24: In-Depth Review
- Sage Accounts Payable (AP) Automation in ’24
- 7 Vic.AI Alternatives to Automate Accounting in 2023
- Top 10 ReadSoft Alternatives / Competitors
- Top 10 Kofax Alternatives/Competitors in 2023
- 14 Rossum AI Competitors/Alternatives in 2023
What are the benefits of AP Automation?
We collected 20 case studies and looked at their business benefits. The most common project outcomes of AP automation are the following:
- Increased Efficiency of Financial Operations:
AP automation increases speed and accuracy in invoice processing. This allows companies to execute their financial operations, such as invoice validation or payment release, with minimal human involvement and errors, often associated with manual entries and paper-based processes.
- Faster Payments & Improved Cash Flow:
Companies can get a clear picture of their cash flows when they automate invoice payments. That’s because they can keep track of when their payments are due. Also, because automated payments make payments on time, companies can keep up with their contractual obligations and get discounts for paying early.
- Scalability & Reduced Processing Time:
Automating the invoice process reduces each invoice’s processing time and enables processing scalability. This saves businesses valuable resources that can be spent better elsewhere, such as accountants trying to identify fraudulent invoices, or duplicate payments and allows them to expand their operations without worrying about increasing the size of the AP teams.
- Improved Accuracy:
Automation minimizes manual data entry errors in paper-based and manual processing. This increases the accuracy of financial operations. In addition, all transactions can be securely stored and monitored 24/7 in one central location, with minimal intervention . This ensures that all transactions are managed correctly, with no discrepancies or surprises in the financial close season.
- Enhanced Visibility & Reporting Capabilities:
Invoice automation enhances visibility into an organization’s financial operations through visible dashboards, real-time internal controls and notifications, and periodic reports and analytics. This provides businesses a real-time view of their accounts payable process , enabling them to quickly adjust strategies if needed.
- Supplier Cost Savings:
The most significant benefit of automating accounts payable processes is cost savings. AP automation increases your business’ operational efficiency and financial stability with:
- Improved accuracy through reduced errors such as duplicate payments
- Improved vendor relations due to faster payments
- Improved visibility resulting in better allocation decisions
What are some case studies of AP Automation?
To illustrate the benefits of AP automation, we gathered 20 case studies that will showcase various use cases, business functions and benefits for companies:
Customer | Country | Industry | Business Function | Vendor | Solution | Use case | Benefits | Benefits Details | Short Summary | Partner |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Angel Trains | UK | Railway | Accounting | ARCivate | Mi Invoices | - Document management - AP automation | - Reduced human errors - Saved time | - Resolved issues with VAT invoices - Enhanced accountancy work
- Adapted GUI to any language
| The processing of supplier invoices are automated. | Claremont |
Ascend Properties | UK | Property Management | Accounting | Nanonets | Invoice OCR | - AP automation | - Reduced operational costs - Enhanced approval workflow - Contibuted
business' growth
| - Saved processing costs by 80% - Growth in properties
managed from 2,000 to 10,000
| - Used for training the AI to extract required information
from invoices, checking to make sure all fields are accurately supplied and meet expectations.
| NA |
Blue Star | India | Manufacturing | Accounting | Datamatics | TruBot | AP automation | - Saved time - Increased demand | - Improved invoice processing time by 33% - Enhanced efficiency
by 70% - Increased payment requests by 98%
| Used for improving efficiency of AP operations. | NA |
Capita | UK | BPO Services | Accounting | Kofax | Kofax ReadSoft Invoices | - Document management - P2P automation | - Reduced operational costs - Saved time | - Redcuced costs per-invoice by almost 80% - Saved £1
million pounds annually by decreasing office staff by 50% - Boosted invoice process by almost half a million with the new system integration - Increased payment on-time - Enhanced reputation
| Used AP automation to classify, sort and distribute incoming documents. | NA |
Colas | France | Civil Engineering | Accounting | Itesoft | FreeMind for Invoices | AP automation | - Saved time - Reduced operational costs - Enhanced visibility | - Enhanced visibility of the AP process - Reduced paper
and storage costs - Improved supplier service
| Used for total automation of manual process. | NA |
Cypress Creek | US | Renewable Energy Manufacturing | Accounting | Rillion | Invoice Capture, Invoice Processing, PO Matching, Archive & Audit Trail | AP automation | - Saved time - Enhanced accuracy - Reduced operational costs | - Improved accuracy rate of vendor invoices by 98% -
Provided vendor invoices to purchase orders
| Used for invoice data capture automated | NA |
Domino Printing | UK | Manufacturing | Accounting | ARCivate | Mi Invoices | - Document management - AP automation | - Saved time - Improved customer service | - Improved document capture and OCR functuality - Enhanced implementation
speed
| Used AP automation to manage their financial reporting and budgetging. | NA |
KEW Electrical | UK | Electrical Distribution | Accounting | Canon | Canon P2P | AP automation | - Reduced operational costs - Improved visibility - Enhanced fraud
protection
| - Enhanced control over cashflow and spending - The rate
of fraud and duplicated payment are decreased
| AP automation for increased invoice visibility, compliance and higher productivity. | NA |
Land Securities Group (Landsec) | UK | Real Estate | Accounting | Rossum | Rossum AI | - AP automation | - Saved time - Reduced manual workload - Improved productivity | - Saved up to 92% time on manual data capture
and validation
| - Used for connecting Landsec's workflow and ICE, a proprietary
app, to the AI engine and validation screen. - Used for capturing the data from the remittance advice, and matching it to Landsec’s bank statement data
| NA |
Lidl | Germany | Retail | Accounting | Itesoft | Itesoft Streamline for Invoices | AP automation | - Enhanced security - Improved compliance | - Over 70% of invoices processed without human intervention -
Fully secure and encrypted process - Increased copmliance by automating 75% of invoices - Increased invoice reading rate of over 95%
| Used for automated data reading and control | NA |
Mitsubishi Electric | Japan | Electronics | Accounting | Itesoft | W4 | FreeMind for Invoices | AP automation | - Reduced operational costs - Saved time - Reduced human
error
| - Increased speed of coding and approval - Improved flexibility
of locating documents - Invoices are processed automatically by 90%
| Used for invoice automation with seamless SAP integration. | NA |
Molson Coors | Canada | Retail/ CPG | Accounting | Rossum | Rossum IDP | - AP automation | - Saved time - Improved accuracy rate | - 76% saved time per document - Reduced approval time
to 17 seconds per document - Reduced the processing time( from purchase to deployment) to 3 days - Enhanced accuracy rate by 90%
| - Blue Prism robots directs invoices to Rossum - Rossum's
AI imports and collects invoice data upon receipt. - Rossum delivers high-confidence data back to the robot, which matches purchase orders with extracted data. - The Blue Prism robot stores results in SAP.
| Blue Prism & EY |
Network Rail | UK | Rail infrastructure and asset management | Accounting | Itesoft | SWIM (scanning, workflow, invoice management) | Finance Automation | - Reduced operational costs - Saved time - Enhanced invoice
analysis
| - Reduced processing costs by 60% - Processing time decreased
by 90% - Reduced operating costs by downsizing AP team from 20 to 14 and procurment staff from 10 to 4 - Provided better analysis with invoice matching automation by 82%
| Used for a more integrated and automated approach to finance | NA |
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust | UK | Healthcare | Accounting | Itesoft | Itesoft Streamline for Invoices | AP automation | - Increased productivty - Reduced operational costs - Saved time | - Reduced costs while doubling invoice volumes - Increased staff
productivity by 78% - Improved data quality by 80% - Saved time is equivalent to 16 full-time employees in a year - Benefited from supplier discounts thanks to early payments
| Used for invoice automation. | NA |
Schroders | UK | Investment Management | Accounting | ARCivate | Mi Invoices | - Document management - AP automation | - Reduced operational costs - Saved time | - Cost savings by more than a 300% - Improved
efficiencies with 'No PO No Pay' policy - Increased payment rate by 90% in a month - Reduced average processing time from 10 to 3 days - Enhanced data-extraction and OCR recognition with 100% language capability - Allowed for flexible and remote access by ceating a centralised hub - Support for localised payment formats
| Used for invoice management and improving data extraction | NA |
Tacala | US | Franchising | Accounting | Rillion | Invoice Processing, Contracts (Recurring Invoices) and Documents | AP automation | - Enhanced approval workflow - Reduced human error - Reduced
operational costs - Saved time
| - Improved invoice validation rate by 98% - Decreased the
cost arising from duplicate invoices - Improved audit trail and reporting
| AP automation for easier management of bills and other recurring
services of various locations
| NA |
Tapi | New Zealand | Property Management | Accounting | Nanonets | Invoice OCR | - AP automation | - Reduced operational costs - Saved time | - Costs are reduced to down 70% - Validation time
is reduced to 12 seconds per invoice - The correction rate of information is improved by 94%
| - Used to extract data from invoices, verify to see
if it matched expectations.
| NA |
The Master Trust Bank of Japan (MTBJ) | Japan | Finance | Accounting | Rossum | Machine learning OCR | - Document management - AP automation | - Reduced workload - Improved productivity - Reduced error rate | - The manual workload is reduced by 75%. - Document
validation per document time is reduced to 50 seconds.
| - Rossum trained an extraction model to automate account statement
processing with its specialized AI engine - Used machine learning OCR to speed work and eliminate manual workload.
| NA |
TransMontaigne | US | Energy Transportation | Accounting | Kofax | Kofax ReadSoft Invoices | AP automation | - Reduced operational costs - Saved time - Enhanced approval
workflow - Reduced human error
| - Reduced average cost of transaction by almost 80% -
Saved $1 million in monthly accurals - Decreased duplicate payments by 90% - Lowered error rate by 43%
| Used AP automation for improving invoice visibility, cutting invoice processing
times and reducing costs.
| NA |
If you have further questions regarding AP automation you can reach us:
This article was drafted by former AIMultiple industry analyst Kübra İpek.
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Cem has been the principal analyst at AIMultiple since 2017. AIMultiple informs hundreds of thousands of businesses (as per similarWeb) including 60% of Fortune 500 every month.
Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE, NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and media that referenced AIMultiple.
Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised businesses on their enterprise software, automation, cloud, AI / ML and other technology related decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.
He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.
Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
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