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Case study

The challenge

A leading postal services organization, which receives an average of 25,000 supplier invoice update requests, faced major challenges in maintaining good supplier relations and operating cost effectively. Its labor-intensive process was slow, complex and error-prone, which affected productivity. The organization engaged Cognizant to help streamline its payment status communication with suppliers.

Our approach

Cognizant used our extensive supply chain and logistics management expertise to design a robotic process automation (RPA) solution that substantially automates key aspects of the process. The bots now run one hour per day five days a week, processing 375 transactions with 100% accuracy. This solution automates key steps, including downloading vendor ledger reports from the enterprise resource planning system, matching reminder requests with vendor ledger data, checking invoice duplication, updating payment status in the master database, and emailing a detailed report of processed and unprocessed invoices. The bots also assist with requests that require analyst attention and identify any outliers to help speed resolution.

The client, with Cognizant’s assistance, is currently exploring ways to automate more of its supplier accounts payable processes and incorporate knowledge retention into the software bots.

Implementing RPA expedites supplier communication process, increases efficiency

Cognizant automated 80 percent of the supplier request process, reducing the average handling time (AHT) for each request to 30 seconds and saving the postal services organization about 1,680 hours annually. This has enhanced the organization’s supplier relations and freed up its analysts’ time to focus on higher value tasks and more satisfying work.

88.89%

AHT reduction—from 270 seconds to 30 seconds

100%

accuracy achieved for all 375 transactions processed per day

37.5%

resource optimization