The challenge
Ledcor's finance department is busy. In fact, the construction company's accounts payable (AP) team processes approximately 300 thousand invoices each year.
Prior to our partnership, the Ledcor team was managing the deluge of supplier invoices with legacy software and manual processes — factors that made a tough task even tougher. As queues inevitably lengthened, pressure mounted: increasing the risk of manual error and decreasing employee engagement.
The TELUS Digital solution
Recognizing the rule-based and repetitive nature of the AP voucher process, Ledcor identified robotic process automation (RPA), and by extension a RPA-as-a-Service (RPAaaS), as an ideal solution to the challenge at hand.
Our partnership began with a thorough analysis of the current processes to identify opportunities for automation. Our experts worked closely with Ledcor's AP team to understand existing processes, parameters and workflows. By the end of the analysis, we had an idea of both the current state and the desired state to build toward.
Moving from analysis to action, an RPAaaS solution was configured to introduce value-adding efficiency. The bot solution — dubbed "AP Buddy" — interacts with multiple tools within Ledcor's existing software infrastructure, enabling seamless data extraction and automated validation. AP Buddy uses data already matched and verified by the AP team to extract data from the invoice approval software and upload data to the ERP system for invoice payment, eliminating the need for manual invoice entry on invoices with a valid purchase order.
"The automation initiatives we've introduced together mark the start to our digital transformation journey, and we look forward to what's next."The results
- Cost savings through increased productivity: Processing up to 25 thousand transactions per month, the RPA solution can match the approximate output of two full-time employees
- Timely queue clearance: Rather than a growing backlog, supplier invoice queues are effectively cleared on a timely basis, ensuring streamlined processing and timely payments
- Enhanced employee engagement: With the burden of repetitive work lifted, AP clerks are enabled to focus on other critical transactions and complex tasks, thereby increasing job satisfaction
