The Challenge
As a leading chain of catering restaurants and cafés, Umoe was looking for help in designing a centralized purchasing system that could control the supply chain for all of their outlets. The solution needed to support many different business areas, including supplier invoice processing. Umoe was receiving over 100,000 supplier invoices — on paper, in XML or EDIFACT — that needed to be captured and processed automatically for the company to have a much better real time overview of their financial situation.
"The fast food industry is highly competitive. Process optimization and cutting marginal costs are the keys to success. To stay ahead of the competition in a market like ours you need to be flexible, scalable and extremely efficient.”
— Bente Brocs, CFO, Umoe Catering A/S
The Process
After talking with Umoe, Nextway learned that the majority of the supplier invoices are the result of transactions processed through the procurement portal Attento, which automatically generates purchase orders in the business application Solution One, used by Umoe Catering. This was the starting point for building a tailor-made solution.
The Solution
The Nextway solution automatically performs a complete three-way-match, verifying that goods received match the PO, and that the invoice received matches the goods and PO. If any discrepancies are detected, the invoice is automatically routed to the person responsible, no matter where in Norway he or she might be located. And because the solution is browser-based, they can address the matter from anywhere.
The Result
“With Next® we got much more than a simple invoice processing application, we got a foundation for our entire document infrastructure. The fact that it runs as a zero-install browser application, and integrates seamlessly with our business application, didn’t hurt either.”
— Henry Karlsen, CIO, Umoe Catering
