To secure materials for manufacturing and design, Faurecia accounts payable professionals across multiple locations work with suppliers from all over the world. Previously, some teams relied on SAP transactions and basic workflows to track, validate and manage invoices. However, for an innovative enterprise, variable and manual methods did not support fast progress.
Managers lacked an efficient way to gather information from local teams and everyone could be handicapped by inconsistencies or delays in invoice reporting. “We were a bit lost,” recalled Salomé Silva, Accounts Payable team leader and SAP business analyst in the IT department of Faurecia. “We had no visibility about invoices that arrived before they were posted.”
Faurecia set out to accelerate and standardize key points of its financial process for added efficiency. The industry leader in automotive interiors and emission control technology worked with OpenText and its market-leading information management systems: several years and dozens of countries later, Faurecia continues to streamline procurement across more locations with OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Management for SAP® Solutions.
Digital transformation amplified Faurecia capacity for large volumes of data and reliable connections, according to Salomé Silva: “Vendor Invoice Management is an ‘open door’ but for very different channels.” The invoice management and processing solution handles close to two million invoices per year. Of that total, 20% are paper invoices and 80% are invoices arriving in PDF (via email), Ariba, EDI and specific country XML formats. All are gathered within VIM for central automation and collaboration.
With the open door, Faurecia moves forward with enhanced invoice control across international locations. Salomé Silva referenced top capabilities of VIM within the Faurecia environment:
Automatic invoice receipt and posting
“As soon as a document arrives to our system, it can be immediately posted without anybody having to do even a single click,” Salomé Silva noted. Instead of waiting for others to manually enter data, AP professionals and others gain timely insight into the status of invoices. Through vendor portals, even suppliers enhance visibility without delay.
Standardized, central management
Implementation of VIM provides the means for Faurecia to focus worldwide efforts with a common methodology and to construct centralized reports. “Using a solution that is standardized worldwide is allowing us to, in a very fast way, make one control valid for everybody around the world,” Salomé Silva said. “By having the information ‘speak the same language,’ everybody knows exactly what a report means now.”
Integrated workflow and archival
Fully embedded into SAP, Faurecia stores invoices first digitally in OpenText™ Archive Server and VIM automates processing through pre-configured rules, roles and actions. Faurecia integrated all existing workflows into VIM which also accommodates exceptions, routing documents with missing information or other issues to designated personnel for resolution.
Overall, Salomé Silva describes a robust vendor invoice management system that enriches information and transparency for all users. Furthermore, with its digital transformation almost a decade earlier, Faurecia’s finance team stood well-positioned to weather storms stemming from COVID-19. “The pandemic was a challenge for everybody,” Salomé Silva said. “We could not imagine how to work in accounts payable if we had not had VIM implemented. For us, having VIM was absolutely key to continue processing from home with minimal disturbances.”