Customer stories

Heineken Slovensko

Heineken Slovensko streamlines invoice and contract management processes. Brewer digitizes workflows with OpenText Extended ECM for increased efficiency, visibility and savings

Challenges

  • Paper-based contracts and invoices without end-to-end transparency
  • Manual, labor-intensive accounting processes
  • Bottlenecks and misplaced paperwork created accounting, customer service and supply delays

Results

  • Accelerated contract and invoice cycle times, ensuring timely responses to customers

  • Provided end-to-end transparency into document lifecycles, reducing risk of errors

  • Freed accounting teams from time-consuming manual work, making more time for value-added activities

Story

Weighed down by paper. A substantial part of Heineken Slovensko’s business involves managing contracts with the bars, cafés and restaurants that sell its products. Heineken Slovensko uses SAP® Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to create contracts detailing the product quantities each customer has agreed to buy and generate customer invoices.

In the past, workers performed these tasks manually, circulating contracts, invoices and related correspondence among different departments by email or on paper. This resulted in long processing times and a lack of end-to-end transparency. Contracts and invoices would often pile up at bottlenecks, with important documents sometimes getting lost in the shuffle. Not only did this approach cost Heineken Slovensko time and money, it also increased the risk of delays in approvals and payments—jeopardizing the company’s good standing with customers.

Tapping a new approach

In response to these challenges, Heineken Slovensko set out to modernize its finance and accounting operations. The company decided to implement new, centralized and digitized content management workflows powered by Extended ECM.

Company leaders knew this project represented a significant transformation for its business. To ensure the project proceeded smoothly, they engaged proven OpenText Partner Sabris to help manage the solution implementation and integration work.

Today, Heineken Slovensko utilizes a single point of control to manage contracts and invoices, leveraging digital workflows to streamline processes from end to end. PDF and paper documents are now processed using OpenText™ Capture, which uses advanced optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities to convert paper documents into rich digital data for use in key business processes.

Refreshing operations

Contracts are now drafted using pre-built templates, then forwarded via digital workflows for review and approval. The OpenText platform captures the complete revision history of documents, making it easy for Heineken Slovensko to track changes and ensure that every team member is working from the latest version.

Together with Sabris, Heineken Slovensko has seamlessly integrated Extended ECM with its core SAP ERP system. Once a contract is approved, it is automatically sent to SAP ERP. Similarly, invoices are available in the system almost immediately after being generated. Users can also work with documents directly from their preferred application: within SAP ERP for accounting teams or via a web browser for general users.

At the end of the contract lifecycle, all contracts, invoices and supporting documents are stored in a securely archived directory. This enables easier search and retrieval when contracts need to be reviewed or amended.

Raising the bar for accounting

Heineken Slovensko has transformed its finance function by embracing standardized and streamlined digital processes. Accounting teams now work from a single source of truth and a common set of processes. The move has made it possible for the company to consolidate certain aspects of accounts management with other Heineken group companies—including Heineken Poland—unlocking valuable shared efficiencies.

Eliminating fragmented and labor-intensive paper-based processes has also delivered considerable cost savings and efficiency gains. Employees that spend less time pushing paper can process contracts and invoices faster and have more time to focus on value-added work. Digital workflows have shortened the time required to prepare contracts and have all but eliminated bottlenecks, allowing Heineken Slovensko to accelerate cycle times and respond to customers more quickly.

Newfound visibility drives better decisions

With invoice and contract documentation managed from a central platform, Heineken Slovensko has gained greater visibility into enterprise information. Employees can now be confident they are working with the latest version of a document, and the company can more easily keep track of its invoices and contracts.

Heineken Slovensko continues to work closely with Sabris to enhance processes and enable new capabilities in the OpenText platform. Up next? Improving reporting to take operational insight and planning to the next level—helping Heineken Slovensko make better-informed business decisions and keep operations flowing smoothly.

Partner Information:

Sabris provides system integration and long-term support services to more than 200 clients across Central and Eastern Europe. The company is a certified partner of SAP, OpenText and Microsoft, with more than 25 years of industry experience.

About Heineken Slovensko

Heineken Slovensko is one of Slovakia’s leading breweries. The company manages end-to-end operations—from processing grain at its Hurbanovská malting plant to manufacturing and distributing world-class beer and cider brands. Since 1995, Heineken Slovensko has been part of Heineken N.V., the largest brewery group in Europe and second largest in the world.

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