1. Executive Summary:
Our client is a producer of a global organisation operating in the industrial and engineering sector, providing specialised equipment and services to support infrastructure, maintenance, and operational performance. They faced a time-consuming and repetitive manual process for handling trade invoices within SAP, particularly in the UK. Employees were required to manually review, process, and save invoices based on specific conditions, leading to inefficiencies and delays.
An automated solution was developed to streamline this process by extracting, validating, and processing invoices based on predefined rules. The automation significantly reduced processing time from hours of manual effort to minutes while improving accuracy and consistency.
Following its success in the UK, the automation was expanded globally across multiple regions, including the US, India, and Europe. The automation now processes large volumes of invoices daily, delivering substantial efficiency gains and enabling teams to focus on higher-value tasks.
2. Client/Organisation Overview:
This business is a global organisation operating across multiple countries, utilising SAP as its core system for financial and operational processes. The company handles a high volume of trade invoices daily across various regions, each with slightly different processing requirements. Initially, the automation initiative focused on the UK entity, which had the highest invoice volumes and the most pressing need for efficiency improvements.
3. The Challenge:
Before automation, our client relied on manual processing of trade invoices within SAP. This involved many stages for employees, such as navigating SAP tables, checking conditions such as billing dates and incoterms, opening individual records, and saving or distributing invoices manually. This was a highly repetitive and monotonous task, which was time-intensive (typically taking staff 2–3 hours to complete each day), prone to human error and difficult to scale across regions. Additionally, variations in how invoices were handled (email, download, or print) added complexity and reduced transparency.
4. The Solution:
Cevitr’s digital worker ‘Jo’ was deployed to automate this process. The automation systematically works through the following stages:
- Logs into SAP and Extracts invoice data from SAP tables
- Applies validation rules (e.g., date matching, incoterms, destination country)
- Processes eligible invoices automatically
- Saves invoices or distributes them via email, depending on SAP settings
- Captures transaction data for reporting
- Automatically sends an email to the relevant team member where an email is provided
5. Implementation:
The initial implementation for the UK was completed within approximately half a day for the core build, followed by iterative enhancements. This process was so successful that our client opted to roll this out globally to their teams in the US, India, the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany.
6. Results:
The automation delivered significant improvements for our client's business, such as a reduction in processing time from 2-3 hours to minutes. For the UK, Jo processed 175 invoices in roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes. For smaller batches, this automation was completed in minutes. Jo is able to instigate multiple daily runs. Our client is delighted with the results, which have allowed them to liberate their teams from this repetitive manual task, improve accuracy and consistency, and reduce operational workload for staff. The system now handles large volumes daily across multiple regions, with decreasing manual intervention.
7. Testimonials/Client Feedback:
After seeing the success in the UK, the client requested a global rollout due to the value it delivered.
9. Conclusion:
This Trade Invoicing Automation project successfully transformed a manual, time-intensive process into a fast, reliable, and scalable solution.
What began as a UK-specific initiative evolved into a global deployment, delivering substantial efficiency gains and operational improvements across multiple regions.
The solution continues to expand, with ongoing enhancements to support additional countries and requirements, reinforcing its long-term value to the organisation.
