CASE STUDY / Denroy Group Ltd.

The Background

Denroy Group Ltd, based in Bangor, NI is one of the world’s leading innovators in the design and manufacturing of engineered polymer components & solutions. Denroy works with partners both locally and internationally to collaborate and enable the advancement of Thermoplastics and Polymer technology. They specialise in Aerospace, Automotive, Commercial Defence & Haircare sectors providing expertise in design, prototyping, manufacturing, research and technology.

Denroy Group IT manager, Peter Hazlett was keen to digitally transform manual, paper-based processes employed within the business and had identified a number of potential projects. Denroy Group had already invested in a Document Management System (Infor Document Management), but the application was being underutilised. Adding Capture would make it more relevant to AP and could have an immediate impact. Momentum gathered behind the project when Lauren Cousins joined Denroy as Group Financial Controller. Lauren’s previous company had implemented invoice automation and she was convinced of the benefits it could bring to Denroy Group.

Denroy was also working towards ISO/IEC 27001 (standard for information security management systems) and certification relies on reducing risk and increasing the availability of data / documentation. The implementation of AP Automation and Digital Archiving supports the principles of the ISO standard.

The Challenge

Denroy Group’s AP department was processing over 7,000 invoices per annum. Existing processes were manual and paper based, increasing the risk of invoices being mislaid and duplicating work. With no invoice register, there was  a lack of visibility on where invoices were in the process, until they had been logged in the ERP system. Invoices were still being archived manually rather than digitally. Manually processing purchase invoices was eating  into time that could have been better spent on  other important functions within the department such as Credit Control. Customer queries and audits took time to investigate due to paperwork not being to hand.

The Solution

Denroy Group made the decision to implement Infor Document Management (IDM) Capture and Infor OS as their platform for automation. A key factor in the decision was the existence of a pre-built integration with their ERP, Infor SyteLine. The integration was further enhanced through the addition of an ‘AP Voucher Workbench’ developed by Cobwebb partner, JPO Solutions, using Infor’s development platform; Mongoose.

Invoices are automatically picked up from an email inbox and loaded into IDM Capture. Using OCR technology, IDM Capture scans the invoice for key information and triggers an API lookup to SyteLine to validate the invoice and enrich the data. Invoices that require manual intervention are queued up and presented as ‘exceptions’ for the AP Team to review. Once checked and validated, the exceptions are submitted through to the AP Voucher Workbench for processing. The Workbench enables users to control voucher creation, for PO and Non PO invoices.

A copy of the invoice is sent to IDM along with required metadata to enable quick retrieval. An added feature is the ability to access archived documents in context from within the ERP utilising the in context app/widget.