Customer stories

Kalpataru Power Transmission

Kalpataru Power Transmission increases accounts payable efficiency with OpenText. Leading Indian global power transmission and infrastructure company leverages OpenText to automate invoice processing

Challenges

  • High invoice processing cycle time with manual data entry, validation and approval process
  • Distributed invoice processing with no clear visibility of invoice processing status
  • Lack of visibility into invoices and vouchers affecting audits and tax assessments
  • User-driven business rules, invoice approval and payment processes leading to compliance issues

Results

  • Reduced invoice processing cycle times by 40%

  • Centralized invoice verification

  • Consolidated distributed invoice processing

Story

The company has an annual production capacity of more than 180,000 MT of transmission towers at its three state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in India and an ultra-modern tower testing facility, making it one of the largest global power transmission EPC companies. KPTL’s wide reach and presence includes Africa, CIS and SAARC countries, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and the Americas.

Railroad tracks

After implementation of OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions, we have much better control over our Accounts Payable process. Invoice processing within KPTL is much more efficient and we are well prepared to take the next leap and centralize Accounts Payable across the Kalpataru Group.

Ketan Parikh
CIO, Kalpataru Power Transmission Limited

Previously, the Accounts Payable process at KPTL was fragmented, manually-intensive, error-prone and cumbersome. Decentralized processing of invoices at KPTL became a huge challenge as the number of invoices increased day-by-day. In addition, the Accounts Payable department struggled to manage physical copies of invoices and the tracking of incoming invoices waiting to be processed. It was difficult to know the pending liabilities and invoice processing status at any given time. Invoices and supporting documents were not digitally integrated with SAP® transactions, creating problems at the time of audit and tax assessment. Manual processing, userdriven business rules and non-standard approval policies also posed challenges to cycle times, process inefficiencies and proper trails and compliance.

KPTL recognized the need to digitally capture all offline correspondence and approvals in Accounts Payable workflows. The company also wanted to digitize all incoming invoices, create a system-driven business rule validation of incoming vendor invoice data and a customized approval matrix for invoice approval based on amount, type of procurement and location. There was also a need for a realtime analytics dashboard and out-of-the-box ‘slice and dice’ reports to improve process visibility at KPTL.

“Centralized control while maintaining decentralized processing, legal compliance and digitization was the key requirement for KPTL,” explained KPTL’s CIO, Ketan Parikh. “We had challenges due to diversified operations at more than 150 site offices in India and more than 30 countries outside India.”

The organization explored various options and eventually chose to implement OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Management for SAP® Solutions to achieve faster invoice processing from scanning to posting. The solution enabled KPTL to achieve higher productivity and better visibility into its shared services operations.

To implement the solution, KPTL partnered with Avaali and rolled out the product at 50 company locations. The implementation team at Avaali conducted detailed workshops with key stakeholders from KPTL to understand the current system and business processes, as well as user pain points and requirements. Avaali created a roadmap for implementation, transition and change management and conducted workshops that covered all aspects of the proposed solution in detail. This helped KPTL understand how to leverage the solution to resolve current invoice processing challenges.

The Avaali team created a detailed blueprint document covering invoice and payment approval scenarios under the implementation scope. With the support of the KPTL team, implementation of the solution at 50 company locations was completed in just two months.

In addition to deploying Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions, KPTL also rolled out OpenText™ Invoice Capture Center, the best-in-class scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) application. Invoice Capture Center is equipped with an intelligent text recognition engine that can support any type of invoice template and data format. This enables KPTL to automate invoice data capture and route it to SAP applications, with minimal need for human intervention.

With the combined OpenText solutions, KPTL can handle exceptions and approvals efficiently using the system-driven standardized business rules through workflow automation. The OpenText solutions helped KPTL to realize a 40 percent reduction in invoice cycle time by digitizing all incoming invoices and achieving a seamless integration with SAP.

KPTL is now able to maintain proper tax compliance with the help of GST compliance number checking in Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions. Realtime analytics and monitoring of invoices provides KPTL with the necessary KPIs to ensure continual process improvements. Furthermore, digitized copies of invoices are being stored securely in the OpenText™ Archive Server and linked to SAP transactions for future reference. This helps eliminate the inefficient handling of physical copies of invoices across different departments.

With the implementation of Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions, KPTL has been able to consolidate its Accounts Payable process and now efficiently processes all invoices through a shared service center. Parikh commented, “After implementation of OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions, we have much better control over our accounts payable process.”

After a quick and successful implementation with significant benefits for KPTL, Kalpataru Group is now planning to expand its Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions usage. Parikh concluded, “Our processes within KPTL are much more efficient with this solution and we are well prepared to take the next leap and centralize Accounts Payable across the Kalpataru Group.”

About Kalpataru Power Transmission

Kalpataru Power Transmission Limited (KPTL), part of the Kalpataru Group, was established in 1969. KPTL is a diversified conglomerate spanning real estate, power generation and transmission, construction, oil and gas infrastructure and agri-logistics. With more than 2,000 employees, KPTL delivers a compelling advantage, combining in-house research, engineering and manufacturing to ensure the highest value proposition to clients.