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Open Grid Europe GmbH LogoOpen Grid Europe GmbH

Gas transportation company saves time and money with OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Management for SAP® Solutions

Open Grid Europe GmbH Logo

About Open Grid Europe GmbH

Open Grid Europe GmbH is one of Europe’s leading gas transmission system operators headquartered in Essen, Germany. With 1,450 employees, OGE runs 12,000 km of pipelines with 994 entry and exit points, generating a total revenue of €1.6 billion.
Open Grid Europe GmbH image
  • Pipeline length:
    12,000 km
  • Energy delivered:
    742 TWh per year
  • Based in:
    Germany

Summary

Challenges

  • Manual processing for 50,000 invoices a year was time-consuming and resource-intensive.
  • Increased risk of losing discounts because of slow invoice workflows.

Solution

  • Implemented seamless, user-friendly integration with SAP business applications.
  • Replaced manual AP processes with streamlined digital workflows.
  • Secured and backed up all invoice data.

Results

  • Delivered automated matching for 80% of invoices
  • Reduced costs with early payment discounts
  • Boosted productivity and employee satisfaction

Challenges

  • Manual processing for 50,000 invoices a year was time-consuming and resource-intensive
  • Increased risk of losing discounts because of slow invoice workflows
  • Lack of transparency limited possibilities for process improvements

With a pipeline network spanning over 12,000 kilometers, Open Grid Europe GmbH (OGE) is one of Europe’s leading transmission system operators. The company aims to build on decades of success in delivering a reliable energy supply to stakeholders across Germany and to create a sustainable energy mix for future generations.

To operate its extensive asset base, OGE deals with large numbers of suppliers, contractors, partners, and subsidiaries. For many years, the company relied heavily on paper-based invoice processes—but as invoice volumes grew to 50,000 invoices a year, these workflows were beginning to hold the company back.

Michael Kranert, head of invoice management at OGE, said, “With our manual approach to invoice management, approvals typically took several days—resulting in missed opportunities to secure early-payment discounts from our suppliers. Relying on paper also made it difficult to track the status of individual invoices, which in turn made it difficult to take action on invoices that had gotten stuck somewhere in the process.”

Manual processes led to a high workload for accounts payable (AP) employees, who re-keyed data from paper invoices into the company’s business systems.

Jennifer Strötgen, team lead – digital transformation and projects – focus area accounting at OGE, confirmed, “We decided that digitization was the key to future-proofing our invoice management process. By streamlining data entry, we knew we could free our AP professionals from repetitive, time-consuming work—empowering them to focus on value-added activities.”

OGE quote image

OpenText is a reliable and future-proof partner, and we will continue to work together to increase automation further and accelerate innovation at OGE.

Michael Kranert
Head of Invoice Management, Open Grid Europe GmbH

Solution

OGE selected OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) for SAP Solutions, delivering powerful optical capture recognition (OCR) and workflow automation as well as seamless integration with the company’s SAP business applications.

Products deployed

Services deployed

Integrating seamless invoice automation

After evaluating a shortlist of solutions from five different vendors, OGE determined that OpenText Vendor Invoice Management was the optimal choice to streamline its invoicing process. Combined with OpenText Intelligent Capture for SAP Solutions, the solution uses machine learning and AI to convert paper invoices into digital records, while tight integration with SAP optimizes and automates end-to-end invoice processing from receipt to posting.

“One of the key benefits of OpenText Vendor Invoice Management is that it is fully integrated with our SAP business applications,” said Michael Kranert. “This means that we do not need any additional systems to interface with our SAP applications, saving time and reducing costs. The seamless integration with SAP streamlines data management and simplifies automation.”

Ensuring ease of use for AP employees, shaping more efficient processes

The close strategic collaboration between OpenText and SAP helps ensure that OpenText Vendor Invoice Management is highly reliable and fully compatible with SAP ERP. The OpenText solution integrates with standard SAP functions, and also supports the intuitive SAP Fiori user experience.

Sabine Hentschel, IT Management Financials at OGE, said: “User acceptance was key for us. Thanks to SAP Fiori, the solution is extremely easy to use—even for employees who aren’t procurement specialists.”

Working together with procurement and other departments in OGE, the OGE team optimized end-to-end processes—aligning the new workflows closely with VIM to drive efficiency. The company has implemented dynamic approval workflows based on variables such as invoice amount and order details, separate approval processes for finance and business teams, and more.

Jennifer Strötgen said: “Our leadership saw the chance to make this initiative a lighthouse project for digital change at OGE.”

Michael Kranert added: “Working with OpenText, we’ve designed automated workflows that help our employees make faster, better-informed decisions. For example, we now highlight procurement risks such as contract penalties or other procurement challenges with red flag icons in the solution, making it easy for our employees to understand important context as soon as they start work on an invoice.”

Protecting mission-critical data

For many years, OGE has used OpenText Documentum™ to back up mission-critical data from its SAP solutions. Based on its positive experiences with OpenText Documentum, the company decided to use the platform to ensure all invoices are stored safely and in compliance with all relevant document retention policies.

“We really value the insight and guidance the OpenText team provides to us,” noted Michael Kranert. “OpenText clearly explains what’s possible and what our next steps could be. We’re continuously working together to improve and expand our digital processes further.”

Working with OpenText, we’ve designed automated workflows that help our employees make faster, better-informed decisions.

Michael Kranert
Head of Invoice Management, Open Grid Europe GmbH

Results

By automating invoice management with OpenText solutions, OGE saves time and reduces costs. Employees now have a clear overview of the process and can focus on more complex cases, using their time more effectively to create value for the business.

Delivered automated matching for 80% of invoices

In the past, every invoice at OGE was entered manually into SAP ERP by the AP team. Thanks to the OpenText solution, they can now capture the majority of invoice data automatically. Not only that, but around 13 percent of invoices are captured, validated, booked, and approved without any manual intervention based on order information in SAP.

Michael Kranert confirmed, “About 80% of our 50,000 invoices per year are linked to a purchase order record in SAP. We have fully automated the simple, straightforward cases where matching the invoice to the order data is easy. We will continue to work with OpenText to increase the level of automation in the process, as it frees up our experienced employees to focus on more complex tasks.”

Reduced costs with early payment discounts

Many OGE vendors offer discounts for payment within five days of invoicing. Since deploying the OpenText solution, OGE has slashed the time from invoice registration to approval and payment—enabling it to take advantage of these discounts.

“Before, it would often take a week or more until an invoice got paid,” said Michael Kranert. “Today, we can record an invoice within one hour in our SAP application, which is a much better experience for everyone involved. The whole AP process is much faster and more transparent. It’s now crystal clear where invoices are at every stage. By using integrated analytics features in OpenText Vendor Invoice Management, we quickly see what we can do to solve any issues.”

To route invoices to the appropriate teams for review, the OpenText solution reuses existing information in SAP about purchase orders and responsibilities. If the primary contact is out of the office, the new workflow forwards the invoice to other members of the team.

Boosted productivity and employee satisfaction

By freeing employees from manual data-entry, AP teams can now work more efficiently—lifting productivity and satisfaction.

“It’s great to see that the new, user-friendly digital process helps our staff to be more productive,” added Jennifer Strötgen. “Employee satisfaction has definitely increased. In a recent survey, around 70% confirmed that the OpenText solution saves them a significant amount of time.”

With the OpenText solution, employees and managers have greater flexibility to prioritize invoices. This helps to ensure that all invoices for the company’s subsidiaries have been paid and booked in time for quarterly and annual reporting.

“Overall, our project with OpenText has made AP processes at OGE faster and more dynamic,” commented Jennifer Strötgen. “We’ve used this lighthouse project as a catalyst to reorganize our teams and move towards more agile and modern project management, supported by cross-functional product teams. The collaboration with OpenText has shown us that we can deliver smaller work packages faster with shorter feedback loops and achieve better quality for our users.”

Michael Kranert concluded, “We’re very satisfied with what we’ve achieved. OpenText is a reliable and future-proof partner, and we will continue to work together to increase automation further and accelerate innovation at OGE.”

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