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Kramski LogoKRAMSKI

Precision engineering company enables intelligent automation for key back-office processes with OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions

Kramski Logo

KRAMSKI

A family-owned business, KRAMSKI produces high-precision stamped and hybrid parts for the automotive, electronics, and medical industries. Headquartered in Germany, the company also has operations in the United States, India, and Sri Lanka.
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  • Operating for:
    45+ years
  • On-time deliveries:
    99.8%
  • Produces:
    3 billion products a year

Summary

Challenges

  • Manual, paper-based invoice-to-pay, procure-to-pay, and order-to-cash processes threatened to overwhelm back-office teams.
  • Wanted to move from their current SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA®.

Solution

  • Selected a single-vendor solution for back-office automation.
  • Teamed up with experts from OpenText Professional Services.
  • Built new workflows with OpenText and SAP.

Results

  •  Saved time with straight-through processing
  • Improved operational cost-efficiency
  • Preparing for e-invoicing mandates

Challenges

  • Manual, time-consuming processes for invoice-to-pay, procure-to-pay, and order-to-cash threatened to overwhelm back-office teams
  • The company wanted to move from its existing SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA
  • Incoming e-invoicing requirements introduced possible compliance risks

For almost half a century, KRAMSKI has been producing precision-engineered components for a wide range of sectors, including the automotive, electronics, and medical industries. The company manufactures its products to extremely fine tolerances—in many cases, down to just a thousandth of a millimeter.

Andreas Heyde, senior project manager at KRAMSKI, said: “We support the entire value chain, from prototyping to production and finishing. Our commitment to quality is one of our key differentiators, ensuring that customers across Europe and around the world can rely on our products.”

As the company continued to grow, it aimed to keep its back-office lean and efficient while maintaining the highest quality standards. However, manual, paper-based processes presented a challenge. In the past, KRAMSKI manually circulated paper invoices for signed approval before accounts payable (AP) teams manually entered data from paper and electronic invoices into their SAP ERP for posting and payment—a time-consuming and labor-intensive process.

“Many of our document-driven processes required substantial manual work, including procure-to-pay [P2P], invoice-to-pay [I2P], and order-to-cash [O2C],” Heyde continued. “As our business grew, it was becoming increasingly difficult for our teams to keep up.”

To maintain the quality and responsiveness of its back-office services, KRAMSKI began looking for a way to streamline these workflows. The company’s process automation goals coincided with a major initiative to move from its current SAP ERP to the next-generation ERP, SAP S/4HANA.

“Our SAP S/4HANA transformation was a highly complex project, involving the redesign of most of our critical business processes,” explained Heyde. “This was an opportunity to build automated workflows for I2P, P2P, and O2C that took advantages of the latest capabilities of SAP S/4HANA, while also preparing for upcoming regulatory changes, including e-invoicing mandates in Germany and other countries.”

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With SAP S/4HANA and intelligent automation from OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions, we can meet the business requirements while keeping our back-office lean.

Andreas Heyde
Senior Project Manager, KRAMSKI

Solution

Working with OpenText™ Professional Services, KRAMSKI accelerated and streamlined back-office processes with OpenText™ Core Capture for SAP® Solutions, OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Management for SAP® Solutions, and OpenText™ Core Archive for SAP® Solutions.

Products deployed

Services provided

Selecting a single-vendor solution

KRAMSKI searched for a single vendor to deliver all its automation goals: I2P, P2P, O2C, and e-invoicing. After reviewing several leading providers, the company found that only OpenText offered the breadth and depth of functionality it needed.

Using intelligent automation from OpenText Core Capture for SAP Solutions and OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions, KRAMSKI now automatically extracts data from paper and electronic invoices and integrates it seamlessly into SAP S/4HANA. Automated workflows then guide each document through review and approval stages. Finally, OpenText Core Archive for SAP Solutions securely stores copies for compliance purposes.

“Prior to this project, we used another archiving solution to retain copies of our invoices,” commented Heyde. “We felt confident to choose OpenText again for several reasons. We’d already enjoyed a positive relationship for many years, and OpenText was the only vendor we evaluated that could support all our desired intelligent automation use cases. Crucially, OpenText is a well-established and experienced company, and we trust them.”

Teaming up with experts from OpenText

Throughout implementation, KRAMSKI worked closely with OpenText Professional Services. The OpenText team followed a clear, structured methodology with both in-person and remote touchpoints during scoping, design, deployment, user acceptance testing, and knowledge transfer.

“We found working with OpenText Professional Services both valuable and fun, even when we were under pressure,” recalled Heyde. “We always had access to the technical expertise we needed, often receiving answers within a couple of hours. Their on-site visits to understand how we work were a key factor in our success.”

Building new workflows with OpenText and SAP

KRAMSKI collaborated with OpenText to define workstreams for the solution implementation. Since the OpenText and SAP S/4HANA deployments were in parallel and involved many of the same KRAMSKI personnel, resources often had to shift between projects.

Alicia Hiemer, junior IT project manager at KRAMSKI, said: “OpenText Professional Services was extremely flexible and understanding whenever we needed to adjust during deployment. Weekly meetings with the OpenText team kept all stakeholders aligned throughout the project.”

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For our business users, the integration between the OpenText and SAP solutions is totally seamless. Without the OpenText logo on screen, our teams wouldn’t know whether they were working in SAP S/4HANA or OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions.

Alicia Hiemer
Junior IT Project Manager, KRAMSKI

Results

KRAMSKI has seamlessly integrated its OpenText solutions with SAP S/4HANA—letting the company streamline document-related transactions, manage operational costs, and lay the foundation for scalable business growth as the solution is gradually rolled out.

Saved time with straight-through processing

KRAMSKI is using OpenText Core Capture for SAP Solutions, OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions, and OpenText Core Archive for SAP Solutions to transform its document-driven workflows.

“In the past, our teams spent significant time sorting inbound documents and manually entering data into SAP,” explained Heyde. “With OpenText Core Capture and OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions, we have reduced repetitive tasks for more than 27,000 transactions a year. This saves us a great deal of time across our I2P, P2P, and O2C processes—allowing us to meet business demands more effectively.”

Hiemer added, “For our business users, the integration between the OpenText and SAP solutions is totally seamless. If it weren’t for the OpenText logo on screen, our teams wouldn’t even know whether they were working in SAP S/4HANA or OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions.”

Improved operational cost-efficiency

By using OpenText Core Archive for SAP Solutions as the endpoint for its document-driven workflows, KRAMSKI ensures compliance with regulatory requirements while increasing the cost-effectiveness of its new SAP S/4HANA landscape.

“Once we have posted and paid an invoice, we need to retain a copy for several years—but retaining that data within our SAP platform has licensing cost implications,” commented Heyde. “By archiving out data in OpenText Core Archive for SAP Solutions, we can reduce the rate of growth of our SAP database and keep operational costs under control.”

Prepared for e-invoicing mandates

As the project enters its final stage, KRAMSKI will work with OpenText to enable automated workflows for e-invoices—streamlining compliance with upcoming e-invoicing mandates in Germany. Looking ahead, the company is already planning further enhancements to document processing.

By leveraging the Information Extraction Engine (IEE) technology in OpenText Core Capture, KRAMSKI aims to further increase straight-through processing rates. The company is also exploring OpenText™ Core Content Management to make archived documents easier for employees to locate and use.

“For KRAMSKI, the ongoing partnership with OpenText aligns perfectly with our own commitments to reliability and quality,” concluded Heyde. “With SAP S/4HANA and intelligent automation from OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions, we can meet the business requirements while keeping our back-office lean.”

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