Invoicing with SAP made smart
Two-way, SAP-integrated system developed by 21infinity saved CEMEX the costly integration of their ERP and its employees, the labor-intensive invoicing process.
By 21infinity (MP, DG) with support of GZ.
Updated 10:35 am CEST, September 18, 2020
Business Partner
CEMEX Poland is a leading producer of cement, concrete and aggregate. The company is a part of CEMEX Global, a Mexico-based building material producer with over 100 years of history. CEMEX Poland runs 48 production plants with over 1,000 employees. The company also provides technical and laboratory services for the construction industry. In 2018, CEMEX Poland reported over 360 million USD of sales.
Saying „no” to costly drudgery
As a major player of the construction industry in Poland, CEMEX makes thousands of sales transactions daily. These are followed by an equally substantial number of detailed invoices, which must be delivered accordingly.
With SAP as the core business system, CEMEX stored this plethora of invoices in a dedicated folder. Until 2011, each invoice was printed and mailed by hand – as many as 10,000 a month. This created the ever-increasing manual labor demand, for several people, for hours on end.
Both the growing cost and the need to optimize asset management prompted CEMEX to search for a digital invoice management solution.
“We had basically two options. One was to request SAP integrators to provide it, which would take several months of waiting, and cost millions, or to seek an alternative solution. And since 21infinity are known as a provider solving atypical software challenges, we invited them to present a PoC for the project. Their market response was approx. 7 times faster than SAP’s, and the costs were 70% better priced”
– Kamil Lekston, Commercial Systems Specialist at CEMEX
Smart delivery equals savings
After an in-depth analysis of all SAP protocols, 21infinity team proposed a proprietary platform integrated with SAP called DPS, which automated invoice generation and distribution.
Launched in 2011, DPS allows preparing and personalizing an invoice directly in SAP, e.g. choosing a dedicated bank account. Based on the document’s watermarks added by the system, appropriate attachments required by law are selected, e.g. product cards.
The invoices are delivered either digitally, straight to third-party invoicing platforms or emails, or as paper copies. In the latter scenario, all the invoices are merged into a single file, which is sent to the postal service provider to be printed and mailed to clients.
Effective workaround for the giant
Since DPS was deployed in 2011, it has worked the daily batch of hundreds of invoices is easily handled by one person, in 15 minutes.
“The operational costs of the invoicing process has been cut by 50%, and the invoice processing time, by 95%. And this is of course except for the cost of manual labor, with all its possible errors that must be corrected,”
– Marcin Romańczuk, Service Delivery Supervisor at CEMEX
Over the years, 21infinity has provided maintenance for DPS, paving the way for smooth integration with the postal service provider. The company SAP was also further enhanced by other automation features for the DPS, to support tax system and law changes. This allowed CEMEX to avoid costly custom development by the manufacturer.
“SAP is known for its architecture complexity and a number of proprietary offerings, require a specific skill set. All these make SAP integration quite a challenge. The solution provided by 21infinity is a fantastic, agile alternative to SAP modification, which is cost ineffective these days,”
– Marcin Romańczuk, Service Delivery Supervisor at CEMEX
Project fact sheet
Time: 12 months
Type: Custom development
Market: Regional (CEE)
Technologies used: Windows Forms, C#, MSSQL
Systems integrated: SAP, Inforsys, Archivio
No. of participants: 4
Solution benefits
USERS
- Invoice distribution time cut by 95%
- Redistribution of employee assets
- Minimized risk of errors
MANAGEMENT
- Delivery time cut by 70%
- Software development costs cut by 75%
- Operating cost reduced by 50%