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Daniel Kimpton, Co-founder and Business Manager Account payable (AP) automation is an investment all organizations should take to drive more value out of their investment in SAP. It is the low-hanging fruit that delivers rapid ROI from process efficiencies and improved payment on time. AP automation achieves this feat by replacing manual AP processes with best-practice automation that matches and posts a high percentage of invoices first time and sends the exceptions to business users with no touch in AP . SAP on its own does not deliver automated invoice processing; organisations need to work with a technology partner who has the experience and long-term commitment to deliver AP automation that genuinely meets their business objectives. Having implemented automated invoice processing for SAP customers since 2005, Cogent Consulting is a go-to partner who has the experience, tools, and intellectual capital to support organisations through their AP automation journey. The company’s longterm commitment and focus on AP automation serving over 150 SAP customers have resulted in an unparalleled depth of knowledge and experience. “Before founding Cogent Consulting, we had been working for big consultancies implementing SAP for many years, but none of them ever went back to help existing SAP users get more out of their investment by driving process efficiencies. We spotted an opportunity to be that consultancy,” remarks Daniel Kimpton, Co-founder and Business Manager, Cogent Consulting."Before founding Cogent Consulting, we had been working for big consultancies implementing SAP for many years, but none of them ever went back to help existing SAP users get more out of their investment by driving process efficiencies. We spotted an opportunity to be that consultancy."
Kimpton notes that the higher the automation rate, the lower the number of exceptions to manage and the more suppliers are paid on time. As a result, Cogent strives to deliver the highest automation rates as possible as part of the initial implementation. "Go Live is only the start of the journey, because, you can't capture everything during the implementation. Further automation can be achieved once you have high volumes of production data to analyse, pinpointing the main issues and how to address them. So, we always tell customers that AP automation is a journey, and we support them on continuous improvement to keep driving automation rates higher as part of our service," explains Kimpton. The solution design at the beginning of a project is the best guess between Cogent and the customer at that stage, but the solution customers go live with incorporates all the new ideas that come out during the testing phases after we’ve learnt more about the customer and the customer understands more about what the system can do. This collaborative approach is the best way to ensure the customer goes live with a solution that really meets their business objectives. Once the solution is bedded in, then we start work on continuous improvement by analysing the reporting data to quantify the errors and how we can use different options in the settings to improve the automation rates. All the different options available are delivered as part of our template that we deploy for all customers as standard and we put AP in control of the settings, with our guidance of course, so doing a change can be as simple as checking a box or filling a table. This is a unique approach for SAP customers because typically any change to an SAP add-on solution requires a lengthy change process, but we can easily optimise the system with no involvement from the customers IT team. "In fact, the template contains all the enhancements that we've ever done on every project," states Kimpton. Cogent provides this template to the new customers, which means they can go live with all knowledge and experience of all the automation options from existing customers available in their production system as standard. New customers not only benefit from all of this but also contribute to the template if we do something new for them on their project.
Cogent also runs regular user groups with customers by getting them in a room to share all the latest developments with everyone. "We talk about the projects that we've done over the last year. And we talk about the best things that have happened on those projects. So a big value-add and something quite unique in this industry is that we give away all the new enhancements to our existing customers at our user groups," says Kimpton. All the best ideas come from customers or the users who use the software every day to do their job, so having a thriving community of users is like a virtuous circle that all participants benefit from. Cogent also practices what it preaches by using the same software to deliver its managed services to customers that it implements for customers to use in-house.
Cogent's 'AP automation journey' aspect is an important differentiator for the company in the market. There are many software vendors who claim their software to be best, but after the implementation, they often bid adieu to the customers only to interact with them if a problem arises or they've something new to sell to customers. On the other hand, for Cogent, Go Live is the start of the journey. It supports the customers all through the journey to help them get the most out of their investment. "We are long-term partners with our customers, supporting them on continuous improvement to their invoice automation rates years after go live," he adds.
We are long-term partners with our customers, supporting them on continuous improvement to their invoice automation rates years after go live
Breaking New Ground in Account Payable and AR Receivable Automation
Cogent's automated invoice processing starts with an objective to automate the posting of invoices in SAP and send the exceptions to business users with no intervention from the AP department. The department is left with only the real exceptions to manage, and the company supports customers post Go Live to reduce exceptions continuously. The company has several methods to get invoices from suppliers and through to SAP employing a mixed approach depending on the customer's requirements. It supports e-invoicing (EDI, e-invoicing networks, portals) and provides managed services to convert PDF and paper invoices to electronic files for submission to SAP within 24 hours.
The same technology Cogent uses for the managed service is also available for customers to use in-house, either delivered as a cloud or on-premise service. The company provides all the tools in SAP to manage the data-checking, line-item matching and auto-postings as well as workflow to manage exceptions. Workflow can be accessed via SAP GUI, Fiori, web application and email. Reporting provides a series of dashboards to monitor current workload and performance. A comprehensive set of KPIs is provided based on industry-standard benchmarks with goals and trends over time. "The analysis also pinpoints the biggest issues for us to focus on with the clients as part of our continuous improvement approach to keep driving efficiencies as part of our service," says Kimpton.
Emily McIntosh, Head of Accounts Payable at Premier Foods, a British food manufacturer, says, "Premier Foods have worked with Cogent for a number of years. We find the software, guidance and support aids Premier in achieving and maintaining KPI's. Here at Premier we are dedicated and very active in trying to better our monthly performance, we find a face to face, Q&A/brainstorming session with Cogent really helps with that. I do believe the software Cogent has provided does contribute to Premier being in the forefront in regards to AP technology capability."
While delivering continuous automated invoice processing improvements to their customers, Cogent came across numerous AP departments across the globe asking for a better solution to reconcile supplier statements. There must be a better way of doing it manually or in Excel. The company listened to the customer and developed the BETA version of its cloud-based solution Statement-Matching. com that automates the reconciliation of supplier statements against their AP ledger(s) in SAP. Suppliers can send Excel, PDF and Paper statements to Statement-Matching. com, which are automatically reconciled to check for discrepancies, for example, missing invoices/credits, miss-postings, duplicates and data errors. The objective is to ensure all documents have been received and input correctly so that suppliers can be paid on time and the ledgers are 100 per cent accurate. Reports can be shared with suppliers to give them the status of their invoices, and more suppliers are paid on time, which reduces the volume of supplier queries AP team have to deal with. There is no software or hardware to install, and it can be up and running in 3 days once it has the initial data from customers’ accounting system.
Cogent is getting customer feedback for Statement-Matching.com to know what they thought was right, what could be improved and added to the solution.
The company also has Accounts Receivable (AR) automation solutions, which are a mirror image of AP automation solutions from a process perspective, but share the same business objectives and KPI’s. Both departments want to make sure all documents have been received and processed efficiently, accurately and on time. The AP and AR solutions are based on the same technology, so an organisation investing in the technology for one process can re-use the same components for the other method. “All AP and AR solutions in our portfolio are all SAP Certified and there are thousands of customers worldwide using them,” states Kimpton.
A Client-Centric Implementation Approach
"I think a big thing that kept us in the minds of customers is that AP automation really is our core business. We also listen to customers and incorporate their ideas into our solutions, which are then shared with everyone to support continuous improvement. We are a small business relative to the average SAP customer. Even though there are thousands of SAP customers globally, it’s a small world in a way because people move to different companies and if you keep doing a good job then you will be invited to bid for the next project. Some of our consultants have been with us since our inception, so customers like to see that continuity when they come to work with you again and we’re always doing something new," highlights Kimpton. Cogent's team, holding the deep level of knowledge and expertise in AP automation, are always available for the customers to not only resolve issues as part of standard support, but just be there to help with advice and guidance. The company does a lot for customers on a Goodwill basis as part of their value-add because long term it means customers come to you for advice. "We would rather focus on keeping the customers happy than charging them the money every time for a small change or bit of advice, like some big consultancies do," he adds. Such an approach keeps driving customers to Cogent, and when the company has new things to sell them, like Statement-Matching.com, they're very receptive. Julian Hannan, P2P/Accounts Payable Analyst at Serco Group plc, a British company that delivers essential public services, says, "Cogent are a key partner to Serco and have always provided a very professional, yet personal service to Serco right from day 1. The service and support are second to none and the dedicated team at Cogent understands our complex business and are always willing to go out of their way to offer assistance and advance."
Besides, such a customer-centric approach encourages current customers to refer Cogent to prospective clients. The company has customers that have been with them for over ten years who are still happy to be references. This gives a tremendous amount of confidence for prospective clients when it comes to making the final decision.
Supporting the Customers' AP/AR Processing in the wake of COVID Pandemic
Organisations the world over have been doing digital transformation programs for years now, but back-office functions like AP/AR are finally getting the attention they deserve, partly due to the current pandemic situation. AP/AR are having to do more with less and teams working remotely requires better visibility of the process and more collaborate ways of working. Organisations are going paperless as the pandemic has exposed the risk and inefficiencies resulting from manual processing. "We've seen most of our customers telling their suppliers they will no longer accept paper invoices: We will," shares Kimpton. Organisations leveraging Cogent's AP automation solution receive emailed invoices from suppliers into their SAP system within 24 hours with no touch by the customers AP team. Peter McGrath, Head of Accounts at The Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, a Japanese multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company, says, "Cogent have been our reliable partner for almost four years now. As we navigate the Covid-19 situation, Cogent has been transparent, flexible and communicative, which has helped us minimise the impact on our operations."
Demonstrating Capabilities to the Organisations
From pre-sales through to post Go Live improvements, Cogent provides the organisations with honest, practical advice on the options available to meet their requirements. The company loves to demonstrate its solutions to show them how the process and technology work end-to-end. For this, Cogent accesses the live systems in its Service Centre, so that the organisations can see real data from receipt to post on customers' SAP systems. "AP automation is a journey, and we would welcome the opportunity to host a Virtual Site Visit to our Service Centre to see it all working on customer systems and follow up with a reference call to speak to one of our customers about their journey," concludes Kimpton.
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Company
Cogent Consulting
Management
Daniel Kimpton, Co-founder and Business Manager
Description
Cogent Consulting is an AP automation specialist, focused exclusively on automated invoice processing for SAP customers
