Cleveland Steel Container

Neil Addleman, General Accountant with CSC, recalls his main objective when searching for an AP automation solution. 

“We had to get away from paper. We process too many invoices at several different locations – compiling all the invoices, filing, and then having to find these invoices to reference – was an absolute nightmare.”

“Each location would receive physical invoices, physically match it to the PO, enter that data in Oracle E-Business Suite and then also write the code on the invoice directly.  Their general manager would then sign off on the coding, because approvals were not done in Oracle at this point, but just on the paper.” 

“Once the invoice was validated in Oracle, the location would package up all those invoices and send to our corporate office where I would file them.  I would then cut checks and physically match a check backup to all the invoices attached to that check, staple it together, file it away and mail the check out.”

AP Express by Nivo1 was able to immediately help CSC streamline their paper-heavy AP process while also helping them achieve a quick ROI. It not only digitized their invoices, automated their workflow, but also maintained and stored all the invoice details, including image, in the AP Express Archive. 

These few things alone have saved CSC time and money. “AP Express has freed up a TON of time” Addleman stated. “With AP Express, accounts payable went from 100% of my time down to 10%, which freed me up to focus on other company projects.” Addleman also made mention of CSC’s rapid growth and how AP Express has handled the uptick. 

“Our sales have been much higher, so we have been processing about 150%-200% more invoices than we have in the past. It’s because of AP Express we aren’t feeling any impact with the increase in volume.  We are processing just as fast and it’s all without having to add any additional resources.” 

Along with time savings, CSC also experienced unexpected cost savings while using AP Express.  

“The cost impact at our corporate office has been quite significant. AP Express has helped us save money. We no longer need each location to package and ship their invoices to corporate.  Believe it not, that process included having to send (5) overnight packages, each and every week. That adds up!” 

It’s estimated these savings offset half of their cost for AP Express. As Addleman previously mentioned, AP Express enabled his team to do more with less. 

“We didn’t need to hire anyone with the increase in volume. That was a huge win for us.”

AP Express brought Addleman one more unexpected benefit. “I didn’t realize how often people asked me to pull a copy of an invoice.”  He recalls his purchasing director requesting to see an invoice after implementing AP Express.  Addleman simply went into the application, downloaded the image and fired off an email. He quickly received a phone call. It was his purchasing director who asked him “Did you already have that invoice sitting on your desk? That was a quick turnaround.”  Addleman laughed and reminded his director of the new solution they had in place – a solution that allowed him to turn these requests around in less than a minute. He was no longer digging through folders and boxes to find the paper invoice; he just simply clicked a button.