Shimano

The need to eliminate manual processes, gain some much needed visibility and be compatible with JD Edwards World, led Shimano to AP Express for JD Edwards.

Laura Conklin, Accounts Payable Manager at Shimano North America, recalls the ‘biggest pain points,’ she and her team were looking to solve with AP Automation.

“All invoices were emailed to a dedicated AP inbox monitored by several AP coordinators. The team would then save each PDF invoice to their folder, open the PDF, and then key them into the system.” Conklin then emphasized her biggest headache, “I then reviewed all the batches against the PDFs – so I had to reopen every single PDF to verify and then manually post it – and that was just invoice processing.” 

Approvals were another story…

“Invoices were sent via email to the approver – and we just hoped we would receive it back in a timely manner in order to then manually key it into the system,” Conklin said.  “This was a big gap in the process. It was very difficult to track and manage the invoices out for approval – and then somehow double check that you received them all back.  Our monthly accruals were somewhat of a challenge – until AP Express.”

“When we hit month end, it’s so nice to log into the AP Express dashboard and see exactly where we are. I have such a clear picture heading into month end – how many invoices are left to process and how many are needing approval.”

“Because of AP Express, we are getting invoices processed so much faster.  We would tend to scramble the day before a payment run – making sure anything that was due, was in the system – and now ALL of that has been eliminated. There is no backlog, no delay, and we now have more bandwidth to work on other things.” 

“I’ve done other implementations like this in the past and it’s inevitable that some people will give push back on a new system – however, with AP Express, there has been no hesitation. The system does what it’s meant to do, but it does it in such a simplified way that people aren’t afraid to use it.”