Building Stronger Stakeholder Relationships Through Process Efficiency

Introduction
About The
Customer

Cinema Solutions depends on a wide network of vendors for essential operations such as maintenance, repairs, and technical support. The company processes large numbers of transactions and vendor invoices. Operating in the fast-paced entertainment industry means Cinema Solutions requires a reliable and agile system, as any disruption incurs costs.

Industry
Entertainment
System Landscape
SAP S/4 HANA
Duration
4 Months
Overview

Cinema Solutions relied on manual vendor invoice approval with heavy oversight from their team throughout the process. The team also had to create many POs for recurring services, which overwhelmed them. These resulted in delays, errors, slow and inefficient operations, and a high workload.

Building Stronger Stakeholder Relationships Through Process Efficiency
Challenges
Building Stronger Stakeholder Relationships Through Process Efficiency
Challenges
  • Integrating the existing SAP system at Cinema Solutions with other systems without disrupting business operations.
  • Creating custom workflows in SAP that align with the company’s requirements for different services for approval automation.
  • Establishing financial and validity controls when creating blanket POs for recurring services while avoiding individual POs for minor services.
  • Fostering team adoption of the new system for smooth completion of business operations.
Goals

Cinema Solutions needed an efficient system with real-time tracking for processing vendor payments faster. They also wanted to reduce team workload significantly by consolidating recurrent payments.

Our Solution

We implemented 2 solutions—one for automating workflows of vendor invoices with SAP Fiori for quick approvals and the other for generating blanket POs for recurring services.

They provide the following capabilities:

  • Automatic routing of invoices for approval based on preconfigured workflows.
  • Predefined approval hierarchies eliminate manual approvals for larger service POs.
  • Customized SAP Fiori based app with a user-friendly interface supports notifications, approvals, and rejections.
  • Rejection handling notifies the relevant team of rejected payments, providing feedback for invoice corrections.
  • Predefined dollar limits and validity periods streamline the processing of blanket POs.
Building Stronger Stakeholder Relationships Through Process Efficiency
Technologies Used
  • SAP IDOC for integrating vendor invoices with the SAP system, ensuring automatic data flow from third-party systems to SAP.
  • SAP workflow automation to manage invoice routing through the approval process based on predefined hierarchies and conditions.
  • SAP Fiori for user-friendly, mobile-compatible notifications and approval functionality.
  • Blanket PO functionality in SAP to process recurring minor services under a single purchase order.
Technologies Used
Results

Cinema Solutions has gained multiple benefits to transform their operations and relationships with vendors.

This is how the solution helps:

  • Vendor payments are processed in a timely manner with significantly fewer delays and interruptions. The team is no longer inundated with manual invoice approval tasks.
  • The team has real-time visibility throughout the approval process so that they can track approval progress and reduce bottlenecks where possible.
  • The team has saved costs by automating approval processes and reducing the number of POs raised.

All of these benefits have ultimately led to stronger relationships with vendors, who are key stakeholders. With cost savings, Cinema Solutions also has the flexibility to redirect budgets towards more strategic initiatives involving vendor relationship management.

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