Robotic automation of invoicing. A case study.

Our multinational client in agriculture requested a software robot to support its financial processes by collecting, organizing their billing data, to create and to electronically sign the invoices, and to send them to its clients.

Glencore Agriculture is one of the world's leading companies in the production, processing, and commerce of agricultural raw materials. The group is present in 35 countries and has more than 13,000 employees worldwide.

The business requirements were as follows:

• Automatic billing twice a day
• Reduction of financial administration tasks by at least 0.5 FTE
• Supporting and accelerating internal and external communication regarding invoicing
• Daily report to the management on billing performance

To provide a high-quality solution to the business need described above, we have chosen the UiPath platform and our own RPA implementation methodology.

The high-level process follows the steps listed below:

• Preparing input files from Glencore's own internal ERP system with various queries
• In-memory data manipulation with external excel macro extension (external business logic)
• Preparation and generation of invoices (form filling)
• Bulk electronic signature of PDF files are generated
• E-mailing the completed invoices as attachments
• Sending status reports on completed tasks

The total time of the development (assessment, development, testing, UAT, PRT, go-live) of the robot – implemented in almost 200 steps – took approx. 2 months.

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