A leading global packaging company faced significant challenges in processing and validating 1.5 million supplier invoices annually. With only 65% of invoices processed automatically, FTEs handled 420K invoices manually each year, leading to inefficiencies, human errors, and increased operational costs. Onboarding new suppliers with quite diverse invoice layouts was quite time-consuming and different languages were also quite a challenge. 

The solution was to leverage GenAI to expedite the extraction of intent and data from the semi-structured data sources (scanned PDFs of invoices), that are extracted from mailboxes and sent to the SAP system. 

Documents are extracted from email accounts and processed by the system, using tuned prompts and Bedrock LLM models, and confidence scores are calculated for each field. The structured outputs are then filtered and processed automatically to be loaded into SAP Systems. 

No training of the system is required, only outputs are constrained to pre-defined templates, based on the systems the information on the invoices will be ingested to. 

Only generated outputs with a high confidence score are processed automatically by the system of record (SAP), while a User Interface was also developed to make sure users leverage the extracted information. 

By adopting Hitachi Digital Services’ solution, the customer is able to process large volumes of invoices in a day. Each invoice will be processed with a small interval, and the information in their SAP system is up to date. The manual effort reduced drastically, only 65% were automatically processed by the old system while the systems allow to go up to 97%, resulting in the ability to process an additional around 400,000 invoices per year, leaving only a few to be confirmed by the operator. Overall cost reduced 10x, with an even greater ROI than initially estimated.  

Key callouts 

• Reduced manual processing 

• 97% automation, 10x cost reduction 

• Ability to process 400k additional invoices