Industry: Trade, Wholesale and Distribution
Category: Financial Management

Automating Processes with Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Industrial Robotic Arm

Why NTT DATA Business Solutions?

  • Partnership in the context of the S/4HANA cloud introduction
  • Potential of UiPath recognized early on
  • Optimal international support

Thanks to RPA, we can reduce manual tasks in the finance department to a minimum. The software bots now automate asset accounting and account statement uploading, and free up human resources for other tasks.

Adrian Maegerle Business Engineer, Elektro-Material AG

Products: Distribution of electrical installation materials

Employees: more than 700

Website: www.elektro-material.ch

Challenges and Benefits

Challenges

  • Manual upload of account statements was too time-consuming and error-prone
  • Complete digitalization of asset accounting

Benefits

  • Freed-up resources through process automation
  • Reduction of errors and waiting times
  • Bots can be used in many places in the company

Solutions

  • UiPath Robotic Process Automation
Customer Reference
Elektro-Material AG

The NTT DATA Business Solutions team proposed the development of a software bot (RPA) with UiPath for fixed asset accounting and automatic account statement upload, as it is particularly suitable for repetitive tasks and can speed them up many times over.

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About the Project

Individual Solution for Repetitive Processes

Being able to access all data in real time, reducing manual work to a minimum and thereby accelerating all processes – that was an important goal for Elektro-Material AG with the introduction of SAP S/4HANA Cloud in the area of finance. After all, the leading wholesale company in the Swiss electrical installation industry wants to guarantee not only a top sales service at all times but also rapid cycle times for its products comprising around 250,000 articles. And the finance department plays an important role here. Integration into a global company, the Rexel Group, also placed high demands on accounting.

“During the exploration phase of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud introduction, it was already clear that the solution was going to lead us safely into the future,” reports Adrian Maegerle, Business Engineer, Elektro-Material AG. “Because of our diverse system landscape, the solution for complete digitalization of all process steps did not go far enough with just asset accounting and account statement uploading. We needed an innovative solution.”

RPA Ensures Suitable Automation

This was quickly found: The NTT DATA Business Solutions team suggested the development of a software bot (RPA) with UiPath for assets accounting and automatic uploading of account statements, as it is particularly suitable for repetitive tasks and can accelerate significantly.

In the area of asset accounting, each new asset is created in the system via an interface, and the associated invoice is also posted. Acquisition or disposal of assets is automatically processed according to clear parameters — fast, targeted and without errors.

Up to five account statements need to be uploaded per day. Up until now, this was a manual task that took up to one hour per day per account statement. That was a wait time that employees could be using more productively. “No employee should have to worry about when and how an account statement gets loaded into the system,” says Adrian Maegerle. “If this process gets automated as well, valuable human resources are freed up that can be much better utilized.” The software bot now takes care of uploading account statements to SAP. There they are read, posted in SAP and balanced with open customer and creditor items by means of certain rules. This happens overnight.

At the same time, Elektro-Material thereby achieves a 95% settlement rate. When employees come to work in the morning, they can start right in on processing the remaining 5% of payments that require clarification. Customers’ credit limits are also always up-to-date now.

Armend Imeri, Head of Accounting, Elektro-Material AG explains: “Our new digital colleagues have really proven themselves. They relieve us of repetitive tasks and complete them overnight. The reduces our error rate and cycle times. Above all, we have more time for demanding, profitable tasks. Our whole team has recognized these upsides, and everyone contributed to driving the automation process forward.”

Adrian Maegerle adds: “We definitely see a lot of potential for additional bots, in other departments as well. We are now looking to see where additional process automation with RPA makes sense. RPA provides added value for our company.”

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About NTT DATA Business Solutions

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