The Right Chemistry for EDI
Chemical Company Cognis uses crossgate for Invoice Management
Starnberg, March 13, 2007 – crossgate AG, the expert for B2B integration and cross-automation, has been able to gain another customer from the chemical industry. The contents of the recently signed contract are the digitalisation and centralised management – including workflow – of all incoming, paper-based invoices. The migration to EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is planned to be implemented in several stages. The service provider crossgate will take over the individual coordination with the customers and partners.
The Cognis Group, which emerged from the chemical sector of Henkel KGaA in August 1999, is a worldwide provider of innovative special chemicals and of ingredients for foodstuff. The company employs more than 8,000 persons and operates production sites, as well as research and service centres in approximately 30 countries. Up to now, incoming invoices have been processed completely manually in Germany. The documents were merely scanned for the purpose of archiving. This procedure has now been thoroughly reorganised with the help of crossgate.
After the scheduled activation of the system in summer 2007, approximately 80,000 invoices will be received and scanned per year by crossgate. The data will be extracted via OCR software. The digitised image of the invoice will be stored in an audit proof archive. The exported data will be transferred electronically to the SAP system of Cognis. An automated workflow has been defined for invoice approval, which transfers the invoice via the SAP system and the Intranet to all persons involved. The accounting department receives the document including all approvals and potential comments, which are integrated into the file.
Christoph Lüders, Director of Purchase to Pay of Cognis Germany: "We were searching for a new solution for electronic processing in accountancy. With crossgate, we have now opted for a service provider who optimises the processes considerably and makes an important contribution to reducing the costs on the administrative sector." crossgate is billing the services on the basis of transactions according to the number of documents which were actually scanned and transferred.
In the medium term, it is planned to migrate suppliers with a large volume of invoices to EDI step by step, which will enable them to transfer their invoices electronically – via crossgate – to Cognis. This will lead to a considerable reduction of both effort and costs.
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