Dicom eases invoice overload
Dicom eases invoice overload
Alinta Gas has managed to cope with a huge increase in invoices after acquiring the assets of Duke Energy in Australia and New Zealand through the use of Dicom's Ascent for Invoices technology.
Based in Perth, Alinta manages over 20,000 km of gas pipes and 12,000 km of electricity lines in WA and Victoria, including 1.1 million gas and 583,000 electricity connections.
It has been expanding its role recently in the transmission and supply of both Gas and Electricity in Australia, bringing extra pressure on the Accounts department.
The company looked for a system which could help it cope with ever increasing invoices after these expansions, without costing them the overheads of additional staff.
Alinta chose Dicom's Ascent for Invoices software because it allows a huge amount of invoices to be scanned in and retrieved quickly from the database.
Alinta processes invoices from almost three thousand suppliers, but the technology it was using before could not cope with this fresh influx of more invoices. Under the old system, a new template had to be made for each invoice.
Patsy McCauley, the accounts payable manager for Dicom said. "The set-up and maintenance effort would have been uneconomic. Having the images available on screen is a major efficiency for our staff. We no longer have to go searching through physical paper in response to queries, everything is on the screen in an instant.
"Having the images available on the screen is a major efficiency for our staff. We no longer have to go searching through physical paper in response to queries, everything is on the screen in an instant.
"Not only have we saved hiring more staff? but we are providing a better service to both our suppliers as well as our own staff."
Ascent for Invoices uses the same cognitive rules as a human. It looks for keywords such as "Total", "Total amount", "Grand Total" and automatically finds matching values. This allows new invoices to be added and identified quickly and easily, without laborious form definition.
Alinta automatically extracts the data from the paper invoices, which are then parked into SAP, with an image of the invoice. This is then sent out to the authoriser via an email, who then approves the details as well as looking at the original invoice in SAP.
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