Procter & Gamble · Accounts payable operations
Invoice exceptions were consuming a manual workflow
- Problem
- Supplier invoice discrepancies across North and Latin America required repeated manual handling in a time-sensitive SAP FI process.
- Root cause
- A recurring, rules-based reconciliation path was being handled as individual manual work, creating avoidable delay and inconsistent visibility.
- Fix
- Implemented a KNIME-assisted workflow around SAP FI handling and automated reporting in Excel while preserving documented exception steps.
- Validation
- The revised workflow reduced invoice-handling time by more than 95% and continued to produce audit-ready records and daily status reporting.
- Follow-through
- Documented the process in SOPs and created how-to videos and visual status reports so the improvement could be understood and reused.
Investigation
- ▹Reviewed invoice states, price blocks, purchase-order mismatches, and the handoffs between suppliers, buyers, IT, and Order Management.
- ▹Mapped the repeated decision points and identified which steps could be standardized without removing exception review.
- ▹Compared daily workload and processing time before and after the automated path.
- SAP FI
- KNIME
- Excel
- SOP documentation