Winner: LogicaCMG

Project: OB10 Total Invoice Management

Business goal: To optimise electronic invoicing by spreading the process across multiple global locations. Managing the incessant flow of invoices is a constant headache for accounts staff, consuming time and resources that could be spent on more critical finance issues such as cutting costs and fulfilling regulatory obligations.

In late 2004, IT services giant LogicaCMG identified its own, largely manual invoice handling processes as a major distraction to finance staff – it was also highly inefficient and costing the company far too much money.

LogicaCMG decided that it was going to take its problem global. It adopted an e-invoicing package – OB10 – and, around this tool, built a workflow and management environment that it christened Total Invoice Management.

This combines electronic invoice delivery with the centralised capture of in-coming paper invoices. These paper invoices are channeled through the company’s document handling centre in Wales where they are scanned and workflowed to a finance service centre established in Bangalore for approval and processing. Invoices that are sent electronically to the company are also passed directly through to Bangalore.

From the start, the business benefits have been significant. As well as freeing up head office finance staff, the implementation has had a huge impact on processing overheads, cutting per-invoice costs from £8 to £1 and reducing the time taken to process an invoice from seven to three days. Other benefits have included increased transparency and enhanced reporting capabilities; quicker VAT recovery; and improved relationships with suppliers as the system enables LogicaCMG to pay on time and take advantage of early payment discounts offered by its suppliers.

With 2,000 active suppliers submitting 5,000 invoices a month, LogicaCMG was keen to encourage as many suppliers as possible to submit invoices directly to the OB10 system and today over 70% of invoices are coming in electronically through OB10.

As a measure of its confidence in the system, LogicaCMG has packaged OB10 Total Invoice Management as a commercial offering, combining the software with its scanning and processing services to provide customers with complete electronic invoice processing from day one.

That has been the situation at LogicaCMG’s own finance department for over a year now, where there is no such thing as a non-electronic invoice.

Highly Commended

Linklaters

Global legal practice Linklaters must ensure constant, secure and consistent access to applications and data for over 5,500 employees working in 22 different countries. By using Citrix Presentation Server, the company has replaced a series of local information fiefdoms with a globally consistent set of financial and marketing systems, and provided individual users with secure access to their data wherever they may be.

MSB International

Recruitment consultant MSB International has grown to be a £90 million business based on its ability to fit the right candidate to the right job. As the number of CVs that need to be processed to do this has grown, MSB has been forced to automate a traditionally labour-intensive process. Its success in doing so is reflected in its real-time CV sorting capability that has already reduced annual costs by £120,000.