The international company Schoeller Allibert has completed quite a few acquisitions in recent years. Each acquired company originally had different working methods and business processes. “With software robots, we want to help our colleagues standardize and optimize their processes. Automation allows our employees to focus on activities with higher added value.”
Schoeller Allibert is an international company specializing in custom packaging solutions. With 13 production sites worldwide, 12 of which are in Europe, Schoeller Allibert isthe European market leader.
To maintain this position, it is important to respond to changing customer needs. The manufactured products, the product range, and the services must be continuously adapted to the ever-evolving market . Administrative business processes mustalso remain up to date.
Over the years, Schoeller Allibert has entered into various partnerships, during which new shareholders have come on board andseveral acquisitions have taken place. The company has a rich history and was formed from the market’s leading players: Schoeller, Wavin, Perstorp, BiPP, Arca, Linpac, Allibert, Paxton, Stucki, and others.
Each acquired company originally had different working methods and business processes that need to be standardized within the parent company’s systems. Schoeller Allibert views Robotic Process Automation as a means tostandardize administrative processes across its various international locations and thereby achievemore efficient business administration.
Wouter Schepers, Head of IT Solutions at Schoeller Allibert, on theIT department’s strategy: “Our goal is to help our colleagues standardize and optimize their business processes using software robots. Through automation , we enable our employees to focus on activities with higher addedvalue, such as acting as business partners. We also expect this to increase job satisfaction.”
One example of a robotized process is invoice processing. The software robot logs into theERP system and retrieves all invoices that are ready to be sent out. Based on existing customer settings, it determines whether the invoicewill be sent by mail orprepared for electronic delivery viaemail.
For physical mail delivery, the invoices are prepared as PDF files for an external mail-handling company. This company retrievesall PDF invoices from apredefined file location. The mail service provider handles the further processing and delivery of the paper invoices.
For invoices sent viaemail, the task is transferred to a second RPA robot, which handles the dispatch. Withinthe ERP system, the outstanding invoiceis administratively closed and assigned the status “Pending Payment.”
"Thanks to the use of RPA, sending invoices is faster and more cost-efficient."
For Schoeller Allibert, the use of RPA means thatsending invoices is faster. In addition, this automated approach ismore cost-efficient than employing an administrative staff member. But the greatest value for the company lies primarily in standardizing the invoicing process across the entire organization. The advantage is that this standardizesthe routine and makes it easier to integrate with other business processes.
Robotic Process Automation offers opportunities in areas where a significant amount of manual work is still performed by employees. With this technology, further automation of processes is within reach for business units. In addition, it has become clear that thetime-to-market forsoftware robots is significantly faster than that of traditional solutions, such as modifications to theERP system orcustom integrations.
Wouter Schepers discusses the next steps for RPA at Schoeller Allibert: “With our RPA Center of Excellence,we are now fully engaged in introducing RPA throughout the organization. There is great potential to optimize and automate multiple processes.”
The software robots at Schoeller Allibert are created using RPA software from Tungsten Automation (formerly known as Kofax RPA or Kofax Kapow). The benefits of Tungsten Automation include operational efficiency, modernization of legacy systems, and support for improving the quality of data processing.
Peter Kok, Technical Consultant at 4CEE, on the Robotic Process Automation project at Schoeller Allibert: “Organizations that have their processes well organized and can optimize them quickly and continuously have a lasting edge over their competitors. That’s why, together with the employees, we identified which processes exist and which ones can be automated using Robotic Process Automation. Employees know exactly how the work is carried out, so they play a crucial role in the design process.”