Case Study

Sipcam Agro fast-tracks invoice processing and approvals using an OCR-based AI Solution.

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Industry : Manufacturing

Technology: Form Recognizer

Client Business Background

Sipcam Agro USA, Inc. is recognized worldwide for its chemical formulation and manufacturing expertise. The company produces, distributes, and markets plant protection products in the agricultural, turf, ornamental, and material preservation industry.

Challenges

Sipcam Agro received multiple invoices on an everyday basis from some of their 300 vendors.
Their employees struggled to manage the email attachments and scanned invoices.
To initiate the approval processes for vendor payment, it was difficult to search for key information for example, vendor’s name, invoice number, and other pertinent information on the scanned invoices.
It consumed huge time and efforts of their employees to find and add information manually into their existing system.

Solution Strategy

The Sipcam team needed a solution that could automate their invoice processing and drive faster and error-free approvals.

Beyond Key built a custom Microsoft 365 AI solution using Optical Character Recognition technology (OCR) which automated the invoices meta-tagging and approval processes in SharePoint Online.

Now the invoices could be automatically read from an email and then pushed to the SharePoint document library.

Once an invoice is uploaded in the SharePoint document library, it could be parsed, and the data automatically captured in SharePoint document library fields based on specific meta tags like:

Vendor Name

Invoice Number

Invoice Date

Due Date

PO Number

Invoice Total

Accuracy

Finally, the invoice is ready for approval from the respective Approver.

How it works

The invoice is received as a file attachment in Outlook Email or one drive.
Using this URL as a source, the form recognizer parses the invoice data.
It automatically gets uploaded and the Power Automate triggers sending the document to the SharePoint document library.
Power Automate calls the Form Recognizer API to read and upload the invoice to Azure Blob storage. The new file has a specific file URL.
Parsed data is saved in the document library based on the invoice’s metadata and sent for approval.
Permissions are configured so that the invoice details are shared only with the departments associated with the vendor.
Approval Emails are sent to the respective approver identified by vendor name configured by the user/admin.
A two-step approval can be applied, if required, with a threshold limit of invoice amount)
The process owner gets notified whenever someone approves or rejects a request.

Solution Architecture

Results

Saved Time

The solution fast-tracked Sipcam’s invoice approval process from weeks or months - into minutes!

Accuracy

The solution also reduced human errors as now they hardly needed to add information manually.

High Efficiency

It increased their employees’ overall efficiency while reducing their stress so they could now focus on high-value tasks.

Improved Search

All their documents are now searchable and allow the employees to extract information they need faster – so they have smarter data on their fingertips.

Screenshots

Parsed Data

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