SUCCESS STORYTATA S K Y

Leading Satellite Television
Provider Automates andStandardizes Invoice Processing
Tata Sky solves accounts payable challenges with OpenText andAvaali, reducing invoice processing time by five days

Tata Sky Ltd. is a leading direct broadcast satellite television
provider in India that was incorporated in 2001, and is a joint
venture between Tata Sons and 21st Century Fox. Tata Sky
endeavors to offer Indian viewers a world-class televisionviewing experience through interactive services, as well as avariety of channels including entertainment, sports, movies,music, and news.
Addressing the Challenges of a Manually Intensive Accounts
Payable Process

INDUSTRYMedia and Entertainment

CUSTOMER
Tata Sky Ltd.

CHALLENGES• Invoice processing took a long timeand contained many errors• No central and standard process• Lack of visibility and no audit trail

Tata Sky used to process all of its vendor invoices manually using the paper documents
received from vendors. Its Shared Service Center (SSC) staff members routed the paper
documents to various stakeholders in the organization via mail or fax for handling exceptions and for approvals. When finally approved, they manually entered the invoice data
into the SAP system.

• Manual routing of paper invoices

This manually intensive invoice processing system resulted in several business challenges,
such as high invoice cycle times and late payments. Among other things, this resulted inpoor vendor relations and the inability to leverage discount benefits based on the payment
terms. There were also issues identifying and handling exceptions related to the threeway match—a payment verification technique matching the invoice, purchase order, andreceiving report.

• OpenTextTM Invoice Capture CenterAdditionally, there was a complete lack of visibility into current liabilities and process
bottlenecks. The team was spending inordinate amounts of time replying to vendor inquiries, as there was a lack of visibility into the status of individual invoices. It was also challenging for the organization to store paper invoices and search for them later for audit orverification purposes.

• Greatly improved turnaround time

Vikas Kapoor, VP of Finance at Tata Sky, summarizes the company’s goal for accounts
payable (AP), “We set out to optimize our procure-to-pay process and reduce our invoiceprocessing time and costs. We were facing several issues due to duplicate and erroneous invoices, and manual processing of paper invoices.”• Streamlined process with audit andE N T E R P R I S E I N F O R M AT I O N M A N A G E M E N T

SOLUTIONS• OpenTextTM Vendor Invoice Managementfor SAP ® Solutions• OpenTextTM Archiving for SAP ® Solutions• OpenTextTM Document Access forSAP ® Solutions

BENEFITS• Reduced FTEs by three in one month• Managing four times the number ofinvoices with no additional investments• Implemented within 3 1/2 months

liability reporting• Complete visibility of all invoices

throughout the process

SUCCESS STORYTATA S K Y

To address its challenges, Tata Sky selected OpenTextTM Vendor
Invoice Management (VIM) for SAP® Solutions. Tightly integrated
with SAP ERP, the OpenText VIM solution optimizes and simplifies the process of creating, managing, monitoring, and routing
purchase orders and invoices for AP personnel and vendors.
The solution enables Tata Sky to transition from manual invoiceprocessing to streamlined invoice management for its SharedService Center (SSC).
“We looked at several solutions and decided on OpenText Vendor
Invoice Management for SAP Solutions due to the automatedinvoice capture capabilities and out-of-the-box business rules andworkflows for invoice validation, exception handling, and approvals,”says Kapoor.

Partnering for a Short Implementation
Process
For its implementation of OpenText Vendor Invoice Management,
Tata Sky chose OpenText implementation partner, Avaali Solutions
Pvt. Ltd. “We did an in-depth evaluation of implementation partners
and chose Avaali as our implementation partner due to their process
knowledge, deep expertise, and understanding of the OpenText
VIM solution,” says Kapoor.
The implementation team from Avaali conducted detailed workshops with key Tata Sky business stakeholders to understand thecurrent process in the SSC, their pain points, their requirements,and the roadmap. The workshops also covered the solution functionality in detail to help Tata Sky appreciate how it could put thesolution to use in their SSC. The Avaali team created a detailed
blueprint document covering process and sub-process flows tobe implemented, and then gained the acceptance and complete
buy-in from Tata Sky. Avaali also took ownership of educating
the end users about the solution and thus eased change management and ensured acceptance at Tata Sky. Implementation wascompleted in just 3 1/2 months.

New Automated Digital Workflow Process
Leads to Significant Business Benefits“We went live in just 3 1/2 months
and the solution has resolved ourissues by providing us a platform
for automated and standardized
invoice processing. Tata Sky’s
accounts payable users are very
happy using this solution andwe have been able to gain a70-percent increase in efficiency
in our Shared Services Center,”
VIKAS KAPOOR, VP OF FINANCE AT TATA SKY

average, it used to take more than seven days to process an invoice,not counting the days required for the paper invoices to reach theSSC from various locations. It now only takes an average of two days
to process each invoice, and the AP personnel at the SSC no longer
need to wait for paper invoices to arrive. They can start processing documents as soon as they are scanned at various locations.
Another benefit of its OpenText solution implementation is that
Tata Sky has been able to reduce the number of resources required
to process invoices. There are now only three FTEs (full-time equivalents) needed for processing due to automated data captureand system-driven business rule checks. Avaali also considered
Tata Sky’s future growth requirements and designed the solution tohandle a volume of four times the growth in invoices over the comingyears—without the need for additional investments from Tata Sky.

Along with the OpenText Vendor Invoice Management solution,
Tata Sky also implemented OpenTextTM Imaging Enterprise Scan The reports and dashboards implemented by Avaali provide theand OpenTextTM Invoice Capture Center to digitize incoming invoices. Tata Sky AP team with the status of invoices, along with a view ofThis enabled Tata Sky to reduce errors and increase efficiency by current processor, approver, or exception handler. Statistics now
using automated invoice data capture and routing to SAP applica- show how much time has been spent and whether the process step
tions automatically, without the need for human intervention. The VIM is within defined key performance indicators. Leadership at Tata Sky
solution provides system-driven standardized business rules for each also now has clear visibility into current liabilities, as well as an overinvoice type and allowed Tata Sky to handle exceptions and approval view of the productivity of the AP team and bottlenecks, if any.
flows through workflow automation. Furthermore, the scanned “We went live in just 3 1/2 months and the solution has resolved
copies of invoices are being stored in the OpenTextTM Archive Server our issues by providing us a platform for automated and standardand linked to the invoice document in SAP for future reference.
ized invoice processing. Tata Sky’s accounts payable users arePreviously, the SSC team at Tata Sky had to follow up with different very happy using this solution and we have been able to gain ateams—such as procurement, vendor master, coders, and approv- 70-percent increase in efficiency in our Shared Services Center,”ers—in order to process invoices and complete the payment. On concludes Kapoor.

Avaali Solutions (www.avaali.com) is a company that enables Enterprises to drive and deliver business results byleveraging digital technologies. Avaali has core strengths in powering upper mid-to-large enterprises with solutions in theareas of Enterprise Information Management and Enterprise Mobility. Avaali’s advisory, consulting, and implementation
services have enabled enterprises to transform their business processes and engage better with their stakeholders
including customers, employees, partners, vendors, and shareholders.

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