Success story
Celestica
Industry• Manufacturing

Solutions• OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Managementfor SAP® Solutions• OpenText™ Invoice Capture Center forSAP® Solutions

Global manufacturing company digitizes
invoice processing with OpenText
Celestica enhances its accounts payable with OpenText Suite for SAP®

Results
Automated invoice management
for maximum efficiency
Reduced duplicate invoice
payments by 20%
Reduced approval cycles by 50%
Enabled seamless SAP integration
and real-time invoice visibility
and monitoring“From a process efficiency standpoint, what we have seen isa 20% reduction in our overall cycle time. We’ve seen a 20%reduction in duplicates and a 50% reduction in approval cycles.”Rebecca Schriver

VP of IT
Celestica

Global manufacturing company digitizes invoice processing with OpenText

Celestica is a leader in design, manufacturing and supply chain
solutions for the world’s most innovative companies. It brings
expertise and insight from the drawing board to full-scale
production and after-market services. Headquartered in Canada,
Celestica is a global operation with 27,000 employees in 29 locations
across 14 countries. The company’s solutions span a range ofindustries, including aerospace and defense, communications,enterprise, healthcare, industrial, semiconductor capital equipment
and smart energy.
Celestica prides itself on the commitment of its employees who goabove and beyond to serve its customers. In the face of fiercely competitive markets, however, Celestica must also operate in a lean and efficient manner. Using OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Management for SAP®
Solutions and OpenText™ Invoice Capture Center for SAP® Solutions,
Celestica automated its accounts payable (AP) processes to achieve
critical gains in efficiency and productivity.
Celestica continuously seeks opportunities to manage costs.
Rebecca Schriver, VP of IT, explained, “We have to be very lean,and we have to be very efficient. We are always trying to gain
efficiency and take cost out.” One area of Celestica’s operations
that presented an opportunity for such gains was the AP process,which had manual invoice entry and workflows. The role of accounts
payable is vital to the company—Celestica’s accounts payable
team processes more than 1 million invoices per year in over 12
different languages.

“We were doing a lot of manual invoice entry, and there was a lotof manual workflow processing around approving invoices,”
explained Schriver. To further complicate matters, Celestica had
challenges integrating its invoice management processes with its
SAP business platform.
Streamlined, digital invoice processing
Automation and process improvement were key requirements, but
the company also needed a solution that would integrate with its
SAP system. In the end, Celestica partnered with OpenText to deploy
OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) for SAP Solutions, asolution that streamlines accounts payable operations for SAP
customers by automating and simplifying the process of receiving,
managing, monitoring and routing invoices.
Schriver explained Celestica’s choice: “OpenText VIM provided an opportunity for automation and efficiency gains. OpenText has been in
the market longer than some of its competitors, and we felt that thesolution was more robust and fit more with our existing landscape.
Plus, we are an SAP-run company; the OpenText partnership with
SAP was a key factor in our decision.”
Celestica later added OpenText Invoice Capture Center (ICC) for SAP
Solutions, an OCR tool that uses the most advanced document andcharacter recognition capabilities available to turn invoices into machine-readable information. The deep integration with SAP fully automates data extraction and eliminates manual keying. “The OCR component was really critical for us because it allowed us to automate anddecrease manual entry, which provided a huge benefit,” said Schriver.

“As Celestica looks
forward to defining
its digital strategyand modernizing its
platform, OpenText andSAP continue to be ourstrategic partners in thattransformation.”
Rebecca Schriver

VP of IT
Celestica

Global manufacturing company digitizes invoice processing with OpenText

Increased AP productivity

End-to-end visibility

The new OpenText VIM solution has transformed Celestica’s AP operations, resulting in faster invoice processing and approval times. “From aprocess efficiency standpoint, what we have seen is a 20 percent reduction in our overall cycle time. We’ve seen a 20 percent reductionin duplicates and a 50 percent reduction in approval cycles,”said Schriver.

Furthermore, Celestica reaps the benefits of complete, real-time visibility into the status of invoices, which has greatly simplified theprocess of tracking invoices and locating potential delays in theprocess. “With OpenText VIM, we know where invoices may be
stuck throughout the process because we have visibility to thatnow,” said Schriver.

With the combined solution of OpenText VIM and ICC, the labor-intensive manual entry of invoices has become a thing of the past. Fully integrated with SAP, the invoice capture and management solution has
accelerated invoice processing and reduced the potential for errors
caused by manual data entry.

This visibility has also enhanced the company’s ability to respond toaudit requests because documentation is now readily available. Schriver
explained, “As a publicly traded company, we have both internal andexternal audits. The AP team will tell you that we save a lot of timeby being able to very quickly find invoices and documentation torespond to audit requests.”

Unnecessary delays in the invoice approval process have also been
eliminated via the new solution’s automated invoice routing basedon business rules and roles. “The biggest response from users
has been around the workflow for invoice approvals which is
now clear on what to do and where to approve. Users easily know
when they have something to approve, and will know when it’s
approved and completed,” said Schriver.
With invoice management processes automated, Celestica’s AP
team no longer spends time on manual data entry, manual routing
and dealing with problem invoices. Now, the team can focus on activities that are more productive. “With OpenText VIM, we’re ableto manage the increase in invoice processing more efficiently.”
noted Schriver.

Positioning for the future
Continually seeking greater efficiencies and process improvements,
Celestica is exploring new digital transformation opportunities withOpenText and SAP, including SAP’s S/4HANA digital business suite andOpenText’s Enterprise Content Management suite. “As Celestica looks
forward to defining its digital strategy and modernizing its platform,
OpenText and SAP continue to be our strategic partners in thattransformation,” concluded Schriver.

About OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company™,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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