Success story at Stadtwerke Klagenfurt

Stadtwerke Klagenfurt

Stadtwerke Klagenfurt AG and its subsidiaries are a municipal service provider in the fields of energy supply, mobility, leisure, telecommunications, funeral services and the provision of advertising space with around 900 employees. Electricity customers are served throughout Austria. As part of the ongoing innovation process, the company software was also placed on a new footing with SAP. A distributed solution consisting of the old ERP system and SharePoint with minimal workflow functions was replaced. Paper invoices were also to “disappear”.

The aim was to automate as much as possible, realise seamless integration and remain in the SAP standard despite individual adaptations in order to create a uniform working environment. Due to the many years of good cooperation with easy competence, a company specialising in digital processes, the project manager at Stadtwerke Klagenfurt, Michael Schneider, BSc, relied on a solution proposal from his IT partner for both areas: automatic document entry and the incoming invoice workflow with integration into SAP.

Process-specific expertise makes the difference

The greatest challenges lay in the organisational area. In order to combine the individual steps of an invoice run into a consistent process chain, a detailed survey and analysis was required in advance: “It was essential to record the internal process flows and scrutinise the working methods within the company, as the individual business areas of Stadtwerke have specific invoice processing processes that had to be mapped,” explains Michael Schneider. “For example, special requirements such as subsequent amendments or liability and cover reserves had to be taken into account for our construction division. A solution partner with the relevant expertise and experience was therefore extremely important for us.”

Two specialists – One solution

The digitisation of around 20,000 incoming invoices per year was implemented by easy competence using the Kofax Invoice Processing capturing and extraction solution. This enables the automatic, source-independent scanning, analysing and capturing of invoice data. The requirements of the approval process were realised with the xSuite Invoice solution. The consulting company ZELMION was brought on board to analyse the process and integrate it into SAP. “The overall solution quickly won us over because it is very flexible. The solution is also very attractive in terms of the cost-benefit analysis,” says Michael Schneider, explaining the decision. xSuite Invoice automates the plausibility and content check of the invoices, transmits the invoice images (PDF) and data to SAP and controls the invoice approval for all employees involved.

Checking and approval take place at item level in the SAP GUI or via the web interface. All process-relevant documents are stored with xSuite in the existing EASY archive system of Klagenfurter Stadtwerke in an audit-proof manner. The bold plan to introduce SAP and the incoming invoice workflow at the same time required the IT partners to go above and beyond the call of duty. Based on best-in-class examples, process models were developed in close cooperation with the company’s IT department.

“Our project partners approached the transformation of the processes with great sensitivity
processes and always explained the need to adapt our internal organisation
organisation clearly. During the course of the project, which lasted around a year
always had a very good basis for dialogue and always came up with good solutions.”
(Michael Schneider)

The two IT partners, easy competence and ZELMION, recognise the importance of building up the customer’s knowledge. This enabled the IT team and key users at Stadtwerke Klagenfurt to acquire the necessary expertise to support and further develop the system. As all 900 employees have access authorisation and around a quarter of them regularly work with the new workflow solution, the training courses were rolled out company-wide.

Business benefits at all levels

Stadtwerke Klagenfurt now benefits from a standardised process – from scanning to approval of the invoice, with clear responsibilities and clear logging of the individual steps. This avoids process loops and ambiguities and even new employees quickly find their way around.

Thanks to the integration of the solutions, work can be carried out on the familiar SAP interface without any media disruptions, and only true data is communicated to the outside world, as everyone has access to the same documents and the same status.

From a financial point of view, the municipal utilities were also able to achieve significant business benefits: The throughput times for incoming documents have been reduced, credit notes are being earned more quickly as a result and cash discounts are being fully utilised. In the Austria-wide activities of the company’s outdoor advertising and funeral services divisions, for example, the postal route is saved and all invoices are scanned on site and can be processed immediately.

Compared to manual processes, both labour costs and the error rate have been significantly reduced, as many errors are validated and intercepted by the system. Printing costs are also significantly lower.

To be continued

The desire for efficient processing of incoming invoices provided the impetus for document digitisation. Contract management has already been implemented and will be followed by application and form management, a modern customer portal with a customer file and the project file. Due to the great success of the initial project, the individual specialist departments also want to jump on the digitisation bandwagon at Stadtwerke Klagenfurt. “People like to talk about projects like this that speed up processes, simplify things and are carried out purposefully and cost-effectively by good partners. This positive energy makes it easy to get other areas of the company excited about document digitalisation,” says a delighted Michael Schneide.