Marine Harvest Pieters automates processing of 22,000 incoming invoices

Food industry Multi-country ERP integration

ABOUT MARINE HARVEST PIETERS
Marine Harvest Pieters is part of the Marine Harvest Group listed on the stock exchange. The Norwegian global market-leading producer of fish, mollusc, crustacean and shellfish produces a fifth of the worlds cultivated salmon. The group has over 6,200 employees with clients in more than 50 countries. They process 350,000 tons of fish and related products annually.

CASE STORY marine harvest

Luc Van Vyve, Finance Manager at Marine Harvest Pieters, is a strong advocate of automating their business processes. As far as the invoicing process is concerned, the company started digitalising 100,000 delivery notes per year in 2007. One year later they started automatically processing incoming invoices. Onea then installed Kofax, software that can read paper invoices so they can be processed digitally. All incoming paper invoices are now scanned and given a barcode. Kofax was integrated in Basware Invoice, a web application for invoicing. This application was in turn integrated in Marine Harvest Pieters ERP package. This means the details from incoming paper invoices are entered directly into the ERP system.

Next step in digitalisation Marine Harvest Pieters wants to receive and archive supplier invoices in digital format as much as possible. Onea installed its ScanPRO application, enabling electronic invoices to be legally registered and archived. This meant barcodes no longer needed to be assigned to the invoices. The incoming invoices are given a so-called digital annotation an official date stamp and a digital signature. Oneas software has official approval from the Ministry of Finance for this. Fast implementation The introduction of ScanPRO was very smooth. The software was active within a couple of weeks. The applications didnt need to be seperately integrated with the ERP package, which was one less thing to worry about. We opted for Onea because they concentrate exclusively on document management. Of all the suppliers we looked at, their interface was the most user-friendly. They also keep up to date with the latest developments and when their price also appeared to be the lowest, it was an easy decision to make, explains Luc Van Vyve.

The introduction of ScanPRO was very smooth. The software was active within a couple of weeks.
Luc Van Vyve, Finance Manager at Marine Harvest Pieters

Already 45 percent digital Luc Van Vyve: Suppliers ideally send us invoices in XML format. We can then read and archive them automatically using ScanPRO. We can also process PDF files using character recognition software linked to ScanPRO. Just under 10% of their invoices are currently received in XML format, with around a further 35% as PDF files. The remainder are still paper invoices. But legislation is being changed in 2013, meaning there will no longer be any difference between paper and digital invoices, which will only help increase the number of digital

invoices. There is definitely more growth to come, confirms Luc Van Vyve. Of the 22,000 invoices and credit notes we receive every year, 45% are currently in digital format. This figure will steadily increase. Faster approval Around a hundred employees at Marine Harvest Pieters purchasing department in Bruges, Ostend and Londerzeel approve incoming invoices for goods or services they have ordered. This approval process now runs much faster using automation. The Onea software runs on servers in Bruges, but can be accessed by users via a web application which doesnt need to be installed locally on computers, so its possible to approve invoices from anywhere. It used to be difficult sometimes to find an invoice that had to be approved when a supplier called, because at that stage they were still only visible in the accounting software. Now all incoming invoices including paper invoices are saved directly in ScanPRO, so they can be traced immediately. Increased efficiency Our efficiency has definitely increased, says Luc Van Vyve. An employee who used to work in the finance department has taken early retirement since ScanPRO was installed, and hasnt needed replacing. Marine Harvest Pieters is also going to digitally archive the 50,000 invoices it sends out every year. We want to get started with this in 2012, together with Onea. This will also lead to an increase in efficiency. Better efficiency and an improved view of our incoming invoices were the most important reasons for getting started with digitalisation and the automated approval process three years ago. Weve also saved a lot of costs. This wasnt our primary objective, but it is of course very welcome, concludes Van Vyve.

Im a strong advocate of automating business processes. It definitely increases our efficiency.

Luc Van de Vyve, Finance Manager at Marine Harvest Pieters

SUMMARY
The Marine Harvest Pieters unit in Bruges accommodates the headquarters for the international fish producers department for products with added value. This department is primarily active in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Poland. The departments IT policy is aimed at automating business processes as much as possible. For the last few years, invoices have been processed using a step-by-step method. Marine Harvest Pieters started using Onea for reading in its incoming paper invoices in 2008. But Marine Harvest Pieters also wanted to save the 22,000 invoices that it receives every year in digital format. Onea was selected once again after conducting market research on five different suppliers. Marine Harvest Pieters now receives and processes 45% of its invoices digitally. The approval process is fast and can be done remotely.

ADVANTAGES
User-friendly interface 10,000 of their 22,000 annual invoices are received in digital format The approval process is faster and can be done remotely Fewer faults when processing received invoices Easy to search received invoices Good overview of received invoices and their state of progress

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