Automated invoice processing in healthcare organization

About the client

A network of highly specialized centers for ophthalmic services in Poland, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. It consists of 5 private hospitals and over 30 clinics with more than 10,000 employees.

Motivation to implement RPA solution:

Vendor billing staff in the finance department were responsible for managing and processing approximately 20,000 invoices per month. Because ophthalmic procedures are not life-saving procedures, facilities were closed during the lockdown during the pandemic. As a result, staff had to be reduced and once the facilities reopened, many transactions had to be handled with minimal employment and operating costs. This made the process very cumbersome and prone to potential errors and biases, combined with the other problems listed below:

• Longer processing time for invoices, especially for processing outstanding invoices. 
• High likelihood of discrepancies and exceptions in processed invoices. 
• High turnover rates adversely affect productivity and quality. 
• An inferior vendor management system that does not provide visibility into outstanding payables.

All of the above challenges and many more prompted the company to search for a trusted service provider who would effortlessly analyze processes, discover areas for automation, and develop a scalable automation model.

The audit included activities:

• Conducting a diagnosis of the client’s technical infrastructure
• Analyzing existing business processes, related systems, methods of integration between systems, etc.
• Monitoring the entire invoice processing system and indicating a practical and estimated percentage of 65 to 85% for invoice automation.
• The need to reconcile invoices issued with orders placed, the documentation of which is stored in separate systems.

In the automation phase we have:

• developed a methodology for automating existing systems conducted tests of solutions
• measured the parameters of the solution according to the specific needs of the customer
• implemented improvements
• launched production of the robot

Tasks performed by a robot:

Documents from various integrated sources are received and scanned – the robot monitors the flow of documents. Then the unstructured data is converted into structured data (e.g. tables). The G1ANT robot was designed to index each document and store it in an integrated document management system. In the next step, the robot matches the supplier information on the invoice with the information in the supplier master database and is sent for manual verification in the case of unidentified suppliers. The robot searches the system for a related purchase order and matches line by line the data (item number, number of items, price, etc.) in the supplier invoice. Any discrepancies between PO and the invoice are identified, corrected, and routed for approval or rejection. The processed invoice data and the invoice result are recorded in the processing log and sent by e-mail to the responsible persons for manual review and correction.

Results:

• Successful implementation of an automated accounts payable process means a transparent audit trail of the tasks involved, an easily accessible electronic document system, a reduction in operational costs, and more:
• 70% of invoice processing was automated, representing saving more than 1,800 hours of manual labor per month.
• The backlog of invoices processed has been reduced from 10 days to less than 4 hours, which means a reduced volume in outstanding invoices. 
• Data accuracy and control has been improved by completely eliminating manual intervention in related tasks. 
• Employees are now freed from time-consuming, tedious tasks and work more effectively, diligently and efficiently. 
• Scalability and increasing turnover became less of a challenge as new employees were not burdened with processing invoices and could instead focus on value-added tasks.