Yarra Ranges Council partnered with Xcellerate IT to deploy Kofax ReadSoft Online, a market-leading cloud-based accounts payable automation solution. The software streamlines the processing of 2500 invoices each month for the council and is fully integrated with their on-premise ERP platform, TechnologyOne Ci.

Challenge

Yarra Ranges Council has been a long-term partner of Xcellerate IT, using Kofax Capture (KC) and Kofax Transformation Modules (KTM) to enable PDF Invoice extraction and validation. The Council’s workforce started working remotely due to the pandemic and its accounts payable team experienced significant challenges as a result when trying to utilise the existing solution. The decision was made to implement a new cloud solution to lower costs, increase efficiency, streamline processes and cater to a remote workforce.

Solution

As a trusted partner, Xcellerate IT was engaged to lead the automation project and transition the council to cloud-based accounts payable automation. The KC and KTM solution was replaced with the SaaS-based Kofax ReadSoft Online to overcome the challenges of remote work and deliver a greatly superior user experience. The new solution was configured, tested and live within two months.

Kofax ReadSoft Online automatically classifies and extracts data from supplier invoices and provides the Council’s accounts payable staff with an intuitive, cloud-based user interface to verify the extraction results. After verification, the captured data is automatically sent to TechnologyOne where additional validations occur, and workflows are triggered based on system rules within their TechnologyOne platform. The solution, hosted in Australia on Microsoft Azure, is live 24/7 and is constantly monitored by a dedicated cloud operations team to ensure optimal performance and effortless handling of large changes in document volumes.

“Xcellerate IT has been our trusted partner for almost a decade. The team is very experienced, and the support has always been great, so we were excited to extend this relationship by implementing their cloud-based accounts payable automation solution”, Enterprise Systems Solutions Officer (Finance) at Yarra Ranges Council, Stuart Cardwell, said.

Benefits

The Kofax ReadSoft Online accounts payable automation solution has streamlined the onboarding of supplier invoices with email integration as well as web browser access, supporting the Council’s new cloud-based environment.

The platform provides the Council with the opportunity to benefit from the following factors:

• Proven efficiency gains: Invoice header capture, verification and export to TechnologyOne Ci for further matching, coding and workflow
• 24/7 availability with an average uptime of 99.9%: Web-based access via the cloud ensures council staff can access invoice automation anywhere that there is an internet connection
• Improved invoice cycle time: Reduced cost for manual keying and manual verification leaving the option to reassign employees to more valued work
  One solution for paper/email/electronic invoices: Ensure compliance with new legislation by having one single point of entry for invoices regardless of formats received
• Reduced IT requirements: Implementation was fast and required no hardware or software investments; no time- consuming maintenance, upgrades or updates
• Improved supplier relationships: Faster invoice processing

“The new solution has made life much easier. One week after going live, we experienced some unrelated issues resulting in the integration with our on-premise solutions being unavailable. We decided to continue using ReadSoft Online to process invoices, but we were unable to export to our Finance system, creating a backlog. When we were finally able to restart our solutions, including system integration, all invoices and images uploaded to TechnologyOne without a hitch. I was very relieved and impressed with the accuracy of data coming out of ReadSoft”, Mr Cardwell said.

Yarra Ranges Council

Located on metropolitan Melbourne's eastern fringe, Yarra Ranges is home to more than 145,000 people. The area covers about 2,500 square kilometres and stretches from the densely populated outer suburbs up into the surrounding foothills, agricultural valleys and forested areas of the Great Dividing Ranges. It is one of Victoria's largest, most varied and scenic municipalities. It is also the largest area of any metropolitan council. There are more than 55 suburbs, townships, small communities and rural areas in the Yarra Ranges.

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