Processing Over 111,000 Invoices with Just 1.5 FTE: The Success of Rotterdam Harbour Holding

Rotterdam Harbour Holding (RHH) ships more than 70,000 containers per year to over 700 destinations worldwide, making them a top five player in Europe.

In this complex organization, which also operates under two different brands, IT and automation are essential for success. RHH believes that success comes through innovative people and processes. This is reflected in practice through initiatives like the IT Academy, where every three weeks employees are invited to learn about new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, including the IT solutions that RHH uses.

Naturally, a large international organization like RHH deals with a high volume of purchase invoices, often with added complexity. Onventis Invoice Processing plays a key role in RHH’s IT strategy, helping to ensure invoice processing is as simple and streamlined as possible.

The Challenge

RHH faced three main challenges in its invoice processing:

• The high volume: RHH sends over 100,000 purchase orders and processes 111,000 invoices annually.
• The complexity: RHH receives invoices from all over the world, in various formats and character sets, think of invoices from Greece or China. Many also include extra pages with relevant details for processing, such as container numbers.
• The speed: Invoices need to be handled quickly to ensure timely payments and accurate internal financial reporting.

The Solution

Since 2011, RHH has partnered with Onventis to tackle these challenges. Onventis Invoice Processing is deeply integrated into RHH’s IT landscape, resulting in a seamless workflow:

• Purchases are initiated through RHH’s Transport Management Systems (TMS), generating purchase orders based on existing contracts and agreements.
• These purchase orders are sent in real time from the TMS to Onventis.
• Invoices are received and automatically imported from the mailbox. Onventis handles the recognition, matching, and approval of these invoices.
• Approved invoices are sent to RHH’s financial system and back to the TMS.
• The PDFs of the approved invoices are stored in RHH’s Document Management System (DMS).

RHH gains significant value from using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) as a Service and Robotic Accounting. The OCR reads the invoice data, while Robotic Accounting codes the invoices and assists users in locating the correct purchase order(s). Onventis’ REST API also plays a crucial role by enabling the flow of purchase orders from the TMS to Onventis and retrieving approved invoices for posting in the financial system, TMS, and DMS.

Innovation with OCR

While OCR technology is typically used to extract financial data from invoices, RHH takes a more advanced approach. They leverage OCR not only for invoice data but also to capture additional information, such as container or case numbers.

Since suppliers use a wide range of invoice formats, finding the right data can be time-consuming. Instead of manually checking each invoice, RHH uses OCR to identify and extract these extra fields. This data is shown in dedicated fields, helping employees quickly determine which purchase order(s) the invoice may relate to.

The Result

The outcome of the collaboration between RHH and Onventis is remarkable: RHH processes 111,000 invoices annually with only 1.5 FTE. This efficiency is largely thanks to the innovative use of OCR technology. By including company-specific information in the purchase orders, which then appears on the invoices, the entire process runs like clockwork.

Timely supplier payments and internal financial reporting are vital for RHH. With the help of smart dashboards, RHH has complete visibility into invoice processing times and the status of the queue. Additionally, they monitor the integrated IT landscape to detect any disruptions immediately. This ensures continuous insight into the most important information.

Want to know how Onventis can streamline your processes?

Feel free to get in touch. We’d be happy to explore the possibilities for your organization.