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The REIFF Gruppe, which is based in Reutlingen, near Stuttgart, and is a retailer and wholesaler for tires and automotive technology, as well as technical products, has opted for Docutec Xtract for Documents to capture the 12,000 incoming invoices it receives per month. One special feature of the project has been set up by the REIFF Management and Service GmbH as an internal service provider. It is an integrated automatic invoice checking system (monitoring amounts and conditions) for complex, multiple-page invoices in a customer-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and was only made possible through Docutec data extraction at item level.
The REIFF group consists of seven independent limited liability companies (GmbHs). Initially, Docutec Xtract for Documents is to be implemented for two of these companies. The companies REIFF Reifen- und Autotechnik GmbH (tires and automotive technology) and REIFF Technische Produkte GmbH (tread, drive, fluid, and sealing technologies, personal protection, and plastics) are commercial enterprises with numerous subsidiaries. The REIFF Management- und Service GmbH is responsible for internal services within the holding, such as personnel management, accounting, bookkeeping, controlling, and IT matters. It checks and regulates invoices centrally for both of the commercial limited liability companies. With over 1300 employees, REIFF gained a turnover of approximately 259 million euro across 70 locations in Germany and the rest of Europe in 2003.
In January 2004, the REIFF Management- und Service GmbH opted for an automated incoming invoice checking system to replace their existing time-consuming, manual invoice checking procedure which involved manually comparing delivery notes and trade goods invoices, as well as checking the conditions thereof.
“It was always highly time-consuming to check amounts and conditions manually in our enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, RESIS, as well to type the booking data into SAP FI,” says Sigurd Boßler, Project Leader at REIFF Management- und Service GmbH, when describing the procedure employed to date. “The technical products, in particular, demand great efforts when comparing the order conditions, as the item numbers and codes on the invoice (manufacturer / supplier number) do not correlate to the REIFF numbers on the orders. And only a few of the 90,000 items have a universally-valid, standardized EAN number. In order to accelerate the capture and checking process, we collaborated with Docutec to design a customized solution for REIFF.”
Docutec Xtract for Documents will thus be used in future to automatically capture the 12,000 or so invoices which are processed per month, as well as to check their plausibility, and to forward them on to a module for the automated checking of incoming invoices which was designed and programmed by REIFF itself. The invoice data (amounts and conditions) are automatically compared with the basic data of the ERP system, RESIS. For this to occur, data extraction needs to take place at article or at position data level, where all item numbers and codes, as well as individual prices, may be read. The highest level of data quality is guaranteed by means of a defined set of rules which compares the REIFF item numbers with the numbers specific to the corresponding suppliers. Once the data has been processed in the module for the automated checking of incoming invoices, automatic booking in SAP can follow.
“We have opted to work together with Docutec because they offered a data capture solution which is not only compatible with SAP, but also with our own ERP system. The Docutec solution is also able to capture high-volume position data,” explains Sigurd Boßler.
08.04.2004, Frank Bärmann
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