British Polythene Industries Launches Shared Services Centre to Improve Finance Operations & Save £5

Contempus Accounts Payable automation suite from Digital Vision reduces administration by 50% and improves financial control across business

[UKPRwire, Tue May 15 2007] British Polythene Industries Plc (BPI), one of Europe’s largest manufacturer of polythene products, has launched a UK shared services centre to centralise and streamline its financial and administrative operations and save the company £500,000 per year.

A key element of the shared service centre project has been the deployment of the Contempus AP Automation suite, which will automate BPI’s accounts payable (AP) functions to boost efficiency, reduce the time spent handling invoices by 50%, and achieve annual cost savings of £150,000.

In a project designed and implemented by document processing specialist Digital Vision, the Contempus solution has been successfully rolled out to four of BPI’s operational divisions, with roll-out to the remaining three divisions scheduled to be completed by the end of 2007.

BPI is on of the largest manufacturers of polythene film, bags and sacks in Europe, with manufacturing capacity in excess of 350,000 tonnes a year, with 3,000 employees and an annual turnover in excess of £410m.

The Greenock-based shared service centre will centralise all administrative functions, including payroll, credit control, financial reporting and accounts payable, for the company’s 19 UK sites, standardising all processes and forming a key element of the company’s strategic planning, enabling divisional managers to focus on developing business relationships and delivering value-added service.

Digital Vision deployed a Kofax-based OCR system to automatically capture invoice data; Contempus then auto-matches the results with corresponding purchase order numbers and receipts, and allocates appropriate payment codes, managing financial documents more efficiently and promptly, assisting with approvals routes and reducing overall processing costs.

The solution enables managers to view any invoice-related document from any location, ensuring authorisation can be managed quickly and effectively – improved visibility and traceability mean that finance documents can be better tracked and payment processes streamlined.

Contempus is benefiting BPI as a result of streamlined and more efficient business processes, and is also benefiting suppliers and supplier-relationships by offering certainty of payment within terms.

Jackie Fullerton, Director of Shared Services at BPI said, “The high degree of automation possible with Contempus, coupled with the document processing experience of Digital Vision have been key enablers in helping us to bring all our UK financial operations together under one roof, centralising activity to help reduce costs and improve business processes.

“Accounts Payable automation has been the major investment in the project, and is now bringing the major rewards in terms of cost savings and efficiency gains. We expect that return on investment to be around 12 – 18 months, following full roll-out.”

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