Improving vendor relationships and saving Common Spirit $300 thousand annually

Services

• AP automation
• Subjective coding
• Digital invoice processing
• Metadata processing
• Document scanning

Situation overview

Common Spirit Health has grown to become the second-largest healthcare system in the United States, with 842 locations nationwide. But over time that growth left back-office staff overwhelmed with the thousands of invoices they were receiving. 

With annual revenue of 29B, they found it challenging to pay their vendors in a timely manner, unable to take advantage of early payment discounts, and wanted to protect their relationship with their vendors.

With most of their vendors going digital, Common Spirit needed to move quickly to keep up. 

A paper-based approach was no longer sufficient, they were now receiving emails with invoices attached and needed help transitioning away from old-school manual AP to a modern, digital approach. 

A change was necessary.

Our solution

Our in-house development team embarked on creating a bespoke solution to automate their AP, within 12 months delivering Common Spirit savings of more than $300 thousand each year. 

By building a backdoor, secure FTP transfer we digitally receive invoices, scrub for metadata and integrate them with Common Spirit’s AP and accounting systems for a faster turnaround.

AP automation not only helped staff get on top of their invoices, but it also improved their relationships with vendors to the point they were able to take advantage of significant  discounts on offer. 

The new solution has helped minimize human error and added extra visibility into their finances. 

Using subjective coding, we helped Common Spirit to organize its mail to differentiate between PO and non-PO invoices, saving valuable time and streamlining operations. 

The changes we made have future-proofed Common Spirit’s information management, turning reams of paperwork into a cloud-based service that allows staff to access documents from wherever they are.