Recently Yvonne Grobe, UC San Diego’s (UCSD) AP Manager, presented at Oracle's Innovation Week on how UCSD was able to automate their invoice process by leveraging the Transcepta P2P platform.

Problems created by manual invoice processing

UCSD was expending a huge amount of time and resources manually processing the roughly 27,000 invoices they receive each month from their thousands of suppliers. Only a handful of their suppliers were connected electronically, meaning that the vast majority of invoices arrived by mail. When invoices arrived in the mailroom they were bagged and delivered to the AP department twice a day, morning and afternoon, where they were opened, sorted, scanned, and indexed into the central invoice retention platform. 

This process required extra staff in the mailroom, in addition to two dedicated full-time employees (FTE) and two student interns. Once the invoices were indexed, a fifth FTE manually processed every single invoice, resolving exceptions via lengthy email chains, and manually routing to get proper approvals. The biggest issue with this system, aside from the huge time and resource investment, was the speed of payment. It took so long for the university to process incoming invoices that they were unable to pay their suppliers on time. 

Because the AP team could not meet their supplier payment terms, they were unable to pay by virtual card, causing them to lose out on valuable rewards that helped to reduce costs and offset the massive resource expenditure required to process invoices.

Goals of the AP Department

The AP department knew they needed to change their processes, but didn’t have the resources to do it themselves. They needed a partner to help them make the transition. To help guide their vendor search the AP department laid out the following objectives:

1. Digitally connect and onboard all suppliers to a supplier network 
2. Automate all manual processing efforts
3. Migrate their home-grown ERP to Oracle Cloud

UCSD finds a long-term partner in Transcepta

After a comprehensive vendor search, UCSD selected Transcepta to help them streamline and transform their P2P process with accounts payable automation. One of the primary reasons for the selection was Transcepta’s demonstrated ability to onboard and enable suppliers, and their designation as the only P2P platform with an Oracle Validated Integration.

Because UCSD was struggling with manual invoice processing, the Transcepta team immediately began work connecting their suppliers to the Transcepta Supplier Network, which facilitates the instant electronic transfer of data between supplier and business. Transcepta leveraged their proprietary supplier onboarding process, which quickly enables any supplier, regardless of size or sophistication, to be connected in minutes, avoiding a project that would have taken the UCSD team months or years to complete internally. 

Benefits of straight-through invoice processing

Once all of their suppliers were connected to Transcepta, UCSD was able to completely transform their internal processes. Now the vast majority of incoming invoices are processed straight-through, with no manual effort from the team. The rest enter a workflow that automates exception handling and routing for the proper approval. The UCSD team is now also able to issue payment to their suppliers within 24 hours of receiving an invoice, down from over 30 days when they were processing invoices manually. 

Moving to Oracle Cloud

UCSD is now in the process of transitioning their existing ERP to Oracle Cloud which, under normal circumstances, would create a huge headache for the AP team. A traditional AP solution would require technical resources to remap each individual supplier connection to the new AP system. However because all of UCSD’s suppliers connect directly to the Transcepta Supplier Network, UCSD can leverage Transcepta’s Oracle Validated Integration to simply point from their existing ERP to Oracle Cloud, removing the headache of re-connecting each supplier, and ensuring a disruption-free transition.

Results

1. Transcepta’s Oracle Validated Integration is helping UCSD seamlessly transition their ERP to Oracle Cloud. 
2. Transcepta connected and onboarded all of UCSD’s suppliers enabling instant electronic communication and seamless invoice processing. 
3. UCSD reduced the amount of time it takes to pay their suppliers from 30 days to less than 24 hours, enabling them to pay by virtual card and reduce costs. 
4. Trancepta helped UCSD reduce the resources required to process invoices by 90%.
5. Over 60% of UCSD invoices are now processed straight-through, with no manual effort required from the team. 

If you would like to learn more about how Transcepta can help automate and streamline accounts payable and invoice processing, schedule some time with one of our team members.