UiPath Helps STL Automate Invoice Processing to Drive Accuracy at Scale

Envisaging 10x growth, STL was faced with the challenge of scaling up its supporting processes to 10x. UiPath helped the company scale up and become agile to sustain exponential growth through automation.

As consumers and enterprises demand more data at high speed, STL needs to scale up exponentially by delivering network solutions. To achieve this internally, STL needed a comprehensive solution for seamless and agile internal processes.

STL realized this was a gap and brought in UiPath. UiPath’s RPA solution enabled an automated invoicing process and helped STL bring the change in its business transformation journey.

With data usage going up by 20x, STL was on the path to exponential growth, which was all set to boost its market share by over 10x and catapult them into the big league. However, being on this growth path brought along a set of challenges. The biggest one was scaling up internal processes to support and sustain this growth. This was hard to achieve within a short period, as scaling up the processes manually would be extremely strenuous—especially when even the slightest delay owing to inefficient processes can have a direct impact on business.

Furthermore, manual scaling up of processes by 10x would have resulted in hiring a larger workforce. This meant increased cost to the company, besides being prone to errors and inefficiencies. The objective was to do more and do so efficiently, without any increase in the workforce. Faster processes that are error free became an essential component of scaling up.

We realized the imperative to adopt a transformative approach and deploy advanced, cutting-edge technologies to enable agility and growth. This was the primary reason to consider Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for automating our critical processes in the most optimized and cost-effective manner

Mohit Mathur • Head of Process Transformation and RPA Champion, STL

From initial evaluation to a proof of concept, UiPath came out a winner

STL’s transformation team was instrumental in initiating and designing the roadmap for the adoption of RPA. The transformation team had a unique construct with Process, Information Technology, Data Sciences & Business Analytics, and Program Management verticals. Nischal Gupta, the company’s Chief Transformation Officer, heads this construct within STL and Mohit Mathur heads the process transformation vertical. Both Gupta and Mathur, who had extensive experience of RPA, were convinced of the technology’s capabilities in process automation.

As STL took on the challenge to fundamentally transform their processes using RPA, the next crucial step was to select the right technology partner. After evaluating most RPA vendors on a comprehensive set of parameters, STL chose UiPath for its easy-to-use interface coupled with a strong support network and customer focus.

UiPath helps scale up invoice processing from 8/5 to 24/7 process

After the decision was made to go with the UiPath Enterprise RPA Platform, STL chose invoice processing for vendor payments as the first process to be automated. For the materials procured from various vendors, the finance team was processing the payments manually. This resulted in delayed payments owing to long processing times.

Since it was a manual process, there were a lot of moving parts involved in the payments cycle. With six people already managing the process, the number would have increased drastically if the process were to scale up.

STL implemented two unattended UiPath Robots to automate the entire process. Once the verified invoice comes to the processing team, the first UiPath Robot takes over. The second Robot automated the next few stages, including optical character recognition (OCR), data increase, MIRO (Movement In Receipt Out), and finally the processing of an invoice.

To make the automation function optimally, STL had to re-engineer some of the processes. This involved implementing barcode logic to make it more amenable from an RPA point of view. The result is faster processes that are always on, accurate, and people-independent.

Unlike other companies who have leveraged RPA for people-intensive focus areas, we are using it inovatively not only to improve the speed of execution but also for revamping our processes

Nischal Gupta • Chief Transformation Officer, STL

Besides process accuracy, another key success metric worth mentioning is the speed of execution leading to scalability. UiPath helped the company scale up its invoice processing from an 8/5 to a 24/7 process, helping tackle the growing invoice volumes. The drastic improvement in the speed of execution has also meant that STL employees are now able to enjoy a better work-life balance.

Apart from invoice processing, STL has also automated multiple smaller processes—such as the reporting processes in its factory in Silvassa. It has automated some of the reporting based on purchase order, customer's delivery status, shipment status of the product, and report on stock.

The automation of these smaller reporting processes has fulfilled the objective of creating awareness around the capabilities of automation.

Paving the way for digital transformation with UiPath

For STL, RPA has become an integral part of the company’s growth plans and has now renewed its licenses for the second year.

Currently, UiPath automations are being used by STL’s products business unit. It will now be extended to its software and services business units and other locations. Automating the entire procurement process, followed by the 'order to cash' process, is on the roadmap.

RPA has emerged as a preferred tool for transformation at STL and figures prominently in the overall success narrative.

For STL, partnering with UiPath has been a rewarding experience. By adopting an RPA solution, STL has taken a definite step in strengthening its internal processes to drive exponential growth.