Urbanis automates its accounts payable in the age of Artificial Intelligence with Compleo Invoice Platform

Urbanis, a company with over 500 employees, fifteen agencies, and thirty offices, faced the major challenge of centralizing the management of its supplier invoices. Consequently, the objectives were to optimize costs, improve expense tracking, and strengthen data security to meet the growing challenges of cybersecurity.

Data centralization and ERP migration

Urbanis initiated a significant transformation by strategically migrating to a new ERP, AKUITEO. The main objective of this initiative was to facilitate the company’s growth and development in France, necessitating a reassessment of the organizational structure and existing IT applications.

This initiative was motivated by the desire to centralize all data from the company’s various agencies.  The need to quickly process a large volume of supplier invoices played a decisive role, prompting the company to abandon its decentralized system in favor of the new ERP, which became operational on January 1, 2024.

The challenges 

Automating the receipt and processing of supplier invoices – The choice of Compleo Invoice Platform (CIP)

In addition to this change, Urbanis wanted a solution to handle the receipt, verification, and integration of all supplier invoices, regardless of the agency or department concerned. Urbanis opted for Symtrax’s solution, Compleo Invoice Platform (CIP), which centralizes, processes, and stores invoices electronically, streamlining their management, tracking, and integrating into the AKUITEO ERP. In addition, the solution provides functionalities such as invoice data extraction using Artificial Intelligence, invoice validation, matching with ongoing projects, and payment tracking (IBAN verification, etc.).

What’s more, Compleo Invoice Platform’s bidirectional functionality verifies information consistent with that in the ERP system. If discrepancies are detected between the invoice received and the supplier information in the ERP system, the software will flag these errors. In this way, CIP does not replace the accountant, but rather acts as a genuine decision-making tool, requiring-intervention by the accountant to ensure the accuracy of the data processed and then request the “good to pay”.

The CIP solution integrates directly with the AKUITEO ERP via APIs, ensuring seamless communication between the two systems, including the creation of accounting documents and secure archiving through a digital safe.

Expense tracking

By choosing CIP, Urbanis is on the path to achieving better control over its expenditures. Invoice tracking proved complex for Urbanis, involving up to forty people in the processing of incoming invoices. The CIP platform simplified the process, enabling the company to monitor expenditures in real-time by the various agencies and companies within the group. CIP reconciled agency orders with invoices received at the head office, providing greater visibility of expenditures and enabling the company to track the lifecycle of invoices.

“By choosing the Compleo Invoice Platform solution, this change has represented a significant advantage by streamlining the work of some forty people who were previously processing incoming supplier invoices. These gains have proved significant, both in terms of efficiency and simplification of operations.” Sebastien Garcia, CIO at Urbanis.

Transition to Electronic Invoicing.

Urbanis’ third challenge was to prepare for the widespread adoption of electronic invoicing while ensuring the security of invoices, particularly in the face of the growing risks of cyberattacks and identity theft. The CIP solution enabled Urbanis to ensure communication with the right suppliers by verifying their registration in the ERP system. The platform also restricted access to authorized people within the finance department, reinforcing security against any attempts of identity theft or fraud.

The Urbanis project

Preparation phase = November 2023

Pilot phase = December 2023

UAT Phase (User Acceptance Testing) = January 2024

Production phase = January 19, 2024

Monitoring phase = January – March 2024. During this phase, Symtrax and Urbanis teams closely monitored the system to ensure that was operating correctly and meeting user expectations and required performance levels.

Results 

Thanks to the Compleo Invoice Platform solution, Urbanis has successfully met the challenges of managing supplier invoices, improving operational efficiency, enhancing transaction security, and complying with e-invoicing reform.

“With Compleo Invoice Platform, the invoice processing time has been reduced by a third” Sebastien Garcia, CIO at Urbanis

👉 Watch our webinar “Elevate Your AP Processes with Compleo Invoice Platform!”