Givaudan

SOLUTION: Agile methods make implementation a breeze

Givaudan decided to separate the administrative aspects of customer care from the customer-facing ones, allowing the front office staff to focus on what it does best: building meaningful relationships with new and existing customers. The order entry and administrative support would continue performing the order processing functions, including manually entering orders into the company’s SAP system. However, Givaudan’s aggressive growth strategy meant the workload on this staff would only increase.

Givaudan selected Esker’s Order Management solution to streamline its customer care workflows, eliminate excess paper documents, reduce manual and redundant data entry, and increase both customer and employee satisfaction.

Givaudan was soon able to automate the receipt and reading of customer orders. The automation not only increased the new order throughput but also prevents the inevitable errors that come with manual data entry. Getting orders into the system faster and more accurately has increased order quality and confidence, not to mention speed of fulfillment — which leads back to stronger customer relationships, one of Givaudan’s primary customer care goals.

In addition, the company selected Esker’s Accounts Payable automation solution to eliminate the manual scanning and digitising of invoices, as well as capturing and recording payments, thereby increasing both throughput and accuracy.

Esker always dedicated the right people to our projects, so we found solutions aligned with our vision and goals.
Jan-Willem Scheel | Global Solution Expert, Customer Care and Demand Planning Service Manager, Givaudan

Esker’s Order Management and Accounts Payable solutions were implemented quickly thanks to Esker’s use of Agile methodology, and both solutions seamlessly integrate with Givaudan’s single instance global SAP system. In addition, Givaudan’s automation projects benefited from having a consistent set of Esker team members throughout the projects. “The support we received was of the highest quality and always from the same people at Esker, which made the process very smooth for us,” said Alessandra Mello, Givaudan Global Head of Demand Planning. “Esker never stopped until we were completely satisfied with the results.”

“We selected Esker’s Accounts Payable solution because of the trusted working relationship Esker had with the demand-to-cash team,” said Marton Nagy, Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay at Givaudan. “Esker has been delivering on its promise ever since.”

As a manufacturing company, we need to process invoices from all possible purchasing channels, for raw materials, equipment, services and even logistics. Esker gives us this flexibility.
Marton Nagy | Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay, Givaudan

Part of Givaudan’s strategy for automating order entry and AP included making interaction with the solution simple for both customers and vendors. B2B customers place orders and send invoices in a variety of ways. With Esker, Givaudan has a flexible order processing solution that can adapt to the different ways B2B companies communicate without requiring complex integrations to accommodate Givaudan’s internal systems and data formats. “We considered using EDI connections, but we found this quite limiting, as few customers are willing to invest the time, money, and resources to implement it,” said Mello. “Esker solutions don’t require our customers to build complex integrations to send us orders or invoices.”

Our goal for automation is not to make our people redundant, but to make them more valuable. We need our employees to be creative, to think, to make sure we go further than where we are today. Automating the tedious, repetitive tasks lets them use their time for more valuable purposes.
Marton Nagy | Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay, Givaudan