Customer Story

Givaudan

Promoting a Customer-Centric Culture by Increasing Speed, Accuracy & Efficiency

Industry
Manufacturing
Company Size
16,000 employees
Sales Revenue
6.3 billion CHF in sales (2020)
Solution
Accounts Payable, Customer Service
  • Faster
    and more accurate order entry & fulfillment
  • Streamlined
    automated AP process
  • Up to 20%
    touchless processing in some regions
  • Staff time freed-up
    to focus on more strategic tasks

As a worldwide provider of flavouring, scent, and health and beauty products, Givaudan has three regional customer support centres providing customer care, as well as three shared service centres (SSC) handling accounting and other professional services for the company. As part of the company’s vision for growth and expansion into new lines of business, Givaudan was looking for ways to apply automation to various manual aspects of business operations while allowing for scalability and utilisation of their valued human resources.

Esker’s automation is definitely a quality step forward for our customers and employees.
Alessandra Mello | Global Head of Customer Care and Demand Planning, Givaudan

CHALLENGES: Scaling up while increasing customer satisfaction

Givaudan had also begun to centralise and standardise its internal professional services, including accounts payable (AP). However, its AP processes still heavily relied on intensive, manual entry of invoices, approvals, and payments. Increasing vendor purchases meant a slowdown in payment processing, not to mention a higher potential for manual data entry errors.

We wanted to create added value with the people we have and to improve quality, reduce mistakes and improve service by eliminating manual, repetitive tasks with automation
Jan-Willem Scheel | Global Solution Expert, Customer Care and Demand Planning Service Manager, Givaudan

Existing manual processes for order entry would not scale, and a rising order volume would invite inaccuracies and order fulfillment errors. Givaudan needed automation to improve speed, efficiency and accuracy of order entry and processing. While the SAP system is a core part of their business operations, it did not provide a flexible solution to accomplish this.

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

RESULTS: Accuracy & speed create happy customers & employees

Givaudan started down the path to automation and the “Esker Touchless Journey” well ahead of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, yet its embrace of process automation helped it adapt smoothly to the new way of working. Givaudan attributes a key part of its success during the pandemic — and its ability to adapt to future radical changes in the global business environment — to the implementation process and working closely with the Esker team.

Esker’s automation puts us one step closer to reaching our vision of truly ‘touchless’ order and payment processing.
Jan-Willem Scheel | Global Solution Expert, Customer Care and Demand Planning Service Manager, Givaudan

Givaudan can now teach the solution on the invoice formats its vendors use, allowing it to automatically and accurately enter invoices into the system. It also eliminates tedious entry of additional data to meet the invoice processing and tracking requirements in different countries — critical for a global company like Givaudan. As a result, the AP staff has more time to concentrate on issues that truly require its skill and talent to investigate and resolve.

Thanks to the broad employee acceptance and efficiencies of Esker’s solutions, Givaudan’s future plans include seeking additional opportunities to apply automation to enable its growth over the next decade and beyond.

Our Esker journey started with automating sales order entry, and we’re seeing similar efficiency gains with the new AP solution. Our people can now focus their talents on what they do best, instead of tedious manual processes. Givaudan’s 2025 vision will feature even more ways to automate repetitive, manual tasks to add even greater value. Esker solutions will figure prominently in that plan.
Vincent Dupuis | IT Project Manager, Givaudan

Not a customer yet?

Join thousands of companies around the world that use Esker to automate their business processes.

Contact Us

Top