CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
5 December 2005
Implementation Investments
LANXESS Selects Open Text to Further Optimize Vendor Invoice Processing in SAP® Solutions
Open TextT Corporation announced that LANXESS Corporation, a manufacturer of high-quality chemicals, synthetic rubber and plastics, has selected Open Text's Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) solution to optimize accounts payable within its implementation of SAP solutions, helping the company to lower costs and improve financial reporting speed and accuracy. VIM is part of Open Text's Livelink ECM Suite for SAP Solutions.
Formed earlier this year by Bayer AG to be a new global player in the chemicals industry, LANXESS is turning to Open Text to help it meet cost management and efficiency goals. VIM tightly integrates with LANXESS' implementation of SAP solutions to more fully automate the processing of more than 85,000 invoices annually.
"We anticipate this system will provide significant time savings while also reducing the number of people it takes to process an invoice," said Richard Papke, Accounts Payable Manager at LANXESS. "It will also offer significant benefits to our procurement managers, our vendors and senior executives by providing up-to-date access to the latest payment information directly from our SAP solution-based system."
A critical feature of Open Text's VIM solution for LANXESS was class-leading integration with SAP solutions. "It was extremely important to us to have a solution that worked within our implementation of SAP solutions, and not be a 'bolt-on' like some of the other alternatives we considered. Open Text also came across as a company willing to go the extra mile throughout the evaluation and testing process," said Papke.
VIM offers a complete, end-to-end solution for optimizing vendor invoice processes in SAP solutions, with built-in reporting and analytics that can be used to continuously improve processes. VIM brings capabilities that help customers reduce costs, while helping to improve cash management and compliance with corporate governance regulations.
At the front-end, VIM automates the handling of incoming invoices. Once invoices are routed into an SAP solution, VIM can improve the handling of invoice exceptions by applying more than 20 best-practice workflows for invoice exceptions such as missing goods receipts, incorrect pricing and incorrect tax. The invoice approval function in VIM provides Web-based coding and approval by users working in the SAP solution, and provides complete tracking and visibility as well as escalations, for timely invoice approvals. A vendor self-service component of VIM allows vendors to submit invoices, or check the status of invoices or purchase orders online.
Open Text is an SAP Software Partner. For more information on Open Text's Livelink ECM Suite for SAP Solutions, go to: http://www.opentext.com/products/sap/ .
LANXESS Corporation was formed when the Bayer Group combined most of its chemical businesses and large segments of its polymer activities. The company began operating as a legal entity in the United States on July 1, 2004. LANXESS Corporation is a member of the German LANXESS-Group that was spun-off from Bayer in January 2005.
The LANXESS-Group manufactures high-quality products in the areas of chemicals, synthetic rubber and plastics. The companies' portfolio comprises basic and fine chemicals, color pigments, plastics, fibers, synthetic rubber and rubber chemicals, leather, textile processing chemicals, paper chemicals, material protection products and water treatment products.
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