University of Bath makes cost-efficiencies with ERP and data capture platforms

The University of Bath has today announced it has saved over £25,000 per year as a result of the implementing new invoicing, data capture, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The University claims the new platforms, from Version One and UNIT4, allows them to benefit from less labour-intensive processes, central oversight or invoice workflows, and a “strengthened relationship” with suppliers.

Version One’s DbCapture system has been deployed in conjunction with UNIT4’s Agresso Business World ERP platform, to process the 60,000 annual supplier invoices at the university.

“We needed to improve our purchase-to-pay efficiency to obtain greater visibility of supplier payments and ensure we pay purchase invoices within the agreed payment terms,” explained Robert Coles, purchasing and credit control accountant at the University of Bath.

Coles adds, “By streamlining our P2P processes and changing the working practices in the accounts payable team, we are managing increasing transaction numbers with less people. We are also reducing the number of days it takes us to pay a supplier by 15%, improving our payment performance whilst strengthening relationships with our suppliers.”

Version One’s DbCapture automatically captures data from the imaged purchase invoices using advanced optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and highlights any data discrepancies for the attention of the user. This data is then uploaded to Agresso Business World, reducing manual data entry and cutting data entry errors whilst improving processing efficiency.