Driving Dramatic Cost Savingsby Automating Accounts Payable

October 2, 2014

Session ID#: CON7981

Susan Zielinski

Introduction

IT Manager

The Sherwin-Williams Company

◆ Largest producer of paint & coatings in US, among top 3 worldwide

◆ Founded in 1866, Cleveland, OH◆ 2016 is 150th Anniversary◆ 2013 - $10.19 billion in sales◆ Business in 120+ countries◆ 34,000+ employees◆ 4,000+ company owned stores◆ 90+ manufacturing facilities globally

The Sherwin-Williams Company

SW Invoicing

◆ Original Process– AP utilized Readsoft and 3 Lotus Notes Databases to process

paper invoices◆ Initial production launch May 2011

– Goal: streamline invoice processing and convert to a paperless process

– 3 process flows eExpense Purchase Order (PO) processing User id PO processing Raw material (AOM & QAD) PO processing

– Volume 10,000 invoices / month

SW Invoicing Process Flow

OFR Verifiers

◆ September 2011, opened office in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia◆ Staffing: US – 3 resources; KL – 13 resources◆ Additional growth expected in KL as more tasks are assigned◆ KL team spends 45% of their time in OFR Verifier

SW Invoicing – 3-Way Match

◆ OFR 3-Way Match on PS6 launched August 2014 – Match against purchase order, invoice, and receipt– Goal: eliminate need for Accounts Payables (AP) processors to

key purchasing invoices into Oracle AP Redeploy AP resources to work on more value added activities

– Benefits: reduce keystroke errors and improve invoice Days Payable Outstanding (DPO)

– Enabled OFR line pairing– Volume for 2014: 43,000 indirect, non-PO invoices plus 38,000

raw material/finished good invoices

SW Invoicing – 3-Way Match

◆ OFR 3-Way Match Cost Savings– No reduction in personnel anticipated

Focus has shifted from data entry to hold report analysis and system analysis

– Onboard Inventory Orgs without adding headcount In the last month, managed increased inventory locations via

acquisition – 3 manufacturing facilities, 2 distribution centers, and expanded HQ

purchases related to 300 facilities– Added 7,000 invoices (17,000 invoices / month cumulative)

SW Invoicing - Benefits

◆ Business– Improve internal controls– Improve invoice DPO– Reduce keystroke errors– Ability to change variables at runtime with SOA Composer

◆ IT– Ability to leverage Out of the Box (OOTB) user interface (worklist)– Ability to leverage OOTB monitoring, troubleshooting, and reporting

tools (Enterprise Manager (EM), BAM)– Increase development efficiencies through BPM Studio and JDeveloper– Integration between Oracle product suite

SW Invoicing – 2015 Initiatives

◆ Rollout to Brazil – June – Language considerations end to end– Multi-currency and tax– Add 1,000 invoices (18,000 invoices / month cumulative)

◆ Stores Merchandise Management System (MMS) Migration – MMS is old mainframe software and difficult to find new

talent who knows the technology– Goal: improve data performance– Add 9,000 invoices (27,000 invoices / month cumulative)

SW Invoicing – Future Initiatives

◆ Rollout to Rest of World– Latin America, Canada, Asia,

Europe– Invoice workflow is manual– Electronic approval will improve

internal controls– Allow transition from manual

invoice entry to electronic import into Oracle AP

SW Invoicing - Challenges

◆ Internal– Small development team with complex product suite– Ability to design and scale a custom solution– Global scope coverage

◆ Oracle Product– Upgrades – Performance– OOTB end to end reconciliation