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CASE STUDY - AP AUTOMATION - MANUFACTURING
How a global lifestyle manufacturer eliminated AP bottlenecks and built a scalable invoice operation
Industry: Consumer Goods/Manufacturing
Focus: Accounts Payable
Location: Northeast, US
Challenge
Manual, individual-dependent workflows
Solution
Quidi AP end-to-end
automation
Rollout
4-phase
implementation
Outcome
Scalable, resilient
AP platform
THE CHALLENGE
A manual process that couldn't scale - or survive disruption
A global manufacturer of lifestyle products faced a critical operational bottleneck in its accounts payable department, struggling to manage a high volume of invoices through manual, individual-dependent workflows. The existing process created significant friction and operational risk:
Manual Intake
& Keying
Invoices arriving via email or scanned paper required hands-on human triage, manual tracking, and repetitive data entry into financial systems.
Fragile Routing
& Coverage
Invoice distribution and approvals were tied to specific individuals. This created severe operational vulnerability and processing bottlenecks during vacations, staffing changes, and month-end close pressures.
Limited Pipeline Visibility
It was difficult for management to quickly identify where invoices were stuck or why delays were occurring across various queues and approvers.
Scaling
Pain
Operating with multiple locations and distinct workflows meant that adding new sites exponentially increased administrative complexity, leading to operational breakdowns and limiting strategic financial oversight.
THE SOLUTION
Quidi AP — end-to-end intelligent document processing
The client selected Quidi AP to automate its end-to-end financial workflow, integrating intelligent document processing directly into their core environment.
Automated
Ingestion
​Establishes a consistent, reliable mechanism to capture invoices directly from shared mailboxes and route them into the pipeline automatically.
AI-Powered Extraction
& Exception Handling
​Extracts structured data with high integrity, providing a clear path for exceptions and driving continuous accuracy improvements based on production data.
Dynamic Workload Management
​Replaces rigid, person-by-person allocation with flexible, user-group-based routing. This simplifies coverage, balance of labor, and team transitions during staffing shortages.
IMPLEMENTATION
A four-phase rollout built for zero disruption
To ensure continuous operation throughout deployment, the implementation was executed in four strategic phases.
MEASURABLE IMPACT
Immediate results.
Lasting operational resilience.
The implementation of Quidi AP delivered immediate, quantifiable operational resilience and transformed the role of the AP team.
Increased Efficiency
& Throughput
The average time to process an invoice was drastically reduced from several minutes of manual entry to seconds of automated processing, maintaining steady throughput even during peak periods.
Cost Savings
& Reduced Overhead
The elimination of manual labor and repetitive administrative steps resulted in significant operational cost savings for the department.
Improved Data Integrity
The AI-driven validation process drastically reduced human error, leading to a high-accuracy baseline that continuously improves with production usage.
Accelerated Scaling
The organization established a standardized, plug-and-play rollout approach, enabling rapid, low-friction expansion to new business locations.
STRATEGIC TRANSFORMATION
The AP team shifted from administrators to strategic contributors
With the burden of repetitive data entry lifted, the AP team shifted from administrative tasks to higher-value activities, such as:
Analyzing invoice data to identify trends and negotiate better payment terms with vendors.
Proactively addressing vendor inquiries to strengthen supply chain relationships.
Creating detailed financial reports to support executive decision-making and cash flow management.
FUTURE OUTLOOK
Continuing to scale across the enterprise
Building on the success of the initial implementation, the company is focused on driving further operational maturity across the enterprise by:
Continuously optimizing AI extraction accuracy and refining automated exception workflows.
Extending the proven, repeatable rollout framework to additional corporate workflows, business units, and global operating sites.
Strengthening governance, internal compliance, and operational controls as platform adoption scales across the enterprise.