The deployment of an automated invoice processing solution for multinational corporations is not just a technological trend but a vital requirement for maintaining operational efficiency, ensuring compliance, and enhancing competitive advantage on a global scale. With complex operations spanning multiple countries, multinational corporations (MNCs) face an immense volume of invoices and diverse accounting and tax regulations. Automation is the key to solving this challenging problem.
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Operational Reality: The “Multi-Geography, Multi-Regulation” Challenge
Financial and accounting operations in MNCs face significantly greater pressure than those in purely domestic enterprises. Geographical dispersion and differences in legal frameworks create a “double burden” in the invoice processing workflow.
Massive Data Volume and Cross-Border Complexity
Multinational corporations often have multiple locations, necessitating the collection of information, data, invoices, and documents in financial and accounting operations to ensure consistency, accuracy, and timeliness.
- Diverse Invoice Formats: Invoices arriving from different countries have completely different formats, languages, and legal standards (e.g., traditional paper invoices, e-invoices with codes, e-invoices without codes).
- Varying Tax and Accounting Rules: Each country has its own distinct tax rate rules, accounting methods, and reporting requirements. Manual data entry requires remembering and applying hundreds of these rules correctly, leading to a very high error rate.
- Complex Approval Processes: The purchasing and payment processes often involve multiple departments in different time zones, slowing down the entire payment cycle.
Strict Requirements for Auditing and Fraud Risk
The high demand for accuracy is crucial to prevent fraud risks or manual human errors leading to financial loss, which is why MNCs typically have extremely strict internal and external audit regulations.
- Risk of Fraud and Duplicate Payments: Geographical dispersion and lack of centralized control make the process vulnerable to exploitation for invoice fraud or duplicate payments, resulting in financial losses.
- Lack of Timeliness: The reconciliation and consolidation of unified reports from multiple branches take weeks or months, leaving the MNC’s leadership without real-time data for making timely strategic decisions.
Real-World Statistics: Processing a single manual invoice in large organizations can cost between $10 and $15 USD and takes an average of 8-15 days to complete the cycle. For an MNC processing hundreds of thousands of invoices monthly, this wasted cost and time is an enormous burden. The MNC’s goal is to reduce the processing cost to below $2 USD per invoice.
Application of Automated Invoice Processing for Multinational Corporations
Automated invoice processing is a comprehensive solution that helps multinational corporations transition from fragmented manual processes to a centralized, consistent, and transparent system on a global scale.
Traditional Invoice Processing Workflow and Automation Points
The traditional accounts payable process in an MNC typically goes through 6 main steps, the first 4 of which can be fully automated using Intelligent Document Processing and Robotic Process Automation technology.
| Step in the Process | Traditional Manual Task | Automation Application |
| Collection & Classification | The accountant downloads invoices from email, electronic portals, or receives paper invoices, then classifies them by branch/country. | Automated Collection Bot: Automatically scans emails, tax portals, or shared folders to download invoices. AI Classification: Automatically recognizes format, language, and classifies invoices by branch/country. |
| Data Extraction | The accountant manually enters 10-20 fields of information into the system. | Intelligent Data Extraction: Technology automatically extracts data from all invoice formats with high accuracy. |
| 3-Way Matching | The accountant manually matches invoice data with Purchase Orders and Goods Receipts. | Automated Matching: The Bot automatically matches the extracted data against the Purchase Order/Goods Receipt in the system. If it matches 100%, it is forwarded straight to the Payment step. |
| Verification & Accounting | The accountant verifies validity and posts to the appropriate accounts/cost centers. | Automated Compliance Control: The Bot automatically checks validity via the tax authority’s application programming interface (if available) and applies the established accounting rules by country. |
| Approval | Paperwork or email requests for approval are routed through management levels. | Digital Approval Workflow: Automatically initiates a multi-level approval flow based on cost level and branch. |
| Payment | The accountant manually creates the payment order. | Automated Payment Order Creation: Automatically generates the payment order in the banking system or accounting system after approval is complete. |
Quantifiable Benefits
The automation solution brings significant improvements, helping MNCs achieve cost reduction and enhanced control objectives:
- Processing Speed: Reduces invoice processing time from 8-15 days to just 1-3 days, maximizing the capture of early payment discounts.
- Accuracy: Data entry accuracy reaches 95% – 99%, reducing the human error rate (which can be up to 20%).
- Cost Savings: Reduces the cost of processing each invoice from $10-15 USD to below $3 USD.
- Compliance: Increases the ability to comply with legal requirements across all branches thanks to the mechanism for automatically applying tax/accounting rules based on geography.
Success Story: Global Operational Transformation
Many MNCs have successfully implemented invoice processing automation to harmonize financial operations globally.
Case Study: Global Consumer Goods Corporation
An MNC in the consumer goods industry with branches in over 50 countries faced the challenge of millions of paper and email invoices annually. They used multiple different accounting systems across regions.
- Solution: They deployed a centralized invoice automation platform based on Intelligent Document Processing and Robotic Process Automation technology. This platform integrated with all existing accounting systems, allowing invoices to be processed and accounted for according to local laws, then standardizing and aggregating the data for the corporate accounting system.
- Result: 60% reduction in processing time compared to the old process. Ensured consistency in expense accounting regardless of where operations took place globally. Minimized audit risks due to manual errors.
Lessons Learned for Successful Implementation of Automated Invoice Processing in Multinational Corporations
For the automated invoice processing solution to achieve maximum effectiveness in a multinational corporations environment, a clear deployment strategy is necessary:
1. Centralized Deployment Strategy
- Establish a Shared Service Center (SSC): Centralize the invoice processing workflow of all branches into a virtual center operated by Bots. This ensures process consistency and facilitates the management of multi-national legal compliance.
- Common Platform Rules: Build a library of processing and accounting rules that can be flexibly applied to each country, rather than developing separate solutions for each branch.
2. Prioritize Legal Adaptability
- Multi-Language and Multi-Standard Solution: Choose an automation solution capable of recognizing the language and invoice formats of multiple countries and quickly updating local tax law changes.
- Compliance Integration: Directly integrate compliance checking tools into the automated processing flow to prevent legal risks.
3. Change Management and Training
- Human Resource Liberation: Retrain local accounting staff to shift from a manual data entry role to an exception management and strategic analysis role. This helps employees adapt to and embrace the new technology.
Akabot Automated Invoice Processing Solution for Multinational Corporations (FPT Corporation)
In the context where multinational corporations require a globally scalable automated invoice processing solution, Akabot (a product of FPT Corporation) has emerged as a pioneering choice.
Akabot: The Platform for Global Enterprise Automation
Akabot is a comprehensive Robotic Process Automation solution, combined with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies to solve complex challenges in finance and accounting.
- Multi-Country Processing Capability: Akabot can read, understand, and extract data from invoices with various languages and formats.
- Seamless Integration: The solution easily integrates with most leading global accounting systems and local accounting systems, ensuring smooth and consistent data flow across the entire corporation.
- Proven Performance: Akabot has served over 4,000 businesses in 21 countries, with over 10,000 virtual robots deployed. Akabot’s customers report up to a 90% reduction in processing time and significant productivity gains.
Competitive Advantage with Akabot
For an MNC, Akabot is not just an automation tool but a platform for establishing unified financial control:
- Centralized Automation, Distributed Operation: Allows the MNC to maintain a single source of truth for control rules while flexibly handling the distinct operations of each branch.
- Elevating the Accountant Role: Frees employees from tedious data entry and reconciliation, allowing them to focus on deeper financial analysis, supporting MNC leadership in strategic decision-making.
Choosing a powerful automation solution like Akabot is a decisive step for MNCs to turn complexity into simplicity, risk into opportunity, and achieve superior operational efficiency in the digital age.
