Champion Petfoods Streamlined Sourcing Process with Digitized and Automated RFQ Workflows

About Company

Champion Petfoods is known for its award-winning pet food brands, including Orijen and Acana. Founded in 1985, Champion Petfoods produces high-quality pet food using natural, wholesome, locally sourced ingredients whenever possible. Their pet food is made in their kitchens, allowing for complete quality control. They also firmly commit to sustainability and use renewable energy sources to power their facilities.

Client’s RFx Management Challenges

Champion Petfoods, until now, resorted to tedious juggling of emails and Excel to connect and manage vendors for the quarterly sourcing of raw material . As a result, they observed an utterly manual process from shortlisting, supplier response consolidation, and evaluation to awarding that gave way to errors and time-consuming sourcing cycles. They also followed the tedious task of manually rolling out the event.

Subsequently, this process made it difficult for an organization to understand and compare ingredients from vendors they want to compare and bid award for.

Their existing process needed more visibility at different sourcing stages. And everything being manual led to challenges for them in historical data consolidation. Moreover, it severely impacted management and their decision-making too.

Key challenges include:

Raising RFQ and performing the complete sourcing process manually
Tedious management of emails
Consolidation of supplier responses
Manual shortlisting, evaluation, and awarding
No visibility at different stages of sourcing
Lack of managing historical data in a consolidated manner

“We always had to manually create, edit, deliver, organize, and evaluate our RFx process. Aavenir has saved us countless hours of administrative work. The tool has also allowed us to focus on other tasks instead of organizing responses and dealing with email chains. Everything is organized in one place now, and we can respond to suppliers twice as fast.” – Gary Richard, Procurement Manager, Champion Petfoods.

The Solution: Aavenir AI-enabled RFx Management Solution for Champion Petfoods Company

Aavenir streamlined the RFX process for Champion Petfoods’s RFQ with RFPflow.

From drafting a request for quotes to reviewing responses to shortlisting and awarding, now everything can be performed in RFPflow, skipping the long excels.

Automate Processes

Aavenir RFPflow product extended an easy direct procurement experience to Champion buyers. In addition, the extended product capability from drafting and publishing to awarding at the ingredient level for multiple suppliers enabled Champions Petfood to plan various events across multiple commodities.

Aavenir RFPflow streamlines the RFX process by automating manual processes, including drafting questionnaires, collecting responses, and segregating the award system based on the ingredient choices within the RFPflow tool in a few clicks. In addition, the cumbersome process of maintaining long Excel sheets is now automated, saving sourcing cycle time.

Higher Visibility

Aavenir RFPflow offers transparency on how things function at various stages, especially during evaluation. With a constant reflection of any changes captured dynamically, the tool provided real-time updates for any responses received or submitted by the suppliers.

With the ability to refer to the historical data at the commodity level and even trace it back to two consecutive years in the past, the evaluator can refer to the differences observed in YOY and thus have the negotiations managed for the currently active event.

With the savings calculation and currency conversion available, the evaluation process only sharpens, giving solid benchmarking and scoring for awarding.

Increase Efficiency

Aavenir RFPflow helps consolidates all sourcing-related data, making the consolidation and comparison exercise quicker and more efficient. The evaluator can refer to the differences observed in YOY and thus have the negotiations managed for the currently active event.

Flexibility to Award

Aavenir RFPflow offers flexibility to award at the ingredient level across multiple suppliers, making it easier to manage and compare ingredients from vendors based on the food production requirements.

Key Results

100% transparent process from planning to execution
80% efficiency in setting up the RFQ
100 % advantage in referring to historical data
100% digitized & automated process for publishing an RFQ
Flexibility to award at ingredient level across multiple suppliers

Is your organization experiencing similar challenges? We can help you simulate how AI-enabled, automated RFX solution can make your sourcing process seamless & error-free. BOOK A DEMO>>

American Seafoods Group (ASG) dynamically improved its invoice processing and automated manual tasks to nullify errors with visibility into workflows

About Company

American Seafoods Group (ASG) is the world’s largest at-sea processor of Wild Alaska Pollock, with its high-quality products distributed globally since 1988. It also holds the largest Wild Pacific Hake (Whiting) allocation. . They were one of the pioneers who helped revolutionize how fisheries are managed in the United States. Today it produces up to 150 MT of seafood daily.

Client’s Invoice Management Challenges

Until now, American Seafood Group, as an organization, used to manage 24000 invoices manually over the year. The invoices received through emails were scanned, printed, signed, and approved. The invoice process was cumbersome and involved much paperwork. In addition, numerous manual interventions resulted in issues such as invoice matching errors, discrepancies, more extended approval, and delayed payment cycles, leading to strained supplier relationships.

Moreover, the process involved multiple departments (individual companies of ASG) and members without much visibility of timely approvals and supplier payments. The invoices were sent manually to various departments and people involved in the processing cycle. With the involvement of multiple stakeholders, the probability of duplicate invoices was always high. Also, there was a waste of time in the absence of defined workflows.

Key Challenges include:

Manage and monitor 20,000+ invoices manually
Tedious paperwork leading to delayed processes and room for errors
Absence of defined approval workflows
Lack of visibility & more leakages
Different treatments for operations and IT invoices workflow
Too many manual comments managed on invoices and status updated on manual invoices
With a completely manual process, much time is invested in collaboration and communication between functions and suppliers

“Aavenir Invoiceflow has improved our efficiency with seamless vendor collaboration, zeroing duplicate invoices, and manual invoice management. Integrating the SAP accounting system has further enhanced accrual reporting and timely payments, giving way to supplier discounts. – Accounts Payable Team”.

The Solution: Aavenir AI-enabled Invoice Management Solution for Seafood Processing Company

Aavenir streamlined the invoicing and AP processes on ServiceNow for ASG by tapping into their ERPs, i.e., SAP & operational software AMOS.

As a result, we kicked off the systematic approach for ASG, where all invoices will hit the mailbox and get automatically mapped according to the information.

Defined mailbox for each company

Aavenir created mailboxes based on the company and vendor/department mapping. The invoices received are routed automatically to the AP Team and department heads. The AP team will check the coding and cost allocation on Invoices before sending them out. The double-check system assures everything that goes to the supplier is discrepancy-proof with quicker approvals.

Leverage the usage of AI – Extraction & Mapping

The Aavenir’s intelligent AI engine simplified processes by capturing information on a particular invoice. It allowed automatic extraction and update of multiple line items and fields to map them as relevant. Further, assigning the invoice to a specific user group reduces manual entries and human errors. In addition, the touchless processing and data extraction streamline the invoice approval process for ASG.

Transparency in invoice processing

Aavenir Invoiceflow has powered ASG with clear and complete visibility of invoices, their status, and lifecycle for each department and every approver involved. It ensures that the correct invoice payment goes to each supplier without over or underpayment—the automated invoice processing solution checks for duplicate or delayed payments. Further, the automated 2-way matching identifies disparities.

Task automation

Aavenir Invoiceflow automates the monotonous task of reviewing, mapping, and approving invoices. There is a minimum human intervention with the three implemented workflows, which revolve around PO/NON-PO based and one customized workflow, mainly covering the invoices for operational services/purchases.

Key Results

The quick implementation of Aavenir Invoiceflow built on ServiceNow enabled American Seafoods Group with remarkable results in a short period.

50% increase in operational effectiveness within the AP department
100% reduction in the use of paper invoice
2000+ Invoices processed within a months’ time of go-live with 50% payment already completed
50% reduction in the cost of processing per invoice
100% Automated Approval workflow to avoid leakage
360-degree view of overall AP team members processing using Aavenir Invoiceflow Dashboard
Integration with ERP system, which reduces the risk of errors

Is your organization experiencing similar challenges? We can help you simulate how AI-enabled, automated invoice processing can make your invoicing process seamless & error-free. BOOK A DEMO>>