L'Real has implemented Directum to manage contractual and primary accounting documents

2021: Digitization of work with contracts and primary accounting documentation

On April 15, 2021, it became known that L'OREAL JSC introduced the Directum system to manage contractual and primary accounting documents. The company managed to build an end-to-end process with two streams of primary accounting documents - paper and electronic, as well as optimize interaction with counterparties.

According to the company, the use of intelligent tools for recognitions the classification of documents, extraction and verification data helped to optimize the work with the primary accounting documentation for deliveries, based on the results of the project:

• 220 sets of documents per day are intelligently processed;
• more than 300 employees work in the system; Directum
• 80% of contractual documents with suppliers are signed by CEP.

Before digitalization, a paper request was required to create or change vendor information in the account system. Communications took several days to weeks. With Directum, the request time is reduced to 2.5 minutes and the process is completely electronically converted:

• The system controls the correctness of filling in the fields and the availability of documents mandatory for the counterparty of the specified organizational and legal form.
• The relevance of key supplier data is automatically monitored through the service "Contour.Focus" (PPC, legal address), and if they are changed, the process of updating the data in both Directum and SAP is initiated.
• You do not need to duplicate the data manually: information about suppliers is transferred from Directum to the accounting system automatically, and historical data about more than 100,000 banks from around the world and several thousand existing suppliers are migrated from SAP to Directum.

Contracts are created in the Directum system from up-to-date templates developed by L'Oreal, and a non-standard flow of documents passes the routes of coordinating persons, and currency control work is built into the coordination. The contract policy is followed, the corresponding list of signatories is set up for each contract category. Once the contract is agreed with the vendor in Directum, it is automatically available in SAP.

Employees can easily find information about the history of contractual relations with the counterparty, an archive has appeared. With data migration capabilities, thousands of documents have been migrated from the previous contract scan archiving system to Directum, where they are combined with other documents and structured by vendor.

It became possible to work with contracts in full electronic form: documents are signed by a qualified electronic signature and sent to the supplier through electronic document exchange systems.

Working with Contractual Documents

So that suppliers working in electronic document exchange systems can send primary accounting documentation (PDA) to L'OREAL JSC, the internal process of processing such documents was automated.

The supplier sends the ACD packet through the Diadok service. For each universal transfer document, the Directum system automatically creates a task for the person responsible for receiving the goods or services, then the document is sent to the financial controller, accountant, signatory, and then again to the accountant for posting to SAP.

The pilot project was attended by 15 large suppliers, now the decision is scaled and more than 200 counterparties have been transferred to electronic exchange.

Automated handling of incoming documents that suppliers send in paper form. All ACs go into accounting and are scanned. When documents are processed by Directum Ario intelligent services, the system automatically creates and populates the cards of these documents, which are then sent for approval, processing and validation. The data for posting is transferred to the SAP system. Re-scan versions are automatically replaced with signed versions and stored in the Directum financial archive.

Intelligent processing of paper inbound documents

Those responsible for receiving services or goods, financial supervisors, signatories, currency control specialists, financial directors, lawyers are notified by e-mail of tasks received in the Directum system.