Case Study: The Toro Company Eliminates Global Invoicing Obstacles
October 18, 2021
Table of Content
About The Toro Company
With roots in the landscaping industry that date back more than a century, international manufacturer The Toro Company currently operates across 125 countries. The Minnesota-based company manufactures products and services used in turf and landscape fields, snow and ice management, rental and specialty construction, and irrigation and outdoor lighting applications. In addition to the well-known Toro brand, the parent company owns product lines that include Lawn-Boy, Ditch Witch, Boss Snowplows and American Augers. Toro serves a diverse customer base, from groundskeepers and homeowners to farmers, builders, governments and institutions worldwide.
To learn how Optima and solutions from SAP and OpenText enabled Toro to achieve new levels of operational excellence, download the full case study today.
The Toro Company (Toro) is a global manufacturer of landscaping and turf, snow and ice management, and specialty construction products and services utilized by residential, commercial and government customers. Such a large business footprint in diverse industries require a complex invoice-to-pay process.
The Challenge: Complex Invoicing
Toro’s invoice-to-pay process had become complex due to a combination of factors, including its global expansion to 125 countries through strategic acquisitions and diversification into related industries. As the company expanded, their AP team were experiencing many frustrations:
- A lack of uniform invoicing
- Confusing or imprecise language
- Misplaced invoices
- Erroneous information
- Redundancies due to multiple data entry points
To address these challenges, Toro partnered with Optima ECM to define a clear scope for the project.
The Obstacles
Toro’s existing solution from a previous implementation was not suitable for their manufacturing business due to the compliance requirements associated with their industry. It was also proving difficult to scale and required extensive customization. Other obstacles included:
- A lack of integration between core systems
- Costly invoicing processes
- High invoice cycle time of 18 days
- Over-reliance on paper invoices
- Large volume of invoices
- Poor invoice-to-analyst ratio
The Solution
Over an 18-month journey, the experts at Optima worked with Toro’s team to redesign and optimize their complete invoice-to-pay process with a series of OpenText and SAP software solutions to augment their existing SAP environment including:
- Document Access by OpenText
- Invoice Management by OpenText
- Invoice Capture Center by OpenText
The integrated OpenText solutions provide the client with management and control capabilities throughout the entire invoice-to-pay process. They can access all functionalities from a single, end-to-end SAP-installed system.
The Results
The results of these sweeping system upgrades include:
- Handling over half a million U.S. invoices with a team of only six analysts and one manager
- Process improvements that enable processing over 700,000 invoices per year
- A touch-free global invoicing processing rate of 85%
- Reducing invoice cycle time from 18 days to just 4.25 days
- Enhancing core expense and risk management practices
- Creating audit trails for compliance reporting purposes
