Happy Customers and Employees

Companies, now more than ever, must focus on their most valuable assets: their employees. Automation is often thought of as something that “replaces” workers, when in reality, it can be used to:

• Eliminate manual tasks
• Empower your team with analytics
• Nurture collaboration with digital tools

Furthermore, expectations of excellent customer service are now the norm. They can be the make-or-break factor that determines whether a company thrives or dives. Speed, personal connection and digital competency are no longer hoped for when making purchasing decisions, they’re quite simply expected.

Givaudan, a worldwide provider of flavouring, scent, and health and beauty products, looking for ways to apply automation to various manual aspects of business operations while allowing for scalability and utilisation of their valued human resources.

Givaudan realised to scale up their business they needed to implement the following

• Create more strategic, fulfilling work for staff
• Reduce manual scanning & redundant data entry by automating manual tasks
• Eliminate human errors & inefficiencies with automated processing
• Improve customer satisfaction

Marton Nagy, Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay at Givaudan said, “Our goal for automation is not to make our people redundant, but to make them more valuable. We need our employees to be creative, to think, to make sure we go further than where we are today. Automating the tedious, repetitive tasks lets them use their time for more valuable purposes.”

The Solution

Just as in their business, specialising in complimentary scents to produce the best fragrances, they needed a complimentary solution to their already installed Esker Order Management solution. They chose Esker’s Accounts Payable (AP) solution to realise their vision.
Esker’s AP solution was implemented to eliminate the manual scanning and digitising of invoices, as well as capturing and recording payments, thereby increasing both speed and accuracy. It was implemented quickly thanks to Esker’s use of Agile methodology, and seamlessly integrated with Givaudan’s single instance global SAP system.

“We selected Esker’s Accounts Payable solution because of the trusted working relationship Esker had with the demand-to-cash team,” said Marton Nagy, Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay at Givaudan. “Esker has been delivering on its promise ever since.”

Part of Givaudan’s strategy for automating order entry and AP included making interaction with the solution simple for both customers and vendors. B2B customers place orders and send invoices in a variety of ways. With Esker, Givaudan has a flexible order processing solution that can adapt to the different ways B2B companies communicate without requiring complex integrations to accommodate Givaudan’s internal systems and data formats. Alessandra Mello, Global Head of Customer Care and Demand Planning at Givaudan, said, “We considered using EDI connections, but we found this quite limiting, as few customers are willing to invest the time, money, and resources to implement it,” said Mello. “Esker solutions don’t require our customers to build complex integrations to send us orders or invoices.”

Givaudan can now teach the solution (using Eskers Artificial Intelligence) the invoice formats its vendors use, allowing it to automatically and accurately enter invoices into the system. It also eliminates tedious entry of additional data to meet the invoice processing and tracking requirements in different countries — critical for a global company like Givaudan.
As a result, the AP staff has more time to concentrate on issues that truly require its skill and talent to investigate and resolve.

Vincent Depuis, IT Project Manager at Givaudan, said, “Our Esker journey started with automating sales order entry, and we’re seeing similar efficiency gains with the new AP solution. Our people can now focus their talents on what they do best, instead of tedious manual processes. Givaudan’s 2025 vision will feature even more ways to automate repetitive, manual tasks to add even greater value. Esker solutions will figure prominently in that plan.”

If you would like to learn more about Esker’s Accounts Payable solution, please get in touch, and I’d be happy to provide you with further information or a demo.

Susan Fletcher

Susan is an Internal Sales Consultant for Esker UK. She has been part of the Esker family since 2022.

Read more insights from Susan Fletcher

Global leader in flavour and fragrance manufacturing drives growth and expansion plans with comprehensive digital transformation

Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, today announced that Givaudan, the world’s leading manufacturer of flavours and fragrances for the taste and wellbeing and fragrance and beauty markets, has selected Esker to automate its accounts payable (AP) and order management activities. Several years ago, during the design of the Givaudan Business Solution journey, Givaudan decided to implement Esker’s cloud-based solutions globally.

Givaudan sought an automation solution that could meet its current needs and scale alongside its growing portfolio, as it continues the journey to becoming a Certified B Corporation. These are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance. Givaudan initially engaged Esker to address order entry inefficiencies, and after seeing a positive improvement on order processing time, the company also looked to Esker for its AP needs. By eliminating the need for manual data entry through automation, Esker’s solutions will support Givaudan in improving operational efficiency while allowing staff to focus on building and nurturing customer relationships.

“Adopting best-in-class technology is paramount in driving our forward-thinking methodology and providing an unmatched customer experience, which is the foundation of everything we do at Givaudan,” said JanWillem Scheele, Solution Expert, Customer Care and Demand Planning Service Manager at Givaudan. “Even in today’s unique circumstances, and with newly distributed and remote workforces, our standard for quality work and quick turnaround is unwavering. We look to Esker as a trusted provider to improve and scale our operations with its turnkey and reliable solutions.”

Givaudan is currently rolling out Esker’s AI-driven Accounts Payable and Order Management solutions to its teams worldwide. With shared services centres in Kuala Lumpur, Buenos Aires and Budapest, Givaudan is continually growing and needed to maximise its capabilities on a global scale.

Automating Order Management

Givaudan receives 60,000 orders every month and, before implementing Esker’s AI-driven solution, each order required several manual changes and selections. Now, Givaudan’s customer care team improves on processing orders without manual intervention every week. In some regions already up to 20% of the orders are without manual intervention. This has allowed the company to reduce bottlenecks and time-consuming tasks, which in turn improves speed and ensures the quality of order processing—without increasing headcount as Givaudan grows.

Automating Accounts Payable

To further propel its growth and value, Givaudan turned to Esker to support its AP overhaul. Although SAP® offered Givaudan a highly customised solution, the process behind invoice data entry was still highly manual. Integrating Esker’s intelligent invoice capture with SAP® plays a pivotal role in meeting Givaudan’s evolving needs, by providing substantial time-savings.

“Givaudan at heart is a manufacturing company, and given the nuances of handling raw materials, we required a solution that supported the needs of our purchasing channel from end to end,” said Marton Nagy, Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay at Givaudan. “On average, we’re processing 2,300 to 2,500 invoices every day across the globe, and the benefits of deploying Esker’s solutions is already clear. Their team took the time to fully understand our needs, quickly outlined how to most effectively improve our AP processes and helped us deploy a new system that serves to simplify our team members’ jobs—so they can concentrate on the aspects of their roles that require human creativity and care.”

Through AP automation, the company is empowering its accounts payable team members to invest in providing more of the unrivalled customer service for which Givaudan is known.

“Our goal for automation is not to make our people redundant, but to make them more valuable,” continued Nagy. “We need our employees to be creative, to think, to make sure we go further than where we are today. Automating the tedious, repetitive tasks lets them use their time for more valuable purposes.”

Leveraging Automation Through Change

Givaudan started down the path to automation and the “Esker Touchless Journey” well ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet its embrace of process automation helped it adapt smoothly to the new way of working. Givaudan attributes a key part of its success during the pandemic – and its ability to adapt to future radical changes in the global business environment – to the implementation process and working closely with the Esker team.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

Read more insights from Esker UK