Agricultural Products Company Automates Invoice Processing

The Challenge

A US-based agricultural products manufacturer faced a common but costly problem: invoice processing was manual, slow, and error-prone. The accounts payable team spent hours each week manually entering invoice data from various vendor formats into their financial systems.

The manual process created multiple challenges:

• Staff spent hours on repetitive data entry instead of value-added work
• Different vendor invoice formats made standardization difficult
• Manual entry led to errors requiring corrections and rework
• Approval bottlenecks delayed vendor payments
• Poor visibility into processing status and bottlenecks

The company needed a solution that could intelligently extract data from multiple invoice formats and automate the approval workflow—without requiring a lengthy, expensive implementation.

The Solution

Working with a Microsoft partner, the company implemented an AI-powered invoice processing solution using Power Automate and AI Builder. The solution uses optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning to automatically extract data from invoices and route them through approval workflows.

Key capabilities:

• Intelligent OCR: AI Builder extracts invoice data regardless of format or layout
• Automated Meta-tagging: Invoices automatically categorized by vendor, amount, and type
• Parallel Processing: Multiple users can work on invoices simultaneously
• Approval Routing: Invoices automatically routed based on amount and category
• ERP Integration: Approved invoices flow directly to financial systems

The Results

Implementation Approach

The rapid four-week implementation followed a focused approach:

• Week 1: Requirements gathering and AI Builder model configuration
• Week 2: Power Automate workflow development and testing
• Week 3: Integration with financial systems and user acceptance testing
• Week 4: Training, go-live, and stabilization

Key Takeaways

• AI Builder Accelerates Implementation: Pre-built AI models dramatically reduce time-to-value
• Start with Common Documents: Focus on the highest-volume invoice types first
• Plan for Exceptions: Build workflows for invoices that need human review
• Measure Time Savings: Track hours saved to demonstrate ROI
• Iterate and Improve: Use production data to refine AI model accuracy over time

Technology Stack

• AI Builder: Pre-built invoice processing model with OCR
• Power Automate: Cloud flows for approval routing and system integration
• SharePoint: Document storage and collaboration
• Microsoft 365: Email notifications and approvals