Wigan Council achieves 66% AP process efficiency savings with Proactis

Challenge 

Wigan Council serves approximately 318,000 residents across the North West of England, employing over 4,000 staff. With more than 90,000 invoices to process each year, the Council was looking for opportunities to automate its financial processes and reduce both costs and administrative burden in the Accounts Payable function. 

The existing Purchase-to-Pay process was drawn out, paper-based, and dominated by inefficient manual methods. Invoice handling was decentralised, leading to bottlenecks, delays, and errors that were difficult to track or resolve. As part of a wider enterprise system transformation - including the upgrade of its Unit4 Business World ERP - the Council identified AP automation as a priority area for improvement. 

The objective was to centralise the AP function, automate invoice capture and processing, reduce costs, increase throughput, and improve agility and compliance - all whilst integrating seamlessly with the newly upgraded Unit4 Business World system. 

Solution 

Proactis introduced a fully-automated paper invoice scanning and PDF import solution with intelligent data capture and web-based query desk resolution. The in-house invoice capture solution was designed to work alongside the Council's Unit4 Business World system, enabling purchase invoices to be received faster, with less manual effort and greater accuracy. 

Paper invoices are rapidly converted and stored as electronic images, increasing visibility and transparency across the AP function and eliminating the source of bottlenecks and errors. Queries are handled efficiently through dedicated web-based query resolution functionality, enabling the team to resolve non-conformances in a structured and controlled way. The solution ensures accurate payments and consistent adherence to business rules throughout the process.