Clalit Healthcare Services, Israel’s leading health care organizations and one of the world’s largest, is revolutionizing the management of its entire procurement process and supplier collaboration using the Nipendo Supplier Cloud platform.

Clalit Healthcare Services is the world’s second largest HMO operating 1,400 clinics, 14 hospitals, more than 400 pharmacies, and over 800 other medical facilities.  With an annual purchasing volume of over US$2.5 billion, Clalit receives over 2 million invoices a year issued by thousands of suppliers. Over 1,500 employees are involved in the procurement and AP functions.

Using the Nipendo Supplier Cloud platform, Clalit has transformed a process that was heavily-manual, time-consuming, and error-prone, into an automated process that is speedy and virtually error-free. “Ninety percent of the invoices we receive are processed by Nipendo straight-through to our SAP system without any manual intervention, and this percentage keeps going up as we fine-tune our processes and the business rules that reflect them in the Nipendo platform,” said David Lugassy, Headquarters Administration Director at Clalit.

“This high level of automation has brought about significant benefits to Clalit and to our suppliers,” adds Mr. Lugassy. “Average invoice processing time has been reduced from weeks to just a few minutes, and errors have been reduced down to close to zero. Hundreds of employees have been freed up from manual invoice handling to manage higher value tasks. We are also helping the environment, eliminating the use of over 30 million sheets of paper each year.”

In addition to automating invoice processing, Nipendo enables Clalit to electronically issue purchase orders directly from their SAP system to the supplier. With all communication facilitated through Nipendo Supplier Cloud, changes and modifications are immediately reflected in the system of record. Order fulfillment is now fast, accurate, and requires no human intervention.

Each supplier invoice is validated by Nipendo in real-time against over twenty five different business rules relating to hundreds of data points defined by Clalit, ensuring the data is complete and matches the purchase order and goods received, as well as compliance with internal procedures and local tax regulations. In case of a discrepancy, suppliers are instantaneously notified and can immediately make the necessary corrections to facilitate errorless straight-through processing to the Clalit ERP system.

Over 90 percent of Clalit’s suppliers for both direct and indirect purchasing are currently connected to the Nipendo Supplier Cloud, realizing significant benefits that include shorter time to payment, real-time visibility to invoice and payment status, and a single-point of access to the entire history of their records of interactions with Clalit.

Suppliers connected to the Nipendo Supplier Cloud also have access to a wide-range of value-added services offered by Nipendo’s partners, including supply chain financing, access to online RFPs, digital signature, workflow automation, business intelligence capabilities,  and other related services. As of today, over 15,000 suppliers utilize the Nipendo platform, exchanging tens of thousands of electronic documents each month, facilitating over $5 billion in procurement a year.

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PayStream has witnessed an increase in invoice automation as more companies strive to create effective and efficient supplier relationships and streamline their entire P2P process.  To learn more about invoice automation, download a complimentary PayStream Advisors report.  Reports can be accessed for free online at PayStream’s Research Vault.