Recently, Groceries Inc. surveyed all its vendors. The survey went to $5000$ vendors ranging from small family$-$owned businesses to large corporations like Pepsi. $95\%$ of vendors participated in the study, and the results were alarming. $90\%$ of vendors were happy to do business with Groceries Inc., but $87\%$ of vendors rated Groceries Inc. Invoice Payment capability as three out ten where rating $1$ is 'Not Happy,$\text{'}$ and rating $10$ is 'Very Happy.$\text{'}$

The Business Analyst team investigated the reasons for the low vendor rating. Fundamental analysis revealed the following facts:

Number of vendors $5000$

Number of invoices $10,000$ per week

Average invoice processing time $10$ minutes per invoice

Invoice processing staff $25$ full$-$time employees $(20$ CAD per hour $8$ hrs$.$ shift$)$

Invoice processing backlog $40,000$ invoices

Outstanding accounts payable $15\mathrm{.}5$ million

Payment term $30$ days

Actual payment $65$ days

Payment accuracy $65\%$

Payment dispute $10\%$

Payment delay $85\%$

Delay reason $1$ data entry errors $60\%$

Delay reason $2$ backlog $30\%$

Delay reason $3$ vendor errors $10\%$

Groceries Inc. leadership has taken this issue very seriously and committed to fixing it within six months.

IT team is proposing an RPA application for the Invoice Processing process. Vendors will submit their invoices on Groceries inc.$\text{'}$s vendor portal $($as they do today $$ no change$).$ RPA tool pick$-$up invoices from the document repository server. RPA tool will perform an Optical Characters Recognition $($OCR$).$ OCR will convert data into a structured format. Invoice data will then enter the SAP S$4$HANA application $($ERP application$).$ RPA tool will perform the $3-$way match, i$.$e$.,$ receipt qty & amount, purchase order qty & amount, and invoice qty & amount are matching. In case of a $100\%$ match, it will issue payment advice and process an electronic funds transfer. In case of any exceptions during the entire process, the RPA application will be sent the exceptions to an Account Payable team for further investigation and resolution. The anticipated exception rate could be up to $5\%.$

IT team is very confident that it can develop and deploy this application in $4$ months. The estimated cost is $450,000$ CAD.

The finance team would like to hire five more people in the accounts payable team; per hour per person costs $20$ CAD.

IT$,$ legal, Purchasing prefers RPA application. The finance team is convinced that hiring more people will solve the issue.

Working as a Lead Business Analyst, Digital Transformation Steering Committee has asked you to perform the following analysis and report back to the steering committee in two weeks.

Task:

$1.$ What are the Potential IT and Business benefits?

$2.$ Provide an ROI calculation and list the steps of the approach

$3.$Define the problem statement

$4.$Identify stakeholders for the RPA project

$5.$Pros and Cons of RPA vs$.$ manual Invoice processing

$6.$List the critical decisions points