Problem

Decentralized processes caused department friction and massive payment delays

As one of the oldest private institutions in the U.S., Georgetown University had over $1.5 billion in annual revenues and expenses, including $400 million in supplier invoices. Georgetown's accounts payable team was severely understaffed, with just six full-time employees manually managing 100% of invoices. A process that was "error-prone and time-consuming, and most importantly, led to the creation of a team of clerical workers who were used to keying data rather than a team of analysts," shared Richard Marea, AVP for Revenue, Receivables, and Payables at Georgetown University.

It wasn't uncommon for purchase orders to be created reactively, only after AP staff contacted departments about invoices missing POs. To make matters worse, complex purchase orders were often oversimplified, with multiple unique line items lumped into a single category. Improper documentation meant invoice records in their ERP didn't accurately reflect purchases, making it impossible to audit transactions through the general ledger or system records alone.

Lack of standardization and visibility led to severe processing delays, and "at any given point, AP was running between 30 and 90 days behind," explained Jon Hendrix, Director of Accounts Payable at Georgetown. The AP team found themselves caught in the crossfire of frustrated departments and suppliers, often bearing the blame for upstream dysfunction they couldn't control. Without sophisticated tracking or reporting capabilities, they struggled to identify the source of operational bottlenecks.

Supplier relationships suffered as a result. Invoices arrived through various channels and formats—primarily as PDF email attachments—and the team lacked a standardized system for processing and prioritizing payments. Their inbox-based workflow offered no mechanism to prioritize urgent invoices, leading to frequent supplier calls about late payments that the finance team struggled to address.

Solution

An AI solution for data capture, standardization, and prioritization

As Marea and the team began to evaluate solutions, they focused on a tool that would remove the manual burden from the AP team, introduce a standardized process across departments, and close the gap for procure-to-pay time. To achieve this, they searched for a solution that would automate the capture and prioritization of critical data from email PDF attachments, standardize inconsistent invoice formats, and proactively create invoices rich with information.

After evaluating multiple OCR solutions, Marea realized that almost every solution lacked AI functionalities critical to long-term benefits; in short, "they didn't learn." As they investigated AppZen, a match was made, and in August of 2022, they deployed AppZen's Autonomous AP.

AI was not initially part of our strategy, but quickly, as we investigated AppZen, we saw that it had advantages that non-AI-based solutions absolutely didn't, and it put the other solutions to shame.

 

Richard Marea
AVP for Revenue, Receivables, and Payables at Georgetown University

Implementation plans included:

  • A revitalized AP process free of communication gaps and manual pain points.
  • An inbox integration for efficient email management that would automatically surface high-priority invoices, eliminating manual searches.
  • Maintained headcount and AP team role evolution as subject matter experts.
  • A better understanding of bottlenecks across the entire procure-to-pay process.
RESULT

An upskilled AP team, 1.6K hours saved, and a 76% reduction in cycle time

Improvements were almost immediate. In the first six months of using AppZen's AI, the system absorbed critical data and learned its processes, allowing Georgetown University to auto-approve 66% of all invoices. Rolling out Autonomous AP saved their AP team over 1,600 hours of manual work, giving them time to train and enable their procurement counterparts and introduce organizational change.

If you improve your processes, the cost savings will follow.

Richard Marea
AVP for Revenue, Receivables, and Payables at Georgetown University

AppZen's Inbox functionality transformed Georgetown's email management processes. Previous replies varied by team members, with some providing comprehensive information while others gave brief replies that required multiple follow-up emails. Using institutional knowledge and ERP data like invoice status and payment updates, AppZen's AI drafted expert responses to vendors that AP staff could quickly review and send. Relevant invoice records were automatically surfaced, eliminating manual search time that compounded significantly across weeks.

Keying in data became a thing of the past, and AP staff could easily attend to high-dollar items prioritized by senior leadership. Hendrix shared, "because of the data that is extracted by AppZen, we could prioritize the processing of invoices along any number of variables, i.e., due dates, amounts, suppliers." Using AppZen's workbench, they could quickly search for invoices not appearing in their ERP and confirm invoice receipt status or payment processing. Their fragmented, delayed 30-day cycle time dropped to a staggering 7 days.

Looking ahead, the team planned to further optimize their operations by implementing a new shift-based workflow that would route supplier inquiries directly to subject matter experts and provide detailed analytics on response times and vendor interactions. Georgetown University's transformation from a manual, delay-prone AP operation to an AI-powered, efficient process demonstrated how the right technology could not only improve where time and money were spent but also elevate the entire team's strategic value.