FRoSTA: Pioneering touchless invoice processing and increasing the automation rate in the procure-to-pay process
Becoming a digital champion of automation and AI
FRoSTA AG, one of the largest manufacturers of frozen foods in Europe, wished to simplify its supplier invoice processing. Dedicated to being a digital champion, the company selected the SAP Build Process Automation and SAP Document AI solutions on SAP Business Technology Platform to automate the processing of paper, pdf, and Microsoft Excel–based invoices.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partners |
| Consumer products | Bremerhaven, Germany | ~1,850 employees | sovanta AG and Amista |
minute to process an invoice, from arrival to posting.
of invoices processed through automation booked without any touch.
months from project ideation to the go-live event.
Data and AI Manager, IT, FRoSTA AG
Turning to enterprise automation to streamline accounting
With production facilities in Germany and Poland, FRoSTA AG manufactures frozen food products for consumers across Europe. In addition to its commitment to high-quality, safe products, the green and blue flag on the company logo represents its transparency and sustainable sourcing practices. FRoSTA prides itself on its “Purity Command” dedicated to eliminating all food additives, including those that don’t have to be legally declared. The company displays full product information through the ingredient tracker on its website and detailed labeling on its packaging and cartons.
In Germany, FRoSTA processes around 30,000 invoices for goods received each year. Staff members in accounting had to manually scan incoming documents, seek budget approval from the relevant stakeholders, and post the documents to the company’s ERP software. This resulted in a considerable manual workload, with each document touched at least three times before being entered into the system for processing. In addition, the lack of mobile access in the approval process could delay things by up to two weeks if managers were away from their desks. Recognizing that this fell short of the market standard in accounting, FRoSTA sought a solution that would enable a touchless invoice booking process and integration with multiple third-party applications.
Data and AI Manager, IT, FRoSTA AG
Using automation and AI capabilities for efficient invoice processing
FRoSTA has built a strategic partnership with SAP over several years and has a strong digital transformation agenda. The company had already been using SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) for several years, integrating SAP S/4HANA with SAP SuccessFactors solutions and third-party tools. Expanding on its strategy for SAP BTP, the business developed analytics scenarios leveraging the SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions. The accessibility, flexibility, and ease of integration led FRoSTA to look at SAP Build solutions on SAP BTP to help extend and automate its cloud ERP following a clean core approach.
Increasing the automation rate in invoice processing was identified as the first use case within its core processes. The company chose the SAP Build Process Automation and SAP Document AI solutions for their smooth integration with SAP and third-party software. A trainee in the IT and digital business transformation team led in developing the scenario within three months while cooperating closely with the data and AI manager and an expert on SAP BTP from the digital transformation team.
The project used a mission from the SAP Discovery Center site as a starting point. FRoSTA was able to access a public artifact repository of business content on SAP BTP using SAP Business Accelerator Hub. Partner sovanta AG conducted a two-week training session with the food manufacturer to assist with the implementation, and partner Amista provided support for adopting best practices with SAP Build Process Automation. Other than that, FRoSTA’s trainee performed 90% of the work, despite having no programming background, using a search engine and third-party AI tool as well as the Joule copilot for programming.
While the team was happy with the recognition rate of the template-based approach to information extraction, the large variety of invoice formats made training for each template format impractical. After consulting with the product management team at SAP, FRoSTA switched to the premium edition of SAP Document AI. This edition uses a large language model (LLM) for capturing, validating, and processing invoice data and was thus better suited to process multiple document formats.
Trainee, IT and Digital Business Transformation, FRoSTA AG
Increasing the speed and efficiency of invoice booking
Automating the processing of paper, pdf, and Microsoft Excel–based invoices has reduced cycle times and error rates in the procure-to-pay process, freed up the accounting team from manually processing invoices, and simplified the approval process.
The automation built with SAP Build Process Automation monitors a specific folder for incoming documents and scans of paper documents. The files are processed in SAP Document AI, which uses LLM capabilities to extract and classify relevant information, regardless of document format or language. The automation validates the extracted information, such as purchase order (PO) number, invoice amount, or supplier name, against data in the SAP and third-party systems. It then triggers an approval workflow, if necessary, and creates the invoice in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition.
FRoSTA uses the SAP Task Center service to make workflows in SAP Build Process Automation easily accessible in one place. And with the SAP Mobile Start app, the 80 to 100 cost-center leads who approve invoices can review and process approval workflows on the go.
The company is currently onboarding its suppliers to the new process, with approximately 30% already up and running. Of 30,000 invoices for goods flagged as received in the full amount, about 60% are processed automatically without any human intervention. The other 40% are routed into the approval process or exception handling based on defined business rules, for example, when information is incorrect or missing, or the amount exceeds a threshold that requires human review.
Agile SAP Expert, FRoSTA AG
Advancing the potential of process automation
Automating the processing of paper-based invoices was the first step in increasing the automation rate in invoice processing. Leveraging SAP Integration Suite, e-invoicing involving an XML format will be added into the new automation for validation and approval. Having seen the possibilities and flexibility in implementing the automation and workflows, FRoSTA has plenty of scenarios in the pipeline for SAP Build Process Automation. Another process that FRoSTA can automate is order creation. Currently, the customer service team receives roughly 100,000 customer orders annually, in both pdf and Microsoft Excel–based formats, and must copy and paste incoming e-mail orders between screens to create an order.
FRoSTA is looking to expand its use of SAP Task Center to centralize and simplify employee access to workflows and tasks. Having already enabled access to SAP SuccessFactors solutions, the team will add access to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, SAP Ariba solutions, and SAP Concur solutions in the near future to allow a single entry point to its applications.
Featured partners
sovanta AG has been consulting and supporting SAP customers in the cloud environment for 15 years and specializes in SAP BTP. The consultancy has helped over 250 customers from a wide range of industries, carrying out 500 projects that have impacted two million software users. The two-week training session sovanta provided to FRoSTA assisted the company with the implementation.
Amista is a fast-growing IT company in the Benelux that specializes in SAP solutions and document management. It offers high-value consulting services and solutions to reduce overall IT costs, improve business performance, operational productivity and efficiency. In this project, Amista aided FRoSTA in adopting best practices for SAP Build Process Automation.