NEC Corporation Europe

John Dickens - Manager, UK Shared Services Centre (30 sec)

Brainware Promises to Enable Efficiency Across Departments and Borders for Global Electronics Manufacturer
NEC Europe is a subsidiary of NEC Corporation, a leader in the integration of IT network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. NEC has created a shared services center (SSC) in the United Kingdom for their European accounts payable function, which services vendors in eight countries. The company sought to reduce operational expenditures across the board, and accounts payable automation was targeted as an opportunity for cost-saving efficiency.

One key issue in finding a beneficial automation solution involved reconciliation of affiliate companies and their diverse operating systems; NEC wanted to centralize operations into a single SAP ERP system and required a solution capable of readily interfacing with numerous legacy applications.

“Brainware was agnostic, the only solution that could actually accommodate SAP and other systems,” said John Dickens, U.K. Shared Service Centre Manager for NEC, upon contracting with Brainware in September, 2010. “As a comprehensive data extraction platform, Brainware’s solution dovetails with our ‘ONE NEC’ philosophy, which emphasizes smarter applications that promote the greatest possible experience for customers and vendors.”

NEC Europe currently delegates its invoice processing duties, in one fashion or another, among 40 individuals. Brainware technology is expected to reduce this number significantly, fostering a substantial decrease in labor costs and generating a return on investment within twelve months. Additionally, their operations will benefit from the Brainware Visibility module for real-time key performance indicators (KPIs), reporting and business intelligence.

“This solution will facilitate centralization of A/P invoice posting and our three-way match process,” said Dickens. “Distiller offered the most advanced data capture capabilities and the greatest opportunity for transforming our manual process. The data capture and line pairing are beyond comparison; there’s nothing that can touch this. It’s cutting edge, very much of the moment—perfect timing for the shared services industry and perfect for NEC.”

“We were also drawn to the quality of Brainware’s operations and services, and the speed of turnaround,” he added, in reference to Distiller’s relative ease of implementation into NEC’s operations.

NEC Europe’s accounts payable solution is expected to go live by early 2011. Encouraged by the advanced capabilities of Brainware Distiller as an invoice processing solution, NEC is pursuing a Distiller application for remittance processing, as well as exploring opportunities to introduce the technology at NEC’s global headquarters in Tokyo.