Unified invoice process for all Zentiva markets with Vendor Invoice Management

Zentiva is a leading European pharmaceutical company headquartered in Prague, supplying generic and over-the-counter medicines to more than 100 million patients in over 30 countries. Annually, it produces over 500 million packages of medicines in a wide range of therapeutic areas, including cardiology, oncology, respiratory diseases and women's health. It has its own manufacturing facilities in the Czech Republic, Romania, India and other strategic partners, and employs over 4,700 people across Europe and Asia.

Zentiva faced significant inefficiencies in the processing of incoming invoices within its subsidiaries. The Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) solution was deployed differently across countries, without a uniform standard, resulting in a high level of manual intervention, frequent errors, difficult exception management and complex training for new users.

The company was looking for a way to unify these processes, automate them and greatly simplify their management. The main objectives were to reduce the administrative burden on accountants, speed up and streamline approval workflows, minimize the risk of human error, and create a single framework that would be easily scalable to all countries where Zentiva operates.

In cooperation with Zentiva, we have designed and implemented a unified solution for processing incoming invoices, which brings the company greater efficiency, fewer errors and better control over the entire process. The key output was a global process framework, the so-called blueprint, which defines exactly how invoices will be received, verified, approved and settled across all the Group's subsidiaries.

The initial set-up varied widely from country to country, with each country using its own approach. This complicated the administration, training and development of the system. In some cases, such as Bulgaria, the set-up was opaque and placed a significant burden on accounting work.

The new solution aimed to remove these limitations and set up the process to be clear, stable and as automated as possible. The new solution significantly reduced manual input. Invoice data is now automatically extracted, validated and then passed through a digital approval workflow. Accountants and approvers have a single environment in which the entire process is faster, clearer and less error-prone. As a result, the company has relieved its teams of routine administration while gaining a higher level of control and auditability.

The pilot deployment took place in the Bulgarian office, where the new model proved its worth in practice. The approval process was accelerated, the number of errors was significantly reduced, and it was confirmed that the new solution is easily replicable in other countries. This gave Zentiva a robust basis for the gradual roll-out of standardised invoice processing across the Group.