Invenio implemented an SAP solution to support Neopost's fast development

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Neopost is a global supplier of business communication solutions, specialising in the optimisation of sending and receiving mail, parcels and emails. They work with both small businesses and large national conglomerates in the private and public sector to provide their custom solutions for any type of mail, volume or postal carrier. In the past, Invenio have done work with Neopost branches in Germany and France before moving on to support the UK branch.

Business Challenges

Thanks in part to a fairly rapid period of growth, Neopost UK were struggling with multiple back end technology issues. One of their main problems was that the payment clearance process for all open invoices within their SAP system was incredibly slow. Invoices that had been paid were taking up to a day to clear within SAP, which led to a lot of misinformation and difficult client discussions. The cost of processing invoices was also incredibly high, especially when there were multiple invoices involved.

After some investigation, Invenio also discovered that Neopost were operating ECC 5.0 – a very old and outdated version of SAP that had long since dropped out of support. This was a particularly challenging discovery, since it limited their ability to install updates and new processes in order to comply with 2014-15 changes to HR regulation. This meant that they were no longer meeting their legal HR obligations under UK law.

Invenio's Solution

To resolve the payment clearance issues, Invenio’s experts first installed a solution known as a Kofax interface. This interface scans cheques and sends their information directly to SAP via XL for matching against open invoices. In order to push the data across, Invenio used the web service method. To tackle the issues of outdated support, Invenio’s experts manually implemented the appropriate code directly from notes into SAP, which enabled their HR department to run payroll on time and in line with new regulations.

In order to create a smoother process for admin staff, Invenio installed a search address tool called Satori. This allowed staff to simply input postcodes and select from a drop-down menu of addresses, instead of manually adding data. This simple change saved a lot of time on manual data processing and also dramatically reduced the number of errors within data sets. There was also a considerable amount of internal development done in order to bring old practices and processes up to scratch and ensure correct and efficient processes were followed throughout the businesses. This development included:

  • Creating the ability to swap equipment automatically when needed
  • Adding a billing block onto withdrawal equipment
  • Adding town circle material and post mark material to mail, depending on the characteristics of the main mail

In order to cut down the number of invoices produced for the same client, Invenio were also able to implement a single intelligent invoicing system, which doesn’t generate an invoice until all items ordered are ready. This prevents each order element creating its own invoice and makes the process much more streamlined for both the payment reconciliation team and customers.

The Results


Since implementing this solution, Neopost have seen significant improvements in their customer service levels, operational costs and the efficiency of their general business practices. The most prominent benefit is that HR is now able to comply with UK legislation in regard to payroll. Employees also saw a dramatic improvement in the amount of time they had to spend on data entry, from imputing customer addresses to creating, changing and deletion of transactions. Neopost also saw:

Fully supported platform

Neopost now has a fully supported platform that can be used to automate more processes in the future, including mixed payments

Improved customer service

Reduced number of customer queries

Increased customer satisfaction

Much lower rates of client dissatisfaction thanks to intelligent ordering and invoicing processes

Decreased amount of reprocessing

Significant reduction in the amount of reprocessing by users

Reduced invoice clearing times

Invoice clearing times reduced from 24 hours to 3

Overall, the automation of various processes has delivered significant time savings to employees across the board. HR are now able to generate valid P60’s for their employees without having to go through SAP, saving a large amount of money.

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