Global leader in flavor and fragrance manufacturing drives growth and expansion plans with comprehensive digital transformation

Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, today announced that Givaudan, the world’s leading manufacturer of flavors and fragrances for the taste and wellbeing and fragrance and beauty markets, has selected Esker to automate its accounts payable (AP) and order management activities. Several years ago, during the design of the Givaudan Business Solution journey, Givaudan decided to implement Esker's cloud-based solutions globally.

Givaudan sought an automation solution that could meet its current needs and scale alongside its growing portfolio, as it continues the journey to becoming a Certified B Corporation. These are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance. Givaudan initially engaged Esker to address order entry inefficiencies, and after seeing a positive improvement on order processing time, the company also looked to Esker for its AP needs. By eliminating the need for manual data entry through automation, Esker’s solutions will support Givaudan in improving operational efficiency while allowing staff to focus on building and nurturing customer relationships.

“Adopting best-in-class technology is paramount in driving our forward-thinking methodology and providing an unmatched customer experience, which is the foundation of everything we do at Givaudan,” said Jan-Willem Scheele, Solution Expert, Customer Care and Demand Planning Service Manager at Givaudan. “Even in today’s unique circumstances, and with newly distributed and remote workforces, our standard for quality work and quick turnaround is unwavering. We look to Esker as a trusted provider to improve and scale our operations with its turnkey and reliable solutions.”

Givaudan is currently rolling out Esker’s AI-driven Accounts Payable and Order Management solutions to its teams worldwide. With shared services centers in Kuala Lumpur, Buenos Aires and Budapest, Givaudan is continually growing and needed to maximize its capabilities on a global scale.

Automating Order Management

Givaudan receives 60,000 orders every month and, before implementing Esker’s AI-driven solution, each order requires several manual changes and selections. Now, Givaudan’s customer care team improves on processing orders without manual intervention every week. In some regions already up to 20% of the orders are without manual intervention. This has allowed the company to reduce bottlenecks and time-consuming tasks, which in turn improves speed and ensures the quality of order processing—without increasing headcount as Givaudan grows.

Automating AP

To further propel its growth and value, Givaudan turned to Esker to support its AP overhaul. Although SAP^® offered Givaudan a highly customized solution, the process behind invoice data entry was still highly manual. Integrating Esker’s intelligent invoice capture with SAP plays a pivotal role in meeting Givaudan’s evolving needs, by providing substantial time-savings.

“Givaudan at heart is a manufacturing company, and given the nuances of handling raw materials, we required a solution that supported the needs of our purchasing channel from end to end,” said Marton Nagy, Global Solution Expert Procure-to-Pay at Givaudan. “On average, we’re processing 2,300 to 2,500 invoices every day across the globe, and the benefits of deploying Esker’s solutions is already clear. Their team took the time to fully understand our needs, quickly outlined how to most effectively improve our AP processes and helped us deploy a new system that serves to simplify our team members’ jobs—so they can concentrate on the aspects of their roles that require human creativity and care.”

Through AP automation, the company is empowering its accounts payable team members to invest in providing more of the unrivaled customer service for which Givaudan is known.

"Our goal for automation is not to make our people redundant, but to make them more valuable,” continued Nagy. “We need our employees to be creative, to think, to make sure we go further than where we are today. Automating the tedious, repetitive tasks lets them use their time for more valuable purposes."

Leveraging Automation Through Change

Givaudan started down the path to automation and the “Esker Touchless Journey” well ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet its embrace of process automation helped it adapt smoothly to the new way of working. Givaudan attributes a key part of its success during the pandemic – and its ability to adapt to future radical changes in the global business environment – to the implementation process and working closely with the Esker team.

About Givaudan

Givaudan is a global leading company in taste and wellbeing, and fragrance and beauty. With its heritage stretching back over 250 years, the company has a long history of innovating scents and tastes. From a favorite drink to your daily meal, from prestige perfumes to cosmetics and laundry care, its creations inspire emotions and delight millions of consumers the world over. The company is committed to driving purpose-led, long-term growth while leading the way to improve happiness and health for people and nature. In the fiscal year 2019, the company employed over 14,900 people worldwide and achieved sales of CHF 6.2 billion and a free cash flow of 12.7% of sales. Let’s imagine together on www.givaudan.com.

About Esker

Esker is a global cloud platform built to unlock strategic value for finance and customer service professionals, and strengthen collaboration between companies by automating the cash conversion cycle. Esker’s solutions incorporate technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive increased productivity, enhanced visibility, reduced fraud risk, and improved collaboration with customers, suppliers and internally. Esker operates in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific with global headquarters in Lyon, France, and U.S. headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information on Esker and its solutions, visit www.esker.com. Follow Esker on LinkedIn and join the conversation on the Esker blog at blog.esker.com.

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