Maximizing IT Investments and Streamlining Accounts Payable Lifecycle: A Case Study on Ocean Network Express

Ocean Network Express (ONE) is a global shipping leader, founded following the merger of Japan’s three largest shipping lines in 2017. As of 2023, ONE has a global fleet of over 250 vessels, 244 port calls around the world, and more than 170 weekly services to 120 countries. The company is headquartered in Singapore with regional headquarters in Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Brazil. ONE is the world’s seventh-largest container carrier with active participation in all major global trade lanes and a combined 14,000 onshore and offshore employees. The company's core values include teamwork, reliability, quality, and customer satisfaction.

Ocean Network Express (ONE), the world’s seventh-largest container carrier, was formed following the merger of Japan’s three largest shipping lines in 2017. The merger led to a complex and disjointed process architecture, with a lack of communication between departments and systems posing a significant challenge. The accounts payable process, critical for timely vendor payments, was particularly inefficient, involving three different sub-departments within the finance team. The process was primarily decentralized, managed manually, and often involved a lengthy paper trail. The finance team used spreadsheets to keep the process on track, but it was difficult to manage and standardize. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated these issues, as the shift to remote work made the process unmanageable and hindered seamless communication between the finance sub-departments and systems. The team needed a platform, system, or tool to fit all of their processes in this new reality.

ONE turned to Pipefy, a platform that could centralize all communication within a single platform and provide process orchestration capabilities and visibility into all operations. After understanding ONE's challenges, the Pipefy team created a prototype process to demonstrate how the platform could address their primary issue: communication. The finance team at ONE decided to design an entirely new accounts payable workflow from scratch, with two main objectives: gaining control over every single invoice they received and integrating their process with SAP, the company’s global ERP system. The new process began with a vendor filling out a form containing all necessary data for approval and payment. The AP team centralized these requests into a single source within Pipefy, defined the flow of all steps to be performed, and implemented automation triggers to alert responsible parties when invoices were received. The team also implemented an RPA solution to connect Pipefy with SAP for seamless communication between the two systems.

• The implementation of Pipefy led to significant operational improvements for ONE. The accounts payable process was standardized, with vendors now required to fill out a form containing all necessary data for approval and payment. This eliminated delays caused by missing information in payment requests. The finance team was able to centralize these requests into a single source within Pipefy, providing greater data centralization and process visibility. Automated triggers were implemented to alert responsible parties when invoices were received, ensuring timely action. The integration of Pipefy with SAP through an RPA solution allowed for seamless communication between the two systems, eliminating the need for manual data input. This digital transformation led to increased team efficiencies, lower operational costs, and freed up employees to work on additional value-generating projects. The success of the finance team led to the HR department and teams in other countries adopting Pipefy, with plans for further expansion.

• The accounts payable process now only requires one employee to supervise, down from three full-time employees.

• Each dedicated employee gained an additional three to four working hours back each week following the SAP integration.

• An invoice’s lifecycle — from request to schedule payment — is now no greater than two business days.