AO Smith Cut Invoice Processing Costs by 70% and Eliminated 6-Month Payment Delays

Challenge

AO Smith India manages a substantial vendor network across manufacturing operations - with invoice volumes demanding fast, accurate processing to keep procurement and production on schedule. Before IQInvoice, that wasn’t what they were getting.

The AP team was working with a patchwork of tools that carried high per-user licensing costs. Giving the full team access to invoice data meant paying for every additional seat - so access was rationed, decisions were delayed, and bottlenecks accumulated.

Vendor payments fell months behind. At peak, suppliers were waiting up to six months to be paid - a situation that strained vendor relationships and created ongoing reconciliation overhead. Every time a vendor followed up, someone on the AP team had to manually trace the invoice status, adding to an already stretched workload.

Without centralized invoice handling, there was no consistent process for reviewing, approving, or escalating invoices. Approvals followed whoever was available rather than any formal delegation of authority. The result was a team working hard but without the structure to work efficiently - and a payment cycle that reflected the strain.

Solution

IQInvoice replaced AO Smith’s fragmented setup with a centralized invoice management platform - one solution, unlimited users, no per-seat licensing. The entire AP team gained simultaneous access to invoice data without additional cost overhead.

Automated invoice capture using ICR/OCR technology eliminated manual data entry at the point of receipt. Invoices arriving by email or paper were automatically extracted and queued for processing - reducing handling time and the errors that came with it.

Approval workflows were configured to match AO Smith’s Delegation of Authority structure. Each invoice was automatically routed to the right approver based on amount, category, and cost centre - replacing the ad hoc process with an auditable chain of decisions.

Vendor payment automation ensured that approved invoices moved to payment on schedule. The backlog of overdue payments cleared within weeks of go-live. Vendors were paid on time, consistently - and invoice status enquiries dropped sharply as payment became predictable.

AO Smith’s 70% processing cost reduction is representative of outcomes across IQInvoice’s manufacturing customer base. See IQInvoice pricing to understand the investment required to achieve comparable results. Read more customer stories in our case studies.