Case Study: Applied Industrial Technologies achieves 87% autonomous AP processing and 50% productivity gains with AppZen

Applied Industrial Technologies powers 87% autonomous AP processing with AppZen's AI

Applied Industrial Technologies, a premier industrial distributor, was manually processing over 500,000 invoices annually with a 12.5‑person AP team and a legacy OCR that missed header and line‑level PO details, causing multi‑day delays and heavy manual work. To address these bottlenecks they partnered with AppZen, implementing AppZen Autonomous AP and its SAP‑certified add‑on for SAP ECC.

AppZen’s AI integrated with Applied’s ECC system to automatically match headers and line‑level PO details, lifting the burden on downstream workflows and enabling rapid processing—40% touchless in month one and invoices entering the ERP in under 10 minutes. The AppZen deployment ultimately delivered 87% autonomous processing, 91% of invoices processed in under two minutes, a 33% reduction in FTEs (from 12.5 to 8.5), and roughly 50% productivity gains, freeing the AP team to work on supplier relationships and exceptions.

Applied Industrial Technologies

Adam Lotycz

Director of Financial Planning and Analysis