Case Study: Catalina achieves touch-free, automated accounts payable with Ascend Software

Leading digital media company upgrades their AP processing with Ascend

Catalina, a digital media company that personalizes coupons for leading CPG brands, faced a heavily manual accounts payable workflow—spreadsheets, manual data entry and physical invoice attachments—while needing tight ERP integration during a migration from Lawson to Workday and operating with a lean team. To modernize AP, Catalina engaged Ascend Software and implemented Ascend’s SmartTouch AP™ OCR and workflow tools.

Ascend Software automated Catalina’s AP end-to-end—scanning, PO matching, invoice locking for coding and approval, and line pairing—first integrating with Lawson and then Workday. Line pairing in Ascend cut about one-third of processing time; Catalina now handles roughly 900–1,000 invoices per month with automatic line coding and touch-free mail extraction, increasing capacity, reducing manual work, and moving toward a largely touch-free AP operation.

Catalina

Tony Lutz

Senior Director of Shared Services