Case Study: Panera Bread achieves 40% faster invoice processing and 60% higher recognition rates with Ascend Software's AP Automation

Panera Accelerates and Optimizes their AP Processes

Panera Bread, a leading U.S. bakery‑cafe chain, was struggling with manual accounts payable across more than 400,000 invoices a year and 2,000 locations, with fragmented AP processes across retail/cafes, manufacturing and corporate overhead and declining recognition accuracy. To standardize and speed up AP, Panera Bread engaged Ascend Software’s Ascend AP Automation to replace its prior manual and semi-automated workflows.

Ascend Software centralized Panera Bread’s AP, automated OCR-based text extraction and auto‑coding of spend categories and cost centers, and integrated invoices with Workday (including PO and Worktag sync). The result was a >60% increase in recognition rates and a 40% faster invoice‑processing time versus the prior solution, significantly cutting manual intervention, lowering costs, reducing errors, and creating capacity for future expansion.

Panera Bread