Case Study: Heineken France achieves 95% on-time payments and halves invoice backlog with Basware AP Automation

Heineken France - Customer Case Study

Heineken France, part of the global Heineken Group, operates both as a brewer and a distributor to the Cafés‑Hotels‑Restaurants (CHR) market, handling about 140,000 supplier invoices annually from nearly 12,000 suppliers across multiple ERP instances. As it accelerates a financial transformation and prepares for an SAP S/4HANA rollout, the company needed a single, scalable invoice management solution to handle dual invoice flows and multiple formats (EDI, PDF, paper), ensure regulatory e-invoicing compliance, and reduce a growing invoice backlog.

Heineken rolled out Basware’s AP Automation SaaS integrated with its SAP Central Finance and country-specific configurations, standardizing deployments across Europe and automating reconciliation and approval workflows (including 100% routing of PO invoices). The implementation (completed in six months in France) cut the invoice backlog from 8,000 to 4,000, raised on-time supplier payments from 75% to 95%, and established continuous KPI-driven improvements while preparing the company for upcoming e-invoicing requirements.

Heineken France

Eric Salimon

Accounts Director