Case Study: Fortune 500 Energy Company achieves up to $2M annual discount savings and 50% reduced invoice processing costs with SAP Ariba

E-lnvoicing to Maximize Early Payment Discounts

A Fortune 500 energy company in the natural gas and natural gas liquids businesses faced manual, paper-heavy invoice processing, lack of procurement control over non‑PO field purchases, and long approval cycles that prevented capture of early payment discounts; the company also could not extend its ERP to support invoice automation or dynamic discounting.

The company deployed Ariba PO and Invoice Automation, Ariba InvoicePro, Invoice Conversion Services and Ariba Discount Professional (with a discount gain‑share program). This reduced invoice processing costs by about 50% (≈$330K/year and six FTEs), compressed cycle time to five days with nearly 100% touchless processing, enabled rapid mobile approvals and better month‑end accruals, identified almost $1M in potential discounts in the first three months (>$350K realized) and is on track for >$2M annual discount savings, with rapid deployment and minimal IT effort.