Digitalization of the back office and automation of the invoice reconciliation process of La Tagliatella

+20 years of
experience

+240 restaurants in
Spain and Portugal

350
suppliers

The starting point

La Tagliatella operates a central kitchen that distributes raw food materials to all their restaurants in Spain and Portugal. After years of using a manual system for procuring products, the company wanted to make the flow of data input to their system as well as the invoicing process more efficient.

Previously, La Tagliatella’s central kitchen would place orders through their ERP and once the raw material arrived, workers had to check the delivery notes for errors and enter them manually in their system. Then, invoices from food suppliers were received via email and they had to manually enter them into their system and take time to check them one by one against the delivery notes in order to reconcile them. Also, many suppliers issued grouped invoices (large documents that include more than one delivery note and order), which made detecting possible errors and correcting them a very difficult process. In cases where there were disagreements regarding the reconciliation of invoices, this would significantly increase the processing time.

For all that, in 2021, the restaurant chain decided to partner with a technology company to begin automating the processes associated with the procurement and invoicing of food products.

The restaurant chain decided to partner with a technology company to begin automating the processes.

This integration helps avoid possible errors and improve the traceability of invoices.

PERE J MASIP
Supply Chain Manager of La Tagliatella.

The solution

La Tagliatella has partnered with Voxel and their Bavel Procurement solution to digitalize their back-office processes (orders, delivery notes and invoices) of the central kitchen and automatically reconcile the invoices.

To achieve this, the Bavel platform has been integrated, on the one hand, with RGB (La Tagliatella’s own ERP) and, on the other hand, it is being integrated with all the suppliers of the restaurant chain in Spain that are still not part of the Bavel network.

Now that Bavel Procurement has been implemented, the process of procuring raw materials is as follows: first, the central kitchen places the orders through their own ERP, then the Bavel platform takes the order from the ERP and integrates it directly into the ERP of the suppliers, who then ship the products and the ERP of La Tagliatella generates an electronic goods receipt (automatic delivery note). Bavel Procurement directly receives the automatic delivery notes from the ERP of La Tagliatella and the invoices from suppliers. Bavel Procurement carries out an automatic reconciliation and sends the already reconciled invoices directly to La Tagliatella. This way, when La Tagliatella receives the invoice, they know it has been reviewed and reconciled and they only need to account for it and ensure its timely payment. “This integration helps avoid possible errors and improve the traceability of invoices”, explains Pere J. Masip, Supply Chain Manager of La Tagliatella.

Also, two ad hoc developments have been carried out to meet the needs of La Tagliatella. The first is the correction of the automatic delivery note by La Tagliatella, who is able to cancel the document that has been sent to the reconciler and generate a new one to be corrected. The second is the sending of a weekly report to La Tagliatella with the status of the reconciliations. Just like before, this prevents personnel from having to enter the program each time they want to check an invoice, the reception of a shipment or a reconciliation in question.

The outcome

So far, La Tagliatella has processed more than 10,000 orders and has automatically reconciled more than 10,000 invoices in less than 1 year with Bavel Procurement. Currently, 35% of suppliers in Spain have been integrated in the Bavel platform, which accounts for a large invoice turnover, with the aim of reaching as many companies as possible.

With this project, the restaurant chain has not only reduced costs, but also achieved significant operating improvements. Although some workers have been doing tasks a certain way for many years now, “we need to make progress in terms of changing the culture of how we work if we want to become more efficient”, says Masip.

Pere J. Masip also added: “At La Tagliatella 85% of the batches of products we work with have an expiration date and therefore, it is very important to have solutions available that help streamline the way we operate”.

Since Bavel Procurement was implemented, the relationships between La Tagliatella and suppliers has experienced significant positive changes such as a speedier payment cycle. Likewise, for the pool of suppliers, some of which issue large amounts of invoices, it is a good opportunity for them to jump on the electronic invoicing wagon.

Given the good results the project is reaching an international level with the progressive integration of Italian suppliers.

Pere J. Masip concludes by saying that in order to implement a project of these characteristics we need to “keep an open mind and trust the Voxel team, with whom we are working on a few other ambitious projects”.