AVR Machinery unlocks procurement capacity with GoBeyond Supplier Confirmations

About AVR Machinery

AVR Machinery designs and produces machinery for the potato farming industry. Procurement sits at the centre of the business, connecting research and development with operations and production, and is responsible for securing the right prices, contracts and delivery terms while ensuring materials and components arrive when production needs them. The team is split between category buyers, who manage suppliers, contracts and pricing, and operational buyers, who handle purchase orders and day-to-day order follow-up.

The Challenge

As AVR continued to refine its processes, procurement was coming under increasing pressure to become more accurate, efficient and proactive.

Until recently, AVR was handling supplier order confirmations almost entirely by hand. Confirmations arrived in a shared mailbox, where the team had to locate the relevant purchase order, review the supplier’s confirmation, check delivery dates and manually enter the information in SAP S/4HANA, identifying any discrepancies themselves along the way. With around 485 active suppliers and roughly 22,000 confirmation documents processed in each year, many containing ten, twenty or more order lines each, the volume of information being reviewed line by line was substantial. The process was especially time-consuming for large purchase orders, and on busy days could absorb the equivalent of a full-time resource.

The manual workload also carried a real risk of error. With purchase orders running to thirty or forty lines, a small mistake could go unnoticed for some time, with significant knock-on consequences for production planning.

Stephanie Fernandez, PMO Manager at AVR Machinery says, “The value of procurement is in how we procure, how we negotiate; less in doing the operational work of typing a standard document and transferring it into our system. The focus should be on exceptions, rather than having to look at every single one.”

The Solution

AVR already used a supplier invoice management solution, so automation for reading supplier documents and connecting information with SAP was familiar. Looking for a more efficient way to manage supplier confirmations, AVR ran a structured selection process involving procurement, business analysts and project sponsors, with several vendors invited to present.

The deciding factor was how TheValueChain demonstrated its solution. Rather than focusing solely on document-reading AI, the team showed how the product worked within AVR’s operational SAP S/4HANA environment, something none of the other vendors did.

Luca Verlinde, Category Buyer Cabin & Electronics at AVR Machinery, highlights, “The integration with SAP was something we hadn’t seen before. It’s not just AI for AI’s sake, it’s actually doing a job and delivering value.”

Implementation ran alongside another major warehouse management project, making the timing challenging. Even so, the relationship with TheValueChain was collaborative, with AVR’s team in direct contact with developers and receiving proactive support. Functionality initially out of scope, such as processing confirmations directly from an email body, has already been incorporated. When AVR began with an Excel-based upload of its open order book, TheValueChain integrated the relevant identifiers directly into the solution.

It was great to see that it’s possible to be that impactful, also on a SaaS solution,” adds Luca.

Integration with SAP S/4HANA has been successful overall. Supplier confirmation data now flows directly into SAP S/4HANA, removing much of the manual effort previously required to transfer information from supplier documents into the ERP system.

Benefits

• More procurement capacity: automation reduces manual processing, freeing operational buyers to dedicate around 20% of their time to higher-value activities.
• Focus shifted from processing to exceptions: if a supplier confirms 200 lines and one is running two or three weeks late, the team can go straight to that line rather than manually reviewing all 200.
• Reduced risk of data entry errors: automated matching against purchase orders lowers the chance of incorrect dates or quantities reaching SAP and disrupting production planning.
• Seamless SAP S/4HANA integration: confirmation data flows straight into AVR’s ERP system, with no separate manual transfer step.
• More time for value-adding procurement work: the team can focus on supplier management, negotiation and the exceptions that genuinely need attention.

Working with TheValueChain

“You really get a sense that TheValueChain believe in their product and want to make it better. With minor fixes and adjustments on both sides, and with the level of service TheValueChain now provides, I have no concerns about where the product is heading.”

Luca Verlinde, Category Buyer Category Buyer Cabin & Electronics, AVR Machinery