EDF picks Cegedim e-business to digitize its supplier invoices

 

Thanks to the SY by Cegedim solution, EDF expects half its incoming invoices to be digitized by end-2020

Boulogne-Billancourt, December 3, 2019

Cegedim e-business, a European expert in B2B process digitalization and digitized data flows, has been chosen by EDF to digitize supplier invoices. EDF, France’s incumbent electricity provider, aims to digitize half its 660,000 incoming invoices in 2020 via the SY by Cegedim platform.

EDF has 26,000 regular suppliers and handles 660,000 incoming invoices a year. The group’s Accounting Shared Services Centre (CSP - CC, in French), needed a reliable, time-saving invoice processing solution to optimize its payment terms and reduce its carbon footprint. Recent regulations introduced by the French government also encourage large companies to transition towards digitization.

A user-friendly, standards-compliant solution

EDF selected SY by Cegedim, Cegedim e-business’ collaborative solution for the digitization of business, accounting, financial, and communication processes and data flows. This intuitive, multi-channel solution (EDI, data capture, signed PDFs) covers most business requirements and is based on an industry standard.

Michel Castel, Deputy Director of EDF’s Accounting Shared Services Centre, comments: “EDF made the organizational changes needed to ensure that the system is successfully implemented. A year and a half into the project, the results are very encouraging and reflect the hard work put in by the project team, EDF, Cegedim e-business, and the accounting teams on the ground. The project has been so successful, we want to entrust Cegedim e-business with all our supplier invoices (paper and digitized), and maybe even expand the collaboration to some of our subsidiaries”.

Gradually ramping up a pivotal project

A year after the project was launched, about fifteen suppliers had an EDI connection and 1,000 were connected to the supplier portal for signed PDFs. The aim is to double the number of connected suppliers by 2020, so that 330,000 incoming invoices are digitized—that’s half of EDF’s annual incoming invoices.

Cédric Youmbi, Business Engineer with Cegedim e-business, comments: “We are proud to work with EDF on this pivotal project, and help it comply with regulations and simplify invoicing for its suppliers. This lasting collaboration is founded on trust, expertise-sharing and robust, scalable tools. Our respective teams are jointly monitoring the project to ensure it fosters a forward-looking approach and is implemented according to the highest standards”.