Dover Business Services' 2021 AWARD FINALIST CASE STUDY: Best Achievement in Process Automation.

Dover Business Services (DBS) is an independent business-to-business service provider within Dover Corporation. DBS empowers Dover Operating Companies' growth by providing best-in-class operations expertise and finance services to increase capacity, improve controls and reduce operating costs. Among its services include the Accounts Payable function which offers an end-to-end AP process that ensures vendor and supplier invoices are processed, approved, and paid on time to keep the business moving.

During DBS' initial stage of operations, most of its Accounts Payable (AP) activities were processed manually – from data capture to approval workflows that required multiple email threads. As a result, it is common for invoices to get lost in the mix and miss deadlines. This led to a deteriorating relationship with vendors and a lower quality of service. This also created a risk for errors that would impact Dover through the amount of time and money it required to fix when these issues surfaced downstream in the payment process. As these challenges continuous to emerge, DBS recognized the importance of digital transformation as a crucial part of its Operational Strategy. 

The DBS AP Digital Transformation strategy leverages technologies managed by process experts to achieve standardization, simplification, and efficiency of the AP process through automation. The move for DBS over AP vision of digitally transforming the AP process through automation was started in 2019, DBS integrates its accounting system with a cloud-based AP Automation solution built to streamline Accounts Payable. This integration includes a two-way Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) of data between systems to ensure secured and accurate interfacing. This integration also aims to have one standard system for different Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software used by Dover Operating Companies. 

The organization started with the “Lift and Shift” model where the goal was to lift the current Operating Company’s AP process and shift its operations to DBS and maintain most of their operational model. In 2019, DBS shifted its gears from the Lift and Shift transition strategy to the “Lift and Transform” model where it follows the business process transition methodology while integrating digital transformation of the Operating Company’s AP process. From 2020 to the present, Dover Business Ser-vices continues to broaden its reach, bringing in new business process transition projects us-ing its "Lift to Transform" methodology. And as the company keeps growing, it is also steadily increasing its scope and services. As a result, DBS has successfully transitioned 44% of Do-ver OpCo’s Business Units as of 2021 and will continue to extend its services to new Operat-ing Companies in the coming years while keeping its vision of continuously improving the digital transformation journey of the AP process through automation. 

With the integration of AP solutions and tools, DBS achieved a streamlined and accurate invoice processing workflow and improved efficiency by 62.43%. While improvement on vendor payment process eliminates overpayment and duplicate payments, at the same time, improving the team's efficiency by 56.5%. Currently, DBS has reduced its AP operating cost by 23% from its 2019 baseline.