Celonis and TEC150 Enable Zespri deliver Millions in Value
Celonis, the global leader in Process Mining and Process Intelligence, and Zespri, the world’s leading marketer of kiwifruit, highlighted the significant success of their have continued their efforts to optimize business operations, improve working capital and deliver millions in value realized.
“When we started to analyze our data in the Celonis Process Intelligence platform, we saw the immediate opportunity to improve our procurement and purchase-to-pay processes. Celonis has been instrumental in enhancing our processes at Zespri helping us to drive better outcomes for our people and our customers, and more value for our growers,” said Dave Scullin, Chief Digital Officer of Zespri.
With 2,800 growers in New Zealand and 1,500 growers offshore, Zespri manages one-third of the global kiwifruit volume across 59 countries. In 2024, the company expects to export 190 million trays of fruit. In 2023/24, Zespri generated annual global operating revenue of $4.2 billion NZD.
Using the Celonis Process Intelligence platform, which leverages the latest process mining technology and AI, Zespri was able to increase productivity, reduce duplicate invoices and clear credit memos quicker. In the 18 months since the collaboration started, the team was able to achieve:
- Reduction to its Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) cycle time by 27%: Given the volume of fruit Zespri ships annually, slow payments can have a significant impact on the Purchase-to-Pay process. Leveraging Celonis for VIM, the company was able to reduce cycle times by 27%.
- Purchase Order conformance increased from 65% to 88% in 12 months: Purchases without POs cause significant manual work, require additional approvals and reduce payment times. As part of Project Horizon
- Credit Memo clearance improved by 68 days in 2024: Credit memos that are not cleared against open invoices impact working capital and carry the risk of being written off. In order to avoid writing off old credit memos, the team implemented the Celonis Open Credit Memo App and began weekly monitoring of credit memos.
- Identified and prevented potential duplicate spend: Zespri used the Celonis Duplicate Invoice Checker App to proactively prevent duplicate payments and assist in accelerated recovery to avoid a negative impact on working capital.
