From Regulatory Risk to Excellence: A Gas Operator’s Accounts Payable Transformation
60%
Reduction in exposure DGCCRF
23%
low-value invoices automatised
4
Advanced dashboards for executive control tower, commercial management, operational management and invoice management
In an increasingly regulated business environment, supplier payment delays can expose organizations to significant regulatory and reputational risks. One of the largest Europe's gas transmission operator, faced precisely this challenge following an initial audit by the DGCCRF (the French Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control). Partnering with OntraaK, the client launched an ambitious 12-month program to transform its Accounts Payable (AP) operations from regulatory compliance concern to operational excellence. The results were decisive: 60% reduction in regulatory exposure, comprehensive automation of low-value invoice processing, and the establishment of advanced operational dashboards that fundamentally changed how the organization manages its supplier payment processes.
Context and Objectives
As a major European energy infrastructure operator, the client manages complex procurement and payment processes involving thousands of suppliers across multiple countries and business units. The initial DGCCRF audit revealed systematic delays in supplier payments, exposing the organization to regulatory penalties and potential damage to critical supplier relationships. More fundamentally, the audit highlighted a deeper challenge: the absence of unified visibility into AP processes across the organization.
The customer’s AP operations suffered from fragmented process execution and limited data-driven insights. Different business units had evolved their own practices over time, making it difficult to understand where delays originated, why they occurred, and which interventions would deliver the greatest impact. The organization possessed vast amounts of transactional data across multiple systems, but this data remained siloed and underutilized for process improvement purposes.
Recognizing the strategic importance of addressing these challenges, the client engaged OntraaK to lead a comprehensive AP transformation. The engagement objectives were clear and ambitious:
harmonize process understanding across the organization;
identify root causes of payment delays through rigorous data analysis,
and implement sustainable solutions that would transform AP operations from diagnosis through to operational excellence.
The ultimate goal was not merely regulatory compliance, but the establishment of world-class AP capabilities that would deliver ongoing value to both the client and its supplier ecosystem.
Principal Actions and Methodology
OntraaK structured the transformation through a phased approach combining rapid proof-of-value with systematic industrialization and capability building. The methodology emphasized data-driven decision-making at every stage, ensuring that transformation efforts focused on the highest-impact opportunities.
Phase 1: Proof-of-Value and Opportunity Identification
The OntraaK team began with a comprehensive proof-of-value exercise designed to identify and quantify improvement opportunities through rigorous process intelligence. This phase involved four critical workstreams executed in parallel.
First, OntraaK conducted extensive data integration, extracting and consolidating invoice and payment data from multiple source systems. This required substantial data cleansing and the construction of robust data models for each source system, followed by a consolidated enterprise view. The team built connections to both SAP (the core ERP system) and EDIIS (Electronic Data Interchange for Invoice Submission, the standardized platform for electronic invoice exchange in France), ensuring comprehensive coverage of the invoice-to-pay process.
Second, the team executed thorough data validation in close collaboration with client’s AP teams. This collaborative approach ensured not only data accuracy but also alignment on KPI definitions and analytical filters, building organizational buy-in for the subsequent findings.
Third, OntraaK developed customized dashboards specifically designed to explore different root causes of payment delays and evaluate their respective impacts. Using Celonis as the process mining platform, these dashboards revealed the actual flow of invoices through client’s systems, highlighting bottlenecks, exceptions, and variations invisible in traditional reporting.
Finally, the team synthesized findings into a comprehensive opportunityassessment, identifying and presenting improvement initiatives substantiated by objective data analysis.
Three Priority Use Cases
The proof-of-value revealed three high-impact opportunities that became the focus of subsequent transformation efforts:
Late Invoice Receipt: Analysis revealed that 39% of late payments stemmed from invoices entering the system more than 50 days after the invoice date. This highlighted a critical upstream issue requiring supplier engagement and process redesign.
Non-Compliant Invoices and Red Circuit Processing: The data showed that 30% of non-compliant invoices were paid late, representing 23% of total payment value. These invoices entered a "red circuit" requiring manual correction and multiple rounds of follow-up, consuming disproportionate resources.
Small Invoice Processing: the client was processing 8,500 invoices under €500, representing 23% of invoice volume but less than 1% of payment value. The cost of manually processing these low-value invoices far exceeded their financial significance.
Phase 2: Industrialization and Solution Deployment
With opportunities clearly identified and quantified, OntraaK led the industrialization phase to transform insights into sustainable operational capabilities. This phase emphasized automation, tool development, and organizational enablement.
The team established live data connections to SAP and automated daily data injection from EDIIS, eliminating manual data extraction and enabling real-time process monitoring. OntraaK then collaborated with main stakeholders to prioritize deliverables, formalize internal business rules, and design solution mockups that would address each of the three priority use cases.
Development followed an agile, iterative approach. OntraaK built three core deliverables through successive refinement cycles, incorporating user feedback to ensure solutions met practical operational needs.
For low-value and backdated invoices, the team designed and implemented automation that eliminated manual processing entirely. For the more complex challenges of late receipt and non-compliant invoices, OntraaK developed sophisticated operational dashboards that fundamentally changed how the business managed these exceptions.
The engagement concluded with comprehensive handover and training sessions, ensuring client’s teams could independently operate and evolve the solutions. OntraaK's approach emphasized capability transfer, not consulting dependency.
Results Achieved
The 12-month transformation delivered substantial, measurable impact across multiple dimensions of AP performance, fundamentally changing both operational metrics and organizational capabilities.
Regulatory Exposure Reduction
Most critically, OntraaK's intervention achieved a 60% reduction in regulatory exposure to DGCCRF penalties. This dramatic improvement resulted from a combination of factors: automation of routine tasks such as follow-up communications, enhanced visibility enabling proactive exception management, and productivity gains that allowed AP teams to process invoices more rapidly.
The reduction in late payments not only addressed regulatory compliance but also strengthened supplier relationships and improved client’s reputation as a reliable payment partner.
Automation of Low-Impact Processing
The transformation automated end-to-end processing for two categories of invoices that had previously consumed significant manual effort. Backdated invoices and small-value invoices (under €500) now flow through automated workflows, freeing AP staff to focus on complex exceptions and strategic supplier relationships.
Advanced Operational Dashboards
OntraaK delivered three sophisticated dashboards that transformed AP operations from reactive firefighting to proactive management:
The Accountant Workbench provides each AP team member with a personalized view of invoices assigned to them, with intelligent prioritization based on urgency, value, and compliance risk. This tool eliminates the previous practice of manually sorting through queues and ensures that attention focuses on the highest-priority items.
The Team Performance Dashboard equips AP managers with comprehensive metrics on team workload and productivity. This visibility enables better resource allocation, identifies training needs, and supports objective performance conversations based on data rather than anecdote.
The Use Case Monitoring Dashboard tracks key indicators related to the three improvement initiatives, enabling leadership to monitor transformation impact and identify emerging issues before they escalate. This dashboard has become a cornerstone of the client’s continuous improvement approach, with metrics reviewed regularly in management forums.
Beyond these specific deliverables, OntraaK established an Executive Control Tower that provides senior leadership with comprehensive visibility into AP performance, supplier payment trends, and transformation progress.
Strategic Lessons
This collaboration offers valuable insights for organizations pursuing finance operations transformation in regulated environments. Several lessons emerge as particularly significant.
Regulatory pressure can catalyze operational excellence: rather than treating the DGCCRF audit as merely a compliance exercise, OntraaK used it as a trigger for comprehensive process transformation. Organizations that view regulatory requirements as opportunities for improvement, not obstacles to navigate, position themselves for sustained competitive advantage.
Data integration precedes insight: OntraaK's investment in rigorous data cleansing, model building, and validation proved essential to subsequent success. Organizations that skip this foundational work inevitably build improvement initiatives on flawed assumptions, leading to suboptimal results and stakeholder skepticism.
Differentiated treatment drives efficiency: The recognition that not all invoices deserve equal attention, exemplified by the low-value invoice automation, represents a fundamental shift from uniform process design to intelligent segmentation. Leading organizations increasingly apply this principle across finance operations, allocating resources based on value and complexity rather than treating all transactions identically.
Visualization enables action: The operational dashboards transformed abstract data into actionable insights accessible to frontline staff. Effective process intelligence requires not just sophisticated analytics but also intuitive interfaces that empower users to make better decisions in their daily work.
Sustainable transformation requires capability transfer: OntraaK's emphasis on training and handover ensured that client’s teams could continue improving AP operations long after the engagement concluded.
As finance functions across industries confront pressure to reduce costs while improving compliance and supplier relationships, this journey with OntraaK illuminates a proven path: leverage process intelligence to understand current state objectively, prioritize improvements based on data-driven impact assessment, and build operational capabilities that enable continuous evolution.
