Case study - 4
JILFORA CONSULTING
Autonomous Accounts Payable for a Growth-Focused Healthcare Provider
Client Overview
A small-sized, rapidly growing healthcare provider operating a network of specialized clinics.
Background
The client provides critical patient care services, and their operational focus is rightly on health outcomes and compliance. However, their back-office functions, particularly Accounts Payable, were struggling to keep up with the complexity and volume of their operations. The company processes thousands of invoices monthly for medical supplies, equipment leases, pharmaceuticals, and facility services from a diverse set of vendors. This manual workload was diverting resources and attention away from strategic growth and patient care initiatives.
Implementation Approach
A forward-thinking, phased approach was used to deploy the autonomous agent, ensuring a seamless integration with existing systems and minimal disruption in the small team:
- Discovery and System Mapping
- Agent Configuration and Training protocols
- Staged Testing & Transition Mode
- Autonomous Deployment & Monitoring
Challenges
The client's AP department was a bottleneck, characterized by significant inefficiencies that created financial and operational risks:
- Excessive Manual Touchpoints: The entire invoice lifecycle was fragmented and manual. Staff had to physically validate invoice details against purchase orders and delivery receipts, manually handle any exceptions or discrepancies, chase approvals via email, and perform manual reconciliation.
- High Error Rates & Delays: The manual nature of the process led to frequent data entry errors, incorrect coding for medical departments, and significant delays. This operational friction was a constant drain on productivity.
- Financial Penalties and Missed Opportunities: Processing delays frequently resulted in late payment penalties and strained relationships with critical medical suppliers. Furthermore, the inefficiency meant the company consistently missed out on early payment discounts, leaving money on the table.
Solution
The client deployed a sophisticated Autonomous AP Agent, a form of Agentic AI, to completely revolutionize their payables process. This single solution was designed to think, learn, and act independently.
- Autonomous End-to-End Management: This AI agent independently manages the entire invoice lifecycle. It ingests invoices from any source (email, portal), uses advanced OCR to extract data, performs 2-way or 3-way matching against POs and goods receipts, and correctly codes expenses to the right department.
- Intelligent Exception Handling: When the agent encounters a discrepancy (e.g., a price variance), it doesn't just flag it. It initiates a resolution workflow by automatically contacting the vendor or internal stakeholder, analyzing the response, and learning from the outcome to handle similar issues on its own in the future.
- Adaptation to Business Rules: The agent understands and adapts to the company's business rules. If an invoice for a specific medical device is over a certain amount, it knows to route it to the clinic's management for approval before proceeding. It orchestrates these tasks across different systems without human intervention.
- Proactive Payment Optimization: The agent actively identifies opportunities for early payment discounts. It automatically schedules payments to capture these discounts, directly improving the company's bottom line.
Client Testimonials
"We are a healthcare company, not a data entry company. The autonomous AP agent has been transformative. It has completely eliminated the manual chores and allows my team to focus on financial analysis and vendor strategy. The agent processes invoices with an accuracy we could never achieve manually. It's like having a super-efficient, self-managing team member, allowing us to scale our operations without scaling our overhead."
RESULTS & IMPACT
Operational Results
- Reduced manual touchpoints in the process by 95%
- Decreased end-to-end processing time from weeks to hours
- Achieved a 99.9% accuracy rate in data processing and validation
- Increased capture of early payment discounts by 40%, generating significant cost savings
Strategic Impact
- Enhanced focus on core mission by automating non-core functions, freeing capital to invest in patient care technology
- Strengthened supply chain relationships through timely and accurate payments to crucial medical suppliers
- Enabled scalability - the company can now double or triple invoice volumes without adding AP staff
- Improved financial governance with a fully auditable trail for every transaction, simplifying healthcare compliance