Tommy Hilfiger Europe Reduces Cross-Border and Domestic Trading Costs Through Automated Invoicing Solution From IBM

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Nov 11, 2010, 09:05 ET

BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 11, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- From the Smarter Industries Symposium in Barcelona, Spain, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced Tommy Hilfiger Europe has selected an electronic invoicing software from IBM to reduce the cost of cross-border and domestic trading by automating its electronic invoicing processes.

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Tommy Hilfiger's accounts receivable department processes more than 30,000 invoices per month from 4,000 customers. The company wanted to improve profits by ensuring all invoices are processed accurately in order to be paid on-time and in-full. An end-to-end audit of accounts receivables processes found that invoices cost approximately one Euro each to print and post internationally. Additional costs were incurred in the manual process through lost receipts and man-hours needed to rectify errors and locate receipts.

To achieve its objectives, Tommy Hilfiger adopted software from Sterling Commerce, an IBM company, to automate its payments process, reduce the error rate in its invoice handling and speed up payments.

"To us, e-invoicing is the future of invoicing and we wish to be among the first companies in our industry to offer this service to our customers," said Frederick Kolff, vice president of Credit Management, Tommy Hilfiger. "Software from Sterling Commerce offers a terrific solution that improves the speed, accuracy and efficiency of our invoicing process and ensures compliance with all safety and auditing regulations in the various countries where we operate. As a result, our invoicing costs will reduce and our days sales outstanding will improve. Equally important to us is that we can have a positive impact on the environment from e-invoicing due to the huge amount of paper we will save."

The software, Sterling e-Invoicing, ensures automated tax and regulatory compliance across multiple countries. The system also archives invoices to meet specific country requirements, offers audit and reporting tools to accommodate tax authorities' audit and inquiry demands and provides signed PDF authentication and non-repudiation services globally. Sterling e-Invoicing can be deployed on-premise or as-a-service. Tommy Hilfiger opted for the on-premise Sterling e-Invoicing deployment to integrate tightly into its SAP system.

More information can be found at www.sterlingcommerce.com.