AUTOGRILL, when Dematerialization brings Innovation and Efficiency

Autogrill is the world leader in travel catering services, present in 30 countries with over 46,000 employees and around 3,300 points of sale. It mainly operates in airports, highways, and train stations through concession contracts. It manages a portfolio of over 300 international and local brands.

The Challenge


In 2008, Autogrill reorganized its IT structure to improve innovation and efficiency. This new "demand and supply" model anticipated the administrative reorganization in 2012. That year, the Administrative Services Center (SSU Admin) was created to provide accounting services to the Business Units in Italy, France, and Spain. The reorganization included redesigning processes and creating a team dedicated to document management.

The services offered included invoice registration, asset movements, and reporting for financial closures. Change was necessary as processing operations were decentralized and independent. These processes mainly relied on paper documentation, with a small number of invoices being scanned after registration. Innovation was crucial to overcome the inefficiency of a manual and fragmented system.

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The Approach


To improve administrative processes, Autogrill decided to implement the Yubiq platform for dematerialization and document management. This facilitated the adoption of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), which today covers 65% of documents exchanged with suppliers. The process of digitizing paper invoices was also optimized using OCR technology, and the management of other documents was standardized by integrating everything into a single platform. This allowed most processes to be automated, enabling operators to focus on more complex tasks. Thanks to Yubiq, which assisted Autogrill in reorganizing supplier relationship activities, a dedicated team was able to handle invoice control and normalization. As a result, automation halved the number of pending invoices in the first three months, improving the entire business chain, including purchasing and logistics.

The Impact


Autogrill achieved a significant reduction in administrative costs, cutting them by 35% through more efficient management of queues and irrerdeadlines. After optimizing these processes in Italy, the company is planning to reintegrate document flows in France and Spain, where the annual invoice volume is around 150,000, compared to 540,000 invoices managed in Italy, covering both goods and services. The document management process has moved from a manual system to a much more efficient digital procedure, requiring a comprehensive view of flows and processes.

Autogrill's long-term goal is to migrate all document and administrative processes, including those related to delivery and transport, to a new digital platform. The company intends to create a single integrated ecosystem for managing documents, processes, and workflows, where the platform will directly receive content generated by Google tools, already used internally. These tools allow for managing every phase of the document lifecycle, from creation and collaborative development to production and archiving, optimizing efficiency and traceability of all business activities.

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