Blue Star

Blue Star, a dominant force in Asia’s air conditioning and commercial refrigeration market, operates with a nationwide presence of 32 offices, five advanced manufacturing facilities, and over 2,900 channel partners. As the second-largest homegrown brand in its sector, Blue Star’s influence spans across industries and borders. But operational scale often comes with process fragmentation.

With a portfolio that spans seven independently managed business units, each with its own procure-to-pay (P2P) workflows, Blue Star faced a common but critical challenge: inconsistency and inefficiency in invoice processing.

The Challenge: Manual Systems, Fragmented Processes

Despite its scale and market strength, Blue Star’s internal finance operations—especially accounts payables—were heavily reliant on manual invoice handling. Each business vertical managed procurement and P2P processes independently, leading to:

• Duplicate data entry
• Frequent rework due to mismatches and errors
• Lack of visibility into end-to-end invoice cycles
• Escalating fulfillment and processing costs
• No centralized vendor interaction system or scalable reporting structure

The organization needed more than digitization—it needed automation with intelligence and control.

Our Approach: Finance Transformation Powered by RPA and Workflow Automation

Pave Agency was selected to architect and execute the transformation of Blue Star’s finance and accounting operations. Our solution began with a complete diagnostic of their AP ecosystem, identifying high-friction points, redundancies, and opportunities for scalable automation.

The core objectives were clear:

• Centralize supplier interactions
• Eliminate manual validation
• Create a consistent invoice lifecycle
• Surface measurable performance data

We implemented a modular, AI-augmented framework consisting of:

• A unified vendor portal, allowing suppliers across all business units to submit and track invoices in one centralized system
• TruBot RPA deployment to automatically validate and index invoices, reducing the risk of data entry errors and delays
• Finato, a web-based workflow engine, to manage the end-to-end movement of invoices from submission to approval
• TruBI, a business intelligence layer, offering live dashboards and granular reporting on AP performance and exception handling

The Impact: Efficiency Unlocked Across Finance Workflows

The transformation delivered quantifiable business value across Blue Star’s AP operations:

• 71% reduction in manual invoice touchpoints, freeing finance teams to focus on reconciliation and strategic analysis
• 3.46x faster invoice processing time, cutting average cycle time from 15+ days to under 5 days
• Unified vendor experience, improving supplier satisfaction and communication clarity across seven business units
• Real-time visibility into AP status, enabling leadership to make proactive, data-driven decisions

Additionally, fulfillment costs dropped significantly due to streamlined workflows and fewer delays in processing and approvals.

Automating for Financial Agility and Scale

Blue Star’s engagement with Pave Agency is a blueprint for how enterprise-scale finance operations can be re-engineered with automation and insight. By merging RPA, workflow systems, and real-time analytics, we didn’t just automate Blue Star’s invoice management—we redesigned how financial work gets done.

At Pave, we specialize in solving operational complexity through intelligent systems that scale with growth. For Blue Star, this wasn't just an upgrade. It was the beginning of a smarter, faster, and more agile financial future.