The largest specialty retailer in North America, PetSmart, partnered with Alitek to modernize its SAP OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) platform and eliminate years of accumulated customization. The reimplementation streamlined invoice processing, improved automation, and created a stable foundation for future SAP S/4HANA transformation.
Background
PetSmart is one of North America’s largest pet specialty retailers, operating hundreds of stores, distribution centers, and digital commerce platforms that generate significant accounts payable activity.
Processing thousands of vendor invoices across merchandise suppliers, logistics providers, and operational vendors requires a reliable and highly scalable SAP invoice management environment.
PetSmart originally implemented SAP OpenText VIM to automate invoice capture, validation, and approval workflows across its enterprise.
Over time, however, the platform accumulated extensive custom development that increased system complexity and made upgrades difficult.
This growing technical debt limited the organization’s ability to fully leverage standard SAP VIM functionality while introducing operational inefficiencies and long term upgrade risk.
The Challenge
PetSmart’s SAP OpenText VIM environment contained more than 235 custom objects that complicated maintenance, slowed upgrades, and increased operational risk. Manual invoice processing steps, redundant approval routing, and inconsistent validation logic created delays while preventing the organization from fully benefiting from modern invoice automation capabilities.
Without a strategic redesign, the heavily customized environment also threatened long term SAP S/4HANA readiness and increased the cost and complexity of future transformation initiatives.
The Solution
Alitek led a comprehensive SAP OpenText VIM reimplementation focused on reducing customization, modernizing invoice automation, and aligning the platform with standard Vendor Invoice Management best practices.
The project upgraded the environment from OpenText VIM 7.5 SP7 to VIM 7.6 SP8, enabling access to improved functionality, enhanced automation features, and a more stable SAP integration framework.
Intelligent Capture and the OpenText Validation Client were implemented to automate invoice data extraction and validation during document intake. These technologies significantly reduced manual data entry while improving invoice accuracy and processing consistency.
Alitek performed a detailed assessment of existing configurations, custom code, and workflow logic across the VIM environment. The team systematically replaced unnecessary custom development with standard SAP OpenText VIM capabilities wherever possible.
This redesign reduced custom objects from 235 to only 27, dramatically lowering technical debt and simplifying long term system maintenance.
Invoice approval workflows were also redesigned to better reflect PetSmart’s operational structure and accounts payable processes. Redundant approval steps were eliminated while improving exception handling and invoice routing efficiency.
Enhancements were implemented to support multi purchase order invoices, multi currency validation, and integration with external posting processes within the SAP environment.
Additional reporting and monitoring capabilities were introduced to provide improved visibility into invoice workflow performance, blocked invoices, and processing exceptions. These insights allow accounts payable teams to resolve issues faster and maintain stronger financial governance.
Results and Outcomes
The SAP OpenText VIM reimplementation significantly simplified PetSmart’s invoice management landscape while delivering measurable operational improvements. Reduced customization created a more stable platform and lowered future upgrade risk.
Automated invoice capture and improved validation processes accelerated invoice processing while reducing manual intervention across the accounts payable organization.
The new environment also strengthened governance, improved transparency into invoice workflows, and positioned PetSmart for smoother SAP upgrades and future S/4HANA migration initiatives.
Project Highlights
Conclusion
By modernizing its SAP OpenText Vendor Invoice Management platform, PetSmart transformed a complex and heavily customized system into a streamlined enterprise invoice automation solution.
Alitek’s structured reimplementation reduced technical debt, improved invoice processing performance, and positioned the organization for long term SAP innovation and digital finance transformation.
