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Microsoft Manufacturing Australia

Komatsu Australia

Data Lake / Data Warehouse Modernization · Enterprise Knowledge Search · IT Operations Automation

“We needed to modernize our invoicing process, and automation was part of the answer,” says Eric Cheng, Digital Solutions Architect at Komatsu Australia.

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As part of its normal business operation, Komatsu Australia source their parts from over 250 global OEMs and local suppliers and receives hundreds of invoices per day.
Every inefficiency in the chain ripples along the entire workflow, slowing down processes across the company’s operations.
Receiving over 1,100 invoices from a single supplier alone left the small parts department scrambling to stay on top of the invoice influx, as well as perform the manual process of entering the invoices into its system.
Saving hundreds of hours of work Using Microsoft Power Automate and AI Builder , Komatsu Australia automated its invoicing process end-to-end from examining incoming invoices from their suppliers.

Reported impact

Business outcome

By automating the process for just this one supplier, Komatsu Australia processed 1,100 invoices in just three weeks and the company estimates it has already saved the parts department 300 hours of work per year.

  • Cost Reduction
  • Productivity Improvement
  • Scalability
  • Speed to Market

Solution

Komatsu Australia is the Australian subsidiary of Komatsu, an industry-leading manufacturer of construction, forestry, and mining equipment. “We needed to modernize our invoicing process, and automation was part of the answer,” says Eric Cheng, Digital Solutions Architect at Komatsu Australia. When the parts department at Komatsu Australia struggled to manually process nearly 52,000 invoices annually, it used Power Automate and AI Builder to automate its invoice processing workflow. The invoices are usually sent as PDFs to a shared Microsoft Outlook inbox monitored by the parts department, which consists of three people. By automating the process for just this one supplier, Komatsu Australia processed 1,100 invoices in just three weeks and the company estimates it has already saved the parts department 300 hours of work per year.

Solution architecture

6 components · 4 layers
  1. Compute
    • Azure Synapse Analytics Provides large-scale analytics and data processing for the solution.
  2. Storage
    • Azure SQL Stores structured operational and analytical data used by the application.
    • SharePoint Stores and shares internal content used by employees.
  3. Serving
    • Microsoft Teams Serves as the collaboration and frontline communications surface for the solution.
  4. Orchestration
    • Power Automate Automates cross-system workflow steps and repetitive tasks.
    • Microsoft Copilot Studio Builds enterprise copilots and orchestrates conversational workflows.

Architecture clues

  • Every inefficiency in the chain ripples along the entire workflow, slowing down processes across the company’s operations.
  • Figure 1: A custom AI Builder model analyzes and extracts data from the PDF invoices received by Komatsu Australia and a Power Automate cloud flow saves the extracted data into a SQL database which then executes corresponding desktop flows.
  • More about this diagram By using robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities, the solution is interoperable with the company’s legacy IBM AS400 mainframe system, which has no API layer available for integration, meaning direct access to the database is otherwise impossible.
  • Power Automate is part of the Microsoft Power Platform , which works seamlessly across the Azure ecosystem and connects to other solutions like Azure Synapse Azure SQL Database Microsoft Teams The solution works as follows (see Figure 2): The scheduled cloud flow examines incoming emails on a shared Outlook mailbox and downloads those that meet the format of PDF invoices.
  • Saving hundreds of hours of work Using Microsoft Power Automate and AI Builder , Komatsu Australia automated its invoicing process end-to-end from examining incoming invoices from their suppliers.
  • The invoices are usually sent as PDFs to a shared Microsoft Outlook inbox monitored by the parts department, which consists of three people.
  • The new invoicing process uses two types of automated “flows” within Power Automate: cloud flows and desktop flows.
  • When the parts department at Komatsu Australia struggled to manually process nearly 52,000 invoices annually, it used Power Automate and AI Builder to automate its invoice processing workflow.

Evidence from the source

By automating the process for just this one supplier, Komatsu Australia processed 1,100 invoices in just three weeks and the company estimates it has already saved the parts department 300 hours of work per year.
The invoices are usually sent as PDFs to a shared Microsoft Outlook inbox monitored by the parts department, which consists of three people.
When the parts department at Komatsu Australia struggled to manually process nearly 52,000 invoices annually, it used Power Automate and AI Builder to automate its invoice processing workflow.
“We needed to modernize our invoicing process, and automation was part of the answer,” says Eric Cheng, Digital Solutions Architect at Komatsu Australia.
Transparency Evidence & methodology 85/100 reference value · 87% confidence · 1 source

Review how this reference was scored and trace each normalized claim back to its documented source.

01

Scoring methodology

How scores are calculated

Customer Reference Value measures usefulness as a customer reference. Evidence Confidence measures the quality and traceability of available evidence, not independent verification.

Customer reference value85/100
  • Problem clarity20/20
    Measures whether the customer's operational problem is specific enough to compare.
  • Implementation depth15/25
    Rewards named components, data flow, integrations, and architecture detail.
  • Outcome specificity20/20
    Measures whether the reported benefit is concrete rather than a generic claim.
  • Quantified impact25/25
    3 metrics describe measurable impact.
  • Deployment scale5/10
    Rewards evidence of a live or scaled deployment and meaningful integration scope.
Evidence confidence87%
  • Source authority20/25
    The main evidence is an official vendor-published customer story.
  • Claim traceability21/25
    10 of 12 key fields link to a named source.
  • Direct evidence20/20
    4 direct source quotes retained.
  • Date provenance10/10
    The publication date comes from the source page or publisher.
  • Source transparency8/10
    1 source reference document publisher, URL, authority, retrieval, and supported fields.
  • Implementation specificity8/10
    Rewards source-backed components, data flow, quantified impact, and a specific outcome.
02

Traceability

Sources & provenance

Field coverage shows which facts each source supports. Dates are shown only when documented by the source.

  1. Microsoft

    Komatsu Australia customer story

    First-party
    https://www.microsoft.com/en/customers/story/1628106064451804013-komatsu-australia-manufacturing-power-automate
    Source type
    Vendor-published customer story
    Published
    Jun 7, 2023
    Supports
    • Customer
    • Business problem
    • Solution
    • Products
    • Solution components
    • Data flow
    • Integrations
    • technical area
    • use case category
    • Business outcome
    • outcome category
    • Metrics
    • Architecture
    • evidence quotes
    • Publication date

Date evidence

  • Published on source page Jun 7, 2023 · Microsoft · First-party
    Open date source
Not separately sourced Industry, Region, Company size. Treat these normalized attributes as lower-confidence until a dedicated source is added.

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