https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/feature/How-AI-helps-Henry-Schein-Ones-accounts-payable-team
As an accounts payable supervisor at dental software provider Henry Schein One, Aubrey Saunders was tasked with updating the company's accounts payable system.
"We were doing things in a very archaic way," Saunders said. "We wanted to bring our AP system into the 21st century."
Updating the system for the current age meant enabling payment vendors to upload invoices or submit changes to their information to a cloud platform. Previously, payment vendors would have to email a PDF to Henry Schein One.
After researching, in 2022, Saunders came across Pipefy, an AI automation vendor.
"Ultimately, the thing that set them apart was the versatility and customization available in Pipefy," she said.
She added that with some other AI vendors she considered, many payment vendors required customers to have a license before using the AI platform. Instead, Pipefy is cloud-based, so any payment vendor can submit forms to Henry Schein without paying for another license, making it cost-effective.
"It was also customizable, which is fabulous," Saunders said. "Instead of changing our policies to fit the software, we could build software to fit our policies. We didn't have to reinvent the wheel."
Pipefy started in 2015 as a provider of a low-code/no-code platform specializing in service management processes.
"Our goal has always been to empower the doers to improve their processes inside their companies and to make a difference and improve the efficiencies of the processes they own," said Rodrigo Subirá, AI product manager at Pipefy.
Since the company's founding and the quick evolution of generative AI, Pipefy has also evolved to include AI technology and reasoning capabilities as part of its engine. This lets users engage more with the platform by asking complex questions that the process can be trained on, Subirá said.
Most of the AI features on Pipefy's platform are built on top of OpenAI's generative AI models, but the startup also uses other models, including Google's, depending on the customer's needs.
"Customers do not need to know which one they're using," Subirá said. "We work for their job to be done, for their task at the moment, and then Pipefy will take care of the rest. We will absorb this complexity of choosing between models."
He added that with the addition of AI, Pipefy's focus is on the application of AI in day-to-day processes, not for customers to build specialized AI models.
For Saunders, Pipefy is helpful in onboarding new vendors. For instance, if the dental software distribution company wants to buy software from a new vendor, it has to get a W-9 form requesting a taxpayer ID number from the vendor, along with banking information.
The vendor fills out a form to input the information. In turn, Henry Schein One places a purchase order by filling out a form. Then, the Pipefy software routes it through the approval process, generates a PDF copy, and sends it to the person who requested it and the vendor.
The Pipefy AI software also helps when a vendor issues an invoice by extrapolating the information on the invoice, such as the invoice number and amount. Pipefy's AI system reads Henry Schein One's database to find the proper coding and the person who will approve it. Once the invoice is verified by a human, Pipefy routes it to the person who requested the purchase order and matches it to the invoice for validation.
After the invoice is approved by a member of the accounts payable team, the AI technology feeds it into the ERP system so that Henry Schein One can pay it.
"All of the processes -- from the point of the vendor onboarding to the point where the invoice is ready to pay -- are handled within Pipefy," Saunders said. The whole process takes about seven days with Pipefy. Previously, it took about three weeks, she said.
"Before Pipefy, we were on an archaic paper-based system," Saunders continued. "All of our approvals were done through emails. It was insane, and things would fall through the cracks all the time. That doesn't happen anymore."
Moreover, mistakes that occurred before -- such as when invoices were paid twice or numbers were flipped around -- are rare because Pipefy's AI software reads the invoice, and a human verifies it.
"It's almost like having two sets of eyes look at it," Saunders said. "It's really reduced the number of errors that we have."
While most of Saunders' team welcomed an AI system, she said some of her approving managers initially had trouble accessing the Pipefy system to approve invoices.
"They didn't understand," she said. "They were wary of the emails from Pipefy because we have a cyberattack protocol in place."
Despite the initial glitches, employees at Henry Schein One see Pipefy as a significant process improvement.
"The amount of efficiency that it has brought to our process is invaluable," Saunders said.
Saunders' team is also considering using Pipefy's AI chatbot feature to help with routine inquiries that the AP team gets, such as, "Where's this invoice? Has it been paid?"
"It would cut down on the time my team has to use in managing questions or things like that," Saunders said. "We'd be able to focus a lot more on things we need to."
Esther Shittu is an Informa TechTarget news writer and podcast host covering AI software and systems.
28 May 2025