Case Study
Kruger Products, one of Canada’s leading manufacturers of tissue and paper-based products, first partnered with Ashling to improve efficiency in their Order Management process. Leveraging Celonis and Ashling’s methodology, the engagement quickly expanded into Accounts Receivable (AR), where broader opportunities across finance and supply chain emerged.
Results at a Glance
One of the most challenging areas within the AR function for manufacturers and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies is deductions management. This often involves planning for, organizing, and tracking promotions, discounts, and rebates. Each deduction typically arrives with its own documentation, format, and justification, creating a highly manual and inconsistent process for finance teams to review.
Ashling and Kruger identified this as a prime candidate to introduce process standardization and automation. Together, they launched a focused initiative to map out the deductions process, uncover the root causes of delays and cost inefficiencies, and build a scalable automation roadmap for transformation.
What Is Deductions Management?
For those unfamiliar with the term, deductions management refers to how a business handles short-payments or discrepancies on customer invoices. In CPG and manufacturing, this often means chasing down unclear reasons for underpayments—each with its own PDF, email thread, or claims form. It’s time-consuming, inconsistent, and often costly when left unmanaged. By standardizing and automating parts of this process, companies gain both efficiency and control.
Our Approach
Discover: Grounding Strategy in Reality
The engagement began with targeted interviews and business analysis sessions across finance and supply chain teams. These sessions helped Ashling understand the nuances of Kruger’s AR operations, isolate key pain points, and identify where inefficiencies were driving up costs or cycle times.
Quantify: Bringing Process Data to Life
Ashling leveraged Celonis to map Kruger’s AR and deductions processes based on actual system data. This enabled the team to validate early hypotheses with fact-based insights and identify bottlenecks, rework loops, and gaps in documentation or traceability. One of the most impactful findings: a 60%+ cost increase in a specific deductions path, which had previously gone unnoticed.
Realize: Turning Insight Into Action
With a clear picture of the current state, Ashling delivered a value-based roadmap across three solution types:
Two automations were implemented during this phase, both designed to reduce processing delays, improve accuracy, and free up time for more strategic finance work.
The Impact
Kruger now has a clear transformation roadmap in place to streamline and automate one of the most complex areas of its finance operations. With support from Ashling, the team identified and prioritized high-impact opportunities and implemented two automations that reduced manual effort by 75%, resulting in reduced processing delays, improved accuracy, and more time back to the team for strategic finance work.
These enhancements are laying the groundwork for a more structured, reliable deductions process—moving away from manual workarounds and toward greater control and efficiency. The deductions management app also acts as a control tower, enabling the team to proactively flag anomalies, spot emerging trends, and drive continuous improvement across the function.
By validating improvement areas with Celonis, Kruger gained confidence in where to focus its efforts. The data-driven insights replaced anecdotal assumptions and helped align stakeholders around clear value drivers.
Why Celonis Made the Difference
End-to-End Visibility
By connecting data across Order Management and Accounts Receivable, Ashling helped Kruger create a unified view of the Order-to-Cash journey—enabling smarter, faster decisions.
Speed & Flexibility
Ashling rapidly deployed Celonis in AR to generate value early and pilot solutions before scaling them across teams.
Operational Intelligence
Unlike traditional reporting, Celonis dashboards empower Kruger to act in near real-time, spot anomalies like cost spikes, and intervene before problems escalate.
Technology Used
