Five Years In and Still Getting Better: The Hilmar Cheese and DataServ Partnership

Key Results:

6,425+ invoices processed monthly across PO and non-PO categories
Invoice Processing Machine™ capture accuracy at 99.9-100% every month for the past year
PO invoices averaging 4.7 days to complete; non-PO invoices averaging 4.8 days
PO invoices averaging just 1.52 touches, down from 1.75 the prior period
Vendor Not Found exceptions down 38% period over period
AutoVouch™ touchless rate trending upward, with clear pathway to continued gains

Key Stats:

Executive Summary

Hilmar Cheese Company is one of the world’s largest cheese manufacturers, producing a variety of cheeses, whey proteins, and lactose from state-of-the-art facilities in California and Texas and serving customers in more than 50 countries. With approximately 1,400 employees and high invoice volumes, Hilmar’s AP operation runs at significant scale with a lean team that depends on automation to keep pace.

When Hilmar partnered with DataServ in 2021, AP automation had been on the company’s project list for seven years. The goals were clear: eliminate paper, improve visibility, establish an exception-based workflow, and create a more scalable foundation for a team processing high invoice volumes with limited headcount. DataServ delivered on that foundation. What has defined the partnership since is what happens after go-live.

Outcomes

A Paperless, Exceptions-Based AP Operation
Hilmar eliminated paper-based invoice handling entirely, including the manual printing, scanning, and physical routing that had made exception resolution especially burdensome. AP teams now operate within a centralized, digital workflow where exceptions surface automatically and route to the right person without manual intervention.

Consistent Capture Accuracy at the Highest Level
The Invoice Processing Machine™ has delivered 99.9-100% capture accuracy every month for the past year, with near-zero error rates. That foundation enables everything downstream, from matching to AutoVouch™ to payment scheduling, to operate on clean, reliable data.

Improving Touch Rates and Cycle Times
PO invoices now average just 1.52 touches, a meaningful improvement from the prior period and a reflection of ongoing tuning work between Hilmar and DataServ. Both PO and non-PO invoices are completing in under five days.

Stronger Vendor Data Integrity
Vendor Not Found exceptions dropped 38% period over period. This improvement reflects both system refinements and the kind of upstream vendor data discipline that drives cleaner automation outcomes.

A Partnership Built for Continuous Improvement
DataServ’s engagement with Hilmar goes well beyond implementation support. Regular Executive Value Reviews, proactive performance analysis, and collaborative problem-solving on emerging challenges define how the two organizations work together. When issues arise, including those that originate outside AP entirely, DataServ works alongside Hilmar to identify root causes and find solutions.

Business Impact

The story of Hilmar’s AP automation success isn’t just about implementation. It’s about evolution.

Getting automation live is the starting point. Creating lasting business value requires a partnership that evolves as the organization evolves. At DataServ, we believe AP automation is a continuous journey of optimization, not a one-time deployment. As business priorities, processes, and technologies change, the most successful organizations continually refine how they work, uncover new opportunities for efficiency, and raise the bar for what automation can achieve.

That philosophy has shaped DataServ’s relationship with Hilmar since 2021. What began as a project to eliminate paper and establish an exceptions-based workflow has matured into an ongoing effort to improve process performance, increase automation rates, strengthen upstream data quality, and identify the next generation of operational improvements.

For Hilmar, that has meant not only refining system configuration but also surfacing upstream process issues that directly affect automation performance. As DataServ has explored in other client contexts, AP automation outcomes are heavily influenced by what happens before an invoice ever reaches the queue. When purchase orders are structured inconsistently or procurement processes generate exceptions that automation can’t resolve, the AP team absorbs the cost. Hilmar and DataServ are actively working through several of these dynamics together, with identifiable pathways to higher AutoVouch™ rates on the other side.

That’s the work DataServ is built for. Identifying the technical fix is one part of it. Helping an organization navigate the internal alignment needed to address upstream procurement behavior is another, and it’s the harder work. We’ve seen it with clients across industries: getting purchasing and AP aligned is where the real gains live, and it’s not something you can automate your way around. It takes a partner willing to stay in it.

DataServ is proud of what Hilmar has built, and proud to be part of building it.

Thoughts from Hilmar Cheese

“What sets DataServ apart is what happens after go-live. They don’t hand you a system and walk away. They stay in it with you, help you identify where the friction is coming from, and work through it alongside you. Five years in, that commitment hasn’t changed.”

Mindy Neves, Financial Shared Services Manager, Hilmar Cheese Company