Integrate ERPs with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Generative AI
AstuteAP is an advanced, artificial intelligence-driven accounts payable automation solution designed to streamline supplier invoice processing across multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms.
The architecture leverages Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services and artificial intelligence (AI) to eliminate manual data entry, reduce errors, and to accelerate the accounts payable workflow. AstuteAP integrates with customer ERP systems to provide intelligent, automated invoice processing.
The solution provides the following benefits:
- Operational Efficiency: Reduces invoice processing costs and accelerates cycle times.
- Accuracy: Minimizes errors through AI-powered data extraction and validation.
- Scalability: Scales to handle varying invoice volumes.
- Visibility: Provides real-time tracking and reporting on invoice status.
- Compliance: Maintains auditable records of all invoice processing activities.
- Cost Reduction: Lowers processing costs through automation and efficiency gains.
AstuteAP leverages artificial intelligence throughout the invoice processing lifecycle:
- Document Processing: OCI Generative AI recognize and interpret various invoice formats and languages.
- Data Extraction: Machine learning algorithms identify and extract key information with high accuracy.
- Validation: AI compares extracted data against known patterns to flag discrepancies and potential errors.
- Processing: Intelligent workflow routing based on invoice attributes and business rules.
- Continuous Learning: Systems improve over time using machine learning from processed invoices.
AstuteAP offers seamless integration with existing enterprise systems:
- Pre-built Connectors: Ready integration with major ERP platforms including PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, and Ellucian Banner.
- API-First Design: OCI API Gateway facilitates connections with other business systems.
- Extensible Framework: The architecture supports custom integrations for specialized requirements.
Use Case: Automating Accounts Payable with AstuteAP
AstuteAP provides an intelligent accounts payable (AP) automation platform that integrates seamlessly with ERP systems, vendor portals, and banking interfaces.
AstuteAP leverages workflow automation, secure connectivity, and compliance controls to streamline AP operations.
Invoices are captured, interpreted, and matched to purchase orders (POs) automatically, with exceptions routed intelligently through a secure, cloud-native workflow.
This reduces manual effort by up to 80%, cuts invoice cycle time from days to hours, improves accuracy, and accelerates month-end close, all of which deliver immediate cost savings, stronger financial control, and a fully auditable AP process.
The solution uses the following high-level process:
- Invoice Capture:
- Invoices received by email or by using the portal are automatically ingested.
- Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) extracts key data from invoices such as vendor, purchase order number, date, amount, tax, and due date.
- Validation and Compliance:
- The system checks for duplicates, tax compliance, and vendor master data.
- Exceptions are routed to AP staff for resolution.
- ERP Integration: Approved invoices are posted directly to the ERP system such as PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, and Ellucian Banner.
- Reporting and Analytics:
- Dashboards provide visibility into liabilities, cycle times, and vendor performance.
- Audit trails ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)/General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Because the architecture enables touchless invoice processing, companies realize the following benefits:
- Reduce AP cycle time from 8 days to 1 day
- 85%+ invoices processed without human touch
- 80% reduction in manual data entry
- 70% fewer exceptions due to AI-driven validation
- Faster month-end close by 2 to 4 days
- Lower processing cost per invoice (from approximately $10 to less than $2)
- Faster, more reliable payments improve trust and improve vendor relations
This directly impacts:
- Cash flow visibility
- Vendor satisfaction
- Compliance & audit readiness
- Operational efficiency across finance teams
Architecture
The architecture provides secure, scalable conversational access to ERP data.
The following diagram illustrates the architecture:
oci-genai-erp-architecture-oracle.zip
The architectures comprises the following primary components:
- Customer ERP zone
- ERP System: Connects with supported platforms including PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, and Ellucian Banner.
- Integration Layer: Facilitates seamless communication between customer systems and AstuteAP.
- Oracle Cloud
Infrastructure (OCI) region
- Internet Gateway: Provides secure external access to the system
- OCI Site-to-Site VPN: Enables secure private network connections to OCI.
- Encryption: Ensures data security during transmission.
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Service Gateway: Provides secure connectivity to Oracle services.
- Virtual cloud network (VCN): Isolated network environment
containing with a public subnet and a private subnet.
The public subnet includes:
- Oracle APEX Application Development: Web-based user interface for invoice management and reporting.
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure API Gateway: Manages API traffic between services and external systems.
The private subnet includes:
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Load Balancer: Distributes traffic for high availability and resilience.
- Automation Engine Representational State Transfer (REST) Server: Core processing engine orchestrating the invoice automation workflow.
- Oracle Autonomous AI Database: Intelligent database platform for storing and analyzing invoice data.
- Astute AI Prompt Library: Repository of AI interaction templates for invoice processing.
- Oracle Service Network and AI layer
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Generative AI: Delivers AI-powered services for intelligent document processing using one of a number of supported large language models (LLM).
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management: Controls authentication and authorization.
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage: Stores invoice documents and related files.
- OCI Email Delivery: Handles notification services for workflow events.
- Security architecture
- Network Security: VPN connectivity and encryption for secure data transmission.
- Access Control: OCI Identity and Access Management for granular permission management.
- Data Protection: Secure document storage with appropriate access controls.
- Isolation: Public and private subnet separation for enhanced security posture.
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Service Gateway: Provides secure connectivity to Oracle services.
- Maximum Security Zone: All OCI resources are provisioned within a Maximum Security Zone to enforce Oracle-mandated security guardrails. This ensures security-by-default controls, such as mandatory encryption, restricted public access, controlled network configurations, and continuous compliance with OCI security policies.
- Network Security Groups (NSGs): Network Security Groups are used to define fine-grained ingress and egress rules at the workload level. NSGs enable precise traffic control between PeopleSoft tiers, AstuteAP services, and OCI Generative AI components, supporting a zero-trust network model and minimizing the attack surface.
The solution uses the following process flow:
- Invoice capture: Leverages automated invoice retrieval from multiple
sources and AI-enabled conversion to digital format using optical character
recognition (OCR) and intelligent recognition technologies.
- Supplier sends invoice by email, upload, by using the portal, or by electronic data interchange (EDI).
- AstuteAP automatically collects and stores the document in OCI Object Storage.
- AI interpretation and data extraction: Includes key-value pair
extraction with confidence scoring, automated validation and preprocessing of
invoice data, and error detection and correction through AI analysis.
- OCI Generative AI using large language models such as Cohere, Llama, or ChatGPT read the document.
- Key fields are extracted with confidence scoring.
- AI prompt library ensures consistent handling of different invoice formats.
- Validation and matching: Features intelligent routing through approval
workflows, seamless integration with target ERP systems for posting and payment
processing, and document storage for audit, look-up, and archival purposes.
- Automation engine validates extracted data against ERP master data.
- Performs 2-way / 3-way matching, vendor validation, tolerance checks.
- Detects duplicates, anomalies, and potential fraud.
- Exceptions are routed to AP staff for quick review.
- Approval workflow:
- If required, exception or non-PO invoices are routed for approval.
- Approvers use AstuteAP UI to Approve or Reject.
- ERP posting: After the invoice is validated and approved:
- The invoice is structured and prepared for the ERP format.
- The invoice is posted into ERP by using REST APIs.
- Storage and audit:
- Invoice PDF including extracted data is stored securely in OCI for audit and retrieval.
- Full processing history is maintained in audit records.
- Analytics and reporting: Features dashboard reporting for process
visibility and performance metrics, insights for financial operations optimization,
and fraud monitoring and alert capabilities. Autonomous AI Database provides dashboards for:
- Invoice status and cycle time
- Exceptions and bottlenecks
- Vendor spend analytics
- Month-end close readiness