Paragon Footwear Runs INR 650 Crore in Vendor Payments Through a Single Automated System

The challenge

Paragon Footwear manages a supply chain of 8,000+ vendors and processes INR 650 Crore in annual payments. The AP function handled a mix of e-invoices, emailed PDFs, and paper documents with no automated capture or validation in place.

Manual GST compliance checks consumed significant team time. With 8,000 vendors across a complex procurement network, verifying GSTIN validity and catching filing mismatches before submission was a daily burden that scaled directly with invoice volume. Errors that reached the payment queue created reconciliation work downstream.

Vendor onboarding had no compliance framework. Without automated verification, activating new vendors required manual document collection and review - creating delays and introducing non-compliant vendors into the payment flow.

SAP HANA added integration complexity. Standard AP tools were either expensive to integrate, required significant customisation, or introduced licensing overhead that made the business case difficult to justify.

What IQSS delivered

Multi-format invoice capture via ICR/OCR and email ingestion - automatically extracting data from e-invoices, PDFs, and paper documents into a single processing queue. Manual data entry at intake was eliminated.

Approval workflows were configured to Paragon’s delegation structure. Every invoice routes to the correct approver based on amount, category, and cost centre - without manual routing decisions.

GST compliance checks and vendor onboarding verification were embedded at intake. Vendors are validated before activation. Invoices are checked for GST accuracy before reaching the payment queue.

SAP HANA integration was implemented cleanly - resolving the licensing and configuration complexity that had made other tools impractical, without introducing additional licensing overhead.

Three additional modules were deployed beyond core AP: Purchase (centralised PO and quotation management), Job Work (real-time tracking of outsourced manufacturing processes), and Asset Purchase (structured capital procurement).