Kuehne+Nagel: Eliminating Tedious Work in Weeks
Beyond Work
Wed Jan 22 2025
As one of the world’s largest logistics companies with tens of thousands of employees operating in over 100 countries, Kuehne+Nagel faced mountains of busywork every month. Beyond Work’s approach to enterprise work outcomes eliminated the most tedious tasks in a matter of weeks - slashing invoice review time by a factor of ten and cutting cash allocation from hours to minutes - freeing people to focus on what truly matters.
As one of the world’s largest logistics companies, operating in over 100 countries with tens of thousands of employees, Kuehne+Nagel moves massive volumes of goods, documents, and payments every day. Dealing with parked invoices and cash allocations had always drained both time and morale. Every month, they faced more than 75,000 invoices flagged as unprocessable, all requiring human intervention. Finance teams also spent hours each day manually allocating over 400,000 open items a year to the right bank statements and customer payments. Old approaches, including rigid RPA tools, demanded months of effort to configure and still couldn’t keep pace with changing business conditions. The work never seemed to ease, and people were stuck sifting through documents rather than focusing on the important stuff.
Turning to the Beyond Work AI platform changed the equation. It didn’t just automate tedious corporate tasks; it learned from them. Instead of adding another layer of software that required constant tinkering, it took on the busywork directly. By understanding data gaps and spotting inconsistencies, it reduced business inefficiencies with AI that got smarter over time. With Beyond Work’s approach to enterprise work outcomes, 80% of all suppliers could be handled without any human input. The repetitive review of parked invoices shrank dramatically, boosting productivity by a factor of ten and freeing people to spend their time on the few complex issues that actually mattered. The same applied to cash allocations. The system pinpointed correct matches with high accuracy and cut processing time by a factor of eight, dropping a four-hour chore down to 30 minutes, while also improving the quality of matches by a third.
A key factor behind this quick turnaround was the platform’s unique Workblock architecture. Rather than getting bogged down in months of setup, Kuehne+Nagel could design and deploy these solutions in weeks. It offered adaptive AI tools for corporate experimentation, letting the company try new approaches without a lengthy wait. The result wasn’t buzzwords and empty promises. It was a reduction in the annoying busywork that had long plagued everyday operations. What emerged was a leaner, more responsive way to handle core financial tasks - one that felt practical, authentic, and aligned with the kind of work people actually wanted to do.
Turning to the Beyond Work AI platform changed the equation. It didn’t just automate tedious corporate tasks; it learned from them. Instead of adding another layer of software that required constant tinkering, it took on the busywork directly. By understanding data gaps and spotting inconsistencies, it reduced business inefficiencies with AI that got smarter over time. With Beyond Work’s approach to enterprise work outcomes, 80% of all suppliers could be handled without any human input. The repetitive review of parked invoices shrank dramatically, boosting productivity by a factor of ten and freeing people to spend their time on the few complex issues that actually mattered. The same applied to cash allocations. The system pinpointed correct matches with high accuracy and cut processing time by a factor of eight, dropping a four-hour chore down to 30 minutes, while also improving the quality of matches by a third.
A key factor behind this quick turnaround was the platform’s unique Workblock architecture. Rather than getting bogged down in months of setup, Kuehne+Nagel could design and deploy these solutions in weeks. It offered adaptive AI tools for corporate experimentation, letting the company try new approaches without a lengthy wait. The result wasn’t buzzwords and empty promises. It was a reduction in the annoying busywork that had long plagued everyday operations. What emerged was a leaner, more responsive way to handle core financial tasks - one that felt practical, authentic, and aligned with the kind of work people actually wanted to do.