Hearst uses embedded AI for invoice recognition, cash management, and supplier-payment decisions

Overview

Hearst launched Project UniFi to standardize finance, HR, and procurement on Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, consolidating 19 general ledgers into one chart of accounts and accelerating financial close by 66%. Hearst uses automation and embedded AI to support invoice recognition, cash management, and supplier-payment decisions; intelligent payments help identify suppliers eligible for early-payment discounts across 40,000 vendor relationships.

The challenge

Finance managed 19 general ledgers and dozens of tools tailored to individual business units; quarterly closes stretched into weeks, forecasting varied across the portfolio, and analytics stayed siloed. HR faced thousands of job codes, manual onboarding, and fragmented workforce data that made it harder to support consistent reporting and connect workforce planning with business performance. Procurement needed more consistent controls, a clearer view of spend and cash management, and better ways to manage supplier payments across a large vendor base.

The solution

Hearst launched Project UniFi to replace decades of legacy systems with Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, bringing together Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP (including EPM and Procurement) and Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM. Hearst uses automation and embedded artificial intelligence to support invoice recognition, cash management, and supplier-payment decisions; intelligent payments help identify suppliers eligible for early-payment discounts across 40,000 vendor relationships.

Reported business value

Hearst accelerated financial close by 66% after consolidating 19 general ledgers into one chart of accounts, used early-payment discounts across 40,000 vendors to save hundreds of thousands of dollars, reduced HR job codes from 7,000 to 1,700, accelerated new-hire productivity by more than 30 days, and reduced IT support costs through quarterly updates.