From 123 Weekly Hours of Manual Work to 182% ROI Process Automation
How Grupo HZ uncovered hidden inefficiencies across 6 departments — in a fraction of the time traditional consulting would take.
Interviews
Satisfaction
Discovery Hours Saved
FTEs Reallocated
ROI
The Challenge
Grupo HZ is a multi-company industrial holding with over 65 years of history in the packaging and paperboard industry. With operations spanning Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, the group manages multiple business units — including INTERPACK and Celomat — under a shared Shared Services center covering Administration, Finance, Procurement, and Treasury.
Excel, email, and manual validations were the backbone of critical processes — no integrated workflows. There was no visibility into where time was being lost or which processes had the highest automation potential. ~123 hours per week were spent on repetitive, manual tasks across Procurement, Accounts Payable, Treasury, Credit & Collections, Sales (Chile), and Planning/Costing. Pricing errors in SAP went undetected without cross-checks, creating downstream issues in billing and auditing.
The opportunity: build a data-driven roadmap for digital transformation — prioritized by impact, not assumptions.
Methodology
The Horizon Approach
Horizon deployed its AI-powered discovery platform to conduct 55 structured interviews across 6 departments — asynchronously, without blocking anyone's calendar.
The platform identified 33 actionable findings and quantified the time impact of each inefficiency down to the hour, per area: Procurement — 48.3 h/week, Accounts Payable — 34 h/week, Treasury — 21.55 h/week, Credit & Collections — 10.5 h/week, Sales / Commercial Chile — 6.5 h/week, Planning/Costing — 2.9 h/week. All areas with 50–90% automation potential.
Recommended solutions included RPA, SAP Workflow, SAP Ariba, OCR, Power BI, and Power Automate — each mapped to specific processes with clear implementation paths.
Traditional consulting: +159 discovery hours saved with Horizon.
The Results
This wasn't just a process audit — it was a strategic unlock. Grupo HZ gained a clear, quantified picture of where time and capacity were being lost, a prioritized transformation roadmap focused on high-impact initiatives, and executive-ready evidence to align business unit leaders (INTERPACK, Celomat) around a shared automation agenda.
The engagement shifted the mindset from "we need more people" to "we need smarter processes" — freeing ~3 FTEs for strategic work without adding headcount.
Key Results
55
Interviews
8.5 / 10
Satisfaction
+159
Discovery Hours Saved
3
FTEs Reallocated
182%
ROI
| Process Area | Before | After | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Process Discovery | Manual interviews, fragmented visibility across 6 departments | 55 AI-driven async interviews, 100% department coverage | 159 hours saved vs. traditional consulting |
| Insights Generation | No quantified view of time loss per area | 33 actionable findings with h/week impact per area | Evidence-based prioritization |
| Automation Roadmap | No roadmap — assumed priorities, no data | Solutions mapped per process (RPA, SAP, OCR, Power BI) with 50–90% automation potential | Clear digital transformation path |
| Headcount Allocation | ~3 FTEs absorbed in manual, repetitive work | 3 FTEs reallocated to strategic work | No headcount added |
| ROI | No measurement framework | 182% ROI | Immediate economic validation |
182% ROI Achieved in the pilot
Immediate economic validation of Horizon's AI-driven discovery approach.
What People Said
“It's great that we're thinking about optimizing time — so people can focus on making decisions instead of chasing data.”
Supply CH Facilitator — Grupo HZ