Client:
Japan Tobacco International
Japan Tobacco International (JTI) Ukraine is one of the country's leading tobacco companies, operating since 1993. It is a division of Japan Tobacco International Group, employing over 900 people across the country and maintaining a portfolio of well-known brands, including Winston, Camel, and Sobranie. The company holds approximately 22% market share in the Ukrainian tobacco market as of 2023.
Ukraine follows an excise tax collection and refund system based on physical stamps. JTI Ukraine has been recognized multiple times as a top employer in Ukraine and contributes significantly to the state budget through tax payments, having paid about UAH 14.5 billion in taxes in 2022.
- Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
- Operating since: 1993
- Leadership:
- Svitlana Sharamok (GM - JTI Ukraine)
- Eddy Pirard (CEO - Switzerland)
- Masamichi Terabatake (President and CEO - Japan)
- Industry: Tobacco Products
- Employee Count: ~500-1000
- Group Revenue: JPY 2657.8 Bn
The setup of the system on our site was seamless, thanks to the assistance provided by the Nanonets team. They guided us through the comprehensive process of building, pre- and post-processing our files to achieve the best output. The system interface is intuitive, making it easy to navigate across models and files, whether they are in recognition or already recognized. It's important to mention that the customer support is top-notch; they promptly respond to any reported issues and address them as quickly as possible.
The Challenge
The damaged tobacco goods are subject to refunds based on the information contained in the physical stamps. There were approximately 185,000 stamps that the operations team at JTI Ukraine was processing manually on an annual basis. Before we jump into the challenge that they faced, let's take a deeper look into the exact process followed and the associated challenges:
- The tobacco excise stamp files are created by JTI Ukraine for refund purposes, pertaining to damaged products. Each file contains 80-100 stamps along with tax ID information.
- There are 3 data points per stamp that need to be extracted, namely, “Date,” “Number,” and “Series.” JTI Ukraine processes 185,000 such stamps annually, which means about 555,000 data points that need to be extracted.
- Each of these documents goes to a person who extracts these data points manually and enters them into an Excel sheet.
The extracted data is then submitted to the central tax authorities and the refund gets processed. The turnaround time for this entire process was close to 24+ weeks. It was time-consuming and prone to errors.
The Solution
Nanonets helped automate the entire tax refund process end-to-end. Here is a quick look at the solution:
- Automated Import: Nanonets directly imported the stamp files from a folder in Google Drive eliminating the need for manual uploads.
- Auto-splitting: We then redirect the files to another model which splits them into images of each individual stamp.
- Duplicity Detection: All duplicate files are auto-detected and flagged to users.
- Data extraction: All 3 data points namely, “Date”, “Number” and “Series” are auto-extracted.
- Automated Export: The extracted data can then be exported in any desirable format.
