Customer challenges

• Rapid growth

• Cost control

• Distributed team

Our customer was faced with a rapidly growing business, which was great, but as the business grew, so the costs and associated Accounts Payable (AP) invoices.

The customer had tried the old proven 3 way matching solution of using a PO, AP and Goods Receipt. Unfortunately, it just didn’t seem practical to have PO’s for everything. They gave us the example of when they needed to call a plumber in the middle of the night, because all the toilets were overflowing at one of their sites.

Options

We discussed with the customer some options. One was to eliminate where possible invoices. We had just finished a project where we moved to suppliers electronically sending in very detailed, but fully consolidated invoices each month. This wasn’t really an option, as this customer had thousands of suppliers ranging from mum and dad businesses to multinationals.

• Standing PO’s - set the maximum amount per month for each supplier

• Mobile phones to allow PO’s to be created when working in the field

• Automate the process

Solution

1. We sourced the appropriate data capture technology that would use OCR to extract meta-data.

2. Created a workflow management solution to ensure the correct delegation of authority.

3. Integrated the invoices into the finance system.

4. Developed key reporting as required for management.

Project challenges

1. As the customer was growing rapidly, the delegation of authority was not well defined. It started off as simple, any invoice over $10k must be approved by the CEO. That soon became a real bottleneck!

2. Along with growth, more roles had to be added into the workflow. This made the original workflow harder to manage. When staff were on leave, invoices weren’t getting approved. This customer prides themselves on treating their suppliers like their customers; so it was a real concern to them.

3. Quality of data - we all knew from the beginning that the quality of the OCR would be challenging. What was actually more challenging was the way each line manager would categorise their expenses. Who would have expected that 50 managers would pick the same GL code for invoices from Bunnings?