AT A GLANCE

Isaac Construction

INDUSTRY

• Construction

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Maintain reputation for on-time payment with suppliers
• Ease burden on accounts payable team chasing up paperwork
• Cope with business growth after acquiring another business

SOLUTION

• Esker Accounts Payable Automation delivered by the FUJIFILM Business Innovation Process Automation team

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• AP process now 100% paperless
• Fast and accurate invoice routing
• AI intelligently monitors and alerts errors & changes
• Immediate visibility across the procure-to-pay process

FOR MORE INFORMATION

FUJIFILM Business Innovation
W: https://betterbusiness-fbnz.fujifilm.com
New Zealand
E: kevin.ptak.pc@fujifilm.com
T: +64 21 275 4321

Christchurch-based Isaac Construction has earned a reputation for excellence by making sure everything it does is at the highest possible level of quality. Employing a team of more than 300 specialists, the company delivers a wide range of services, including construction, surfacing, bitumen products, transport, quarrying and professional contract management services.

Isaac recently acquired Blenheim’s Simcox Construction, adding a further 80 staff members active in civil construction, infrastructure works and earthmoving. Even prior to the acquisition, the accounts payable team were busy, often spending time chasing documents. While understandable and a practical reality in a company handling more than two thousand invoices every month, these situations were at odds with the organisation’s policy of paying its suppliers on time.

With the purchase of Simcox, the limitations of paper-based processes became painfully clear as increased volume exacerbated the situation.

“We’ve always done our best to pay on time. It’s reputational; when you get it right, people like to work for you – but paper has its limitations,” explains Arlee Folkers, Group CFO at Isaac Construction.

Folkers knew that Isaac would need a modern solution to maintain its hard-earned reputation.

After testing the market, the team decided to engage with the FUJIFILM team, who were recommending Esker Accounts Payable Automation.

Solution

The implementation process started with several presentations and then a collaborative workshop.

“This proved invaluable, you could tell FUJIFILM had done many of these deployments in the past. They involved everyone who would be touched by accounts payable automation – and they sequenced it very well, so people weren’t in the room unless necessary.”

“Once an invoice is in our system, we can track every single one with absolute ease.”

Attendees included a project manager, a technical specialist and account manager from FUJIFILM, Isaac’s accounts payable employees, the company accountant, a representative from Nimbus (the Enterprise Resource Planning solution used by the business), an IT specialist an external project manager for added oversight.

The additional resourcing was helpful, Folkers adds, because her accounts payable staff members were eager to get the solution in, having been at the coal face dealing with inadequate paper processes.

“They were experiencing frustration and continual problems which had them feeling like they weren’t on top of the job.”

The project went live after just 4 months.

Results

With Esker, the entire electronic system works seamlessly, eliminating paper in the process. Most importantly, Isaac Construction now enjoys complete visibility across the accounts payable workflow. “If someone rings about their invoice, we can answer immediately because we can see it, when and to whom it’s been submitted, as well as where it is in the process. And once an invoice is in our system, we can track every single one with absolute ease.”

As a cloud solution, alongside a mobile app, Esker also allows AP staff to approve on the go.

The system’s built-in AI is also helping with fraud detection, “We’ve also noticed intelligence in the Esker system. For example, a client’s bank account changed but they didn’t notify us. Esker picked it up, though, and sent an alert so we could verify the legitimacy of the change.”

The visibility and workflow delivered by Esker also ensures Isaac Construction has maintained its reputation with suppliers at its Christchurch and Blenheim operations. “We’ve gone from ‘two and a half’ people focused on accounts payable, down to two. And they now have room to breathe,” says Folkers. She describes the entire project as ‘a pleasure’.

“You don’t hear that about many implementations, but FUJIFILM Process Automation has shown that when you get all the right people in at the start, and you have a clear idea of what needs to be done, an enterprise software project doesn’t have to be a headache.”

“The thoroughness of the preparation, including seeing how all the various systems talk to one another, set the scene for what was the best implementation I’ve ever been involved in.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from FUJFILM Business Innovation

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AT A GLANCE

• Husqvarna Group

INDUSTRY

• Farm Machinery & Equipment

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Increase employee’s productivity and efficiency
• Reduce order entry errors
• Achieve 100 percent order visibility to improve customer response time

SOLUTION

• Esker’s Order Management

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• Significant time savings
• System can translate six languages

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Esker
W: https://www.esker.com.au
E:  info@esker.com.au
T: +61 2 8596 5100

Background
Husqvarna, a global leading producer of outdoor power products, was looking to optimise its order management process, as it was struggling to manually process a monthly volume of 3,000 orders, received in different formats (predominately fax, but paper, email and e-commerce as well). Husqvarna lacked visibility into its order processes, users faced difficulties in easily retrieving information and completing an order was very time consuming. To address these problems, the company selected Esker to automate its order management process to achieve multiple objectives.

We are able to process orders in any format, giving us the visibility to fulfil all orders in a timely and correct manner.

“Today, delivering an order is all about speed and accuracy. With the help of Esker, we are able to process orders in any format, giving us the visibility to fulfil all orders in a timely and correct manner.” says Kanae Ohtsuka, Global information services, Husqvarna Japan.

Solution
Fax continues to be widely used in Japan, however it remains very challenging to retrieve accurate information due to poor quality and content. Thanks to Esker’s Order Management solution, Husqvarna is now able to process all orders received via email, e-commerce platforms like Amazon and fax all on one platform. This has resulted in significant time savings as they no longer need to process orders on two separate platforms.

Particularly beneficial to Husqvarna was the fact that Esker’s solution interface is translated in more than six languages, including Japanese, which has
facilitated solution use internally and increased adoption rates among their customers.

Benefits
Husqvarna has enjoyed numerous benefits from implementing Esker’s automated Order Management solution, including:

Source: This article was originally sourced from Esker

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AT A GLANCE

• FarmRight

INDUSTRY

• Agriculture

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Find a solution to solve the tedious, time consuming, paper-bound problem with AP process
• Streamline and automate current manual AP process to improve business efficiency and capacity without adding more resources
• Eliminate the need to handle paper invoices

SOLUTION

• Esker Accounts Payable automation solution that integrates with FarmRight MicrosoftDynamics GP 2015

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• Improvement in productivity and efficiency
• Approvals are now done in micro-moments through the day using the mobile app
• Dramatic reduction in paperwork
• Greater visibility and reporting on the AP function
• Boost to finance governance measures

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Fuji Xerox
W: www.fujixerox.co.nz
New Zealand
E: cassandra.powell@nzl.fujixerox.com
T: +64 9 356 4200

With more than 60 farms under its control across New Zealand and in Australia, a specialised provider of third-party management services has looked to Fuji Xerox New Zealand and the Esker software solution for Accounts Payable(AP) automation.

Thanks to an on-time, on-budget project delivery, FarmRight today enjoys improved visibility, faster processing and a smaller AP team.

Established in August 2000, FarmRight provides expertise to equity partnerships, corporate ownership and large-scale family holdings in the dairy, beef and horticulture farming industry. The business has expanded from the original three managed farms to more than 60, including several in Australia.

It promised to quite literally put AP in your pocket.

The company focuses on providing a full range of investment and management solutions to well governed, long term investors. This includes investors in portfolios of farms as well as traditional equity partnerships. With staff located throughout New Zealand, FarmRight maintains offices in Lumsden, Christchurch and Te Awamutu.

Situation
Chief Financial Officer Mark Paul says each of the properties under management by FarmRight operates as a separate entity. “Our farm managers look after all aspects of every property, and that includes procurement and approval of Accounts Payable.”

He gives an idea of the scale of the AP function: “We handle up to 3,500 invoices each month, with a spend running intothe millions.”

On the farms, goods and services are procured in the normal operation of the enterprise. Until Fuji Xerox got involved, this was a largely manual process, with paper invoices sent through to a central AP team. “The farmers would typically set aside a day each month for the invoice approval activity. Then, we had a team of 7 in the wider administration team who would enter all these invoices into the financial system, send to farm managers for approval and schedule payments,” says Mark.

As a growing business, with more farms steadily being added to its portfolio, FarmRight was starting to drown in the paperwork. “Paper was a real problem. Invoices would come in, be printed and placed in a pigeonhole. An AP clerk would bring it out, enter the data, then scan the invoice which would go into a transaction list for approval by the farm manager – there was a lot of double and triple handling,” Mark explains.

“That meant that we could not achieve any ‘scalability’. Clients are buying more farms and we reached a point where we’d have to grow the admin team, or find a better way of handling AP,” Mark notes.

Solution
While AP automation had come to Mark’s attention several years ago, the systems he saw then were just not very good. “However, technology changes all the time and we knew we needed to think about doing things differently. That meant taking another look at the market and hoping that a level of maturity had come into this particular technology.”

A Request for Information resulted in six proposals, which FarmRight rapidly narrowed down to two serious contenders. Fuji Xerox and Esker, says Mark, stood out owing to a proven track record with several local successful implementations, and demonstrable functionality and ease for users. “Any change you’re going to introduce becomes far easier if the users see the purpose and if it helps them get their jobs done better,” he notes.

“What stood out about the Esker solution is that it promised to quite literally put AP in your pocket, with a mobile app. That really impressed everyone, from the board down. And we wanted something which would work for the tech savvy just as well as it would work for those who are not.”

With the decision made, he says implementation of the Esker solution is surprisingly straightforward. “That’s partially owing to the expertise of the Fuji Xerox team and partially owing to the software itself. Esker is very configurable, which meant it was easy to adapt to our needs.”

Mark says FarmRight wanted a few extra layers of control over the standard solution, and also sought tight integration with its Microsoft Dynamics financials. “This probably took more time than anything else, so I would advise anyone not to underestimate this aspect. But it does make for ‘full automation’, so things flow right through from AP to the system from which the payments are actually made.”

The deployment was completed within four months, Mark adds, with the company timing its introduction with its payment cycle.

Results
His focus on the users of the solution has borne immediate fruit: Mark says farm managers have welcomed Esker AP automation. “Reception has been very positive from the start, and that actually commenced well before the rollout, with various communiques that this was coming.”

In effect, he says FarmRight’s people widely recognised that AP was a problem – a tedious, time consuming, paper-bound problem. “It was one of those ‘roll your eyes and sigh’ jobs every month.”

Now, handling payments is a breeze. With Esker, invoices are received electronically (generally via email) and placed into a workflow, where they are coded and approved for payment. Mark says this is done in micro-moments through the day using the mobile app. “Most of our farmers handle their approvals at breakfast after the morning milking. It’s just made so easy for them.”

The administration team has also seen a dramatic reduction in paperwork. “This was always about efficiency for us, and the team is a lot happier as Esker lets them focus on more pressing issues. We’ve also seen a reduction in the cost per transaction and have immediately been able to move one team member into the accounting team, and another has gone on maternity leave.

In effect, we have a smaller AP team able to handle the volume without issue,”Mark notes.

With greater visibility and reporting on the AP function, FarmRight is able to delegate authority with confidence, while receiving a boost to its governance measures.

He says the Board is pleased, with an on-time and on-budget enterprise IT project also delivering the anticipated results.

There’s more to it than simply dollars, though. “Relieving your people of an unpleasant task is probably the most valuable benefit of all,” he concludes.

Source: This article was originally sourced from Fuji Xerox

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AT A GLANCE

• LinPepCo

INDUSTRY

• Food and Beverage

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• To digitise and automate its accounts receivable (AR) collections process

SOLUTION

• Esker’s automated Collections Management solution

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• Reduced Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)
• Virtually eliminated customers in the 90-day past-due category
• Improvement in staff productivity and efficiency
• 69 percent increase in auto-pay customers
• Improved customer experience

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Esker
W: https://www.esker.com.au
E:  info@esker.com.au
T: +61 2 8596 5100

Background

LinPepCo is a Pepsi-Cola franchisee with 35 years in the distribution business in the United States. One of its digital transformation projects was to digitise and automate its accounts receivable (AR) collections process.

With more than 35 years of soft drink and vending product distribution experience LinPepCo’s business includes five soft drink franchises, a full-line vending company, a full service coffee company and a refrigeration division that specialises in equipment service and leasing.

Before Esker, LinPepCo relied on a largely manual process to manage its collections. Paper was prevalent, as the team was tasked with printing statements and sending reminders by hand.

“A lot of cost and manual labour went into that,” said the Director of IT at LinPepCo. “We knew there had to be a faster, more cost-effective way to help our staff collect and our customers make payments. Esker’s Collections Management product offered that solution.”

Solution
A key goal LinPepCo wanted to achieve in implementing a new solution was to utilise as few different systems and technologies as possible. Ultimately, it was Esker’s automated Collections Management solution that stood out for its robust capabilities and integration with VIP, LinPepCo’s existing accounting system. Esker’s business partnership with VIP meant a fast and seamless solution delivery process for LinPepCo with very few technical resources needed to set up the solution.

“Esker checked off so many boxes for us that we really had no reason to test other solutions. It was perfectly compatible with what we had in place and the implementation process couldn’t have been more painless.

“Esker was perfectly compatible with what we had in place and the implementation couldn’t have been more painless. After just a few weeks of going live, we had customers and team members telling us how slick the solution was.”
Director of IT at LinPepCo

After just a few weeks of going live, we had customers and team members telling us how slick the solution was.”

Approximately 67 percent of LinPepCo’s customer base (3,800 customers) is currently accessing Esker’s cloud-based solution.

Nearly one in four customers are using the auto-pay feature, which has proven to be a significant time-saver for both the company and its customers.

Benefits
LinPepCo went live with Esker’s Collections Management solution in early 2015. Since then, the company has achieved a number of impressive business benefits.

• Reduced DSO
• Virtually eliminated customers in the 90-day past-due category
• Freed up staff time to spend more time on strategic things like aging reports, contacting customers, reconciliation
• 69 percent increase in auto-pay customer
• Improved customer experience

About LinPepCo
LinPepCo values customers’ business and strives to make their experience with LinPepCo an enjoyable one. Our goal is to provide you with quality products and services, and as a Pepsi-Cola franchisee, we can meet your soft drink needs, assist you with full-line vending, offer full service coffee and provide equipment services on customer-owned equipment throughout the Midwest.

Our dedication to customer satisfaction doesn’t stop with soft drinks, vending products, coffee or equipment service and leasing. At LinPepCo we are dedicated community citizens, and we believe that it is vital to have a corporate presence in the areas we serve.

Source: This article was originally sourced from Esker

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AT A GLANCE

• Ruralco
  

INDUSTRY

• Farming

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Eliminate the manual work created with the existing AP invoice process
• Develop electronic workflow capabilities
• Reduce the reliance on paper invoices

SOLUTION

• Esker Accounts Payable software

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• Full dashboard overview of all invoices
• Dynamic real-time reporting
• Reduce the number of staff processing invoices

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Esker
W: https://www.esker.com.au
E:  info@esker.com.au
T: +61 2 8596 5100

Ruralco provides farmers with all their farming needs, including general farm supplies, seed, fertiliser, fuel and energy. With its business being hampered by time-consuming manual accounts payable (AP) processes, Canterbury-based national agriculture co-operative Ruralco looked to Fuji Xerox New Zealand for a better solution. With the introduction of Esker’s Accounts Payable automation solution, the company has revolutionised this key process, driving down the costs of invoice processing while achieving complete visibility and improving governance and control.

Upon joining Ruralco, group CFO Oliver O’Neill found a situation which, from an accounting perspective, was tedious and time consuming. “We have 16,000 SKUs. We sell everything from pipe fittings to bulk grain and ship from Canterbury all over New Zealand.” With tens of thousands of invoices processed per month, Ruralco also makes payments every day. Further complicating the company’s AP environment is that it has different terms of freight with various suppliers, and must manage inventory across a multitude of SKUs, with monthly billings of over $20 million.

“Now, we’re not fighting fires the whole time, but doing value-added tasks which benefit the business.”

“We had no overview of the [procure-to-pay] cycle; there were paper invoices all over the place – we received 90 percent of them by email and typed them into our MicrosoftTM Dynamics Great Plains ERP system – there were constant issues with inaccurate POs from outdated price lists. When month-end came, it was a constant struggle to get everything closed, with approvers out of the office, papers stacked here and there; to get an idea, we literally needed a forklift to find invoices if we needed them a year after the fact.”

Ruralco at one point had 25 people employed to handle the vast scope of their administrative and financial processes and decided a whole new approach was needed to cope with their antiquated procedures and associated volume of transactions.

Solution
A commitment to make a change to a situation which was clearly less than optimal came directly from the company’s raison d’etre. “We are a company that thinks differently and leverages technology to lower input costs to increase margins for our members,” noted O’Neill.

Having learned about Esker’s Accounts Payable software from an associate, Ruralco requested a demonstration from Fuji Xerox New Zealand Enterprise Consulting, while also evaluating other systems available on the open market.

Esker’s solution allows businesses to eliminate the manual pains of traditional AP invoice processing with intelligent capture, touchless processing and electronic workflow capabilities.

Benefits
With Esker, Ruralco has a full overview of where invoices are at all times, with a dashboard view of how many invoices are being processed per person per day.

Dynamic real-time reporting shows where invoices are in the process and how long it is taking an approver to action an invoice. Approvers use the mobile app to view their invoice queue and approve invoices, significantly accelerating processing. Additionally, all the invoices are stored in the cloud for seven years, effectively putting the forklift out of work.

Since implementing Esker’s cloud software, O’Neill says there has been zero downtime. “It just works. It has an app, it has delegation of authority, it has complete visibility. I can log-in with my phone and find any invoice, see where it is in the process, and even approve it, in seconds.” He has praise for Fuji Xerox New Zealand, which handled the implementation and support. “It wasn’t like other IT companies where you get a nasty surprise with the pricing; they were clear and upfront. And in terms of support and a customisation to handle drop shipping, it’s been nothing short of excellent.”

From 25 staff members in the finance department, Ruralco is now down to just 6 individuals, ‘two and a half’ of whom are focused on AP. “The system just works. When done manually, we had people drowning in paper. Now, we’re not fighting fires the whole time, but doing value-added tasks which benefit the business, while AP largely handles itself.” All that, O’Neill says, is why the payback period is calculated at around 12 months.

And there’s one final benefit which has flowed from the introduction of intelligent automation to the AP process: fertile ground now exists for the further introduction of smart technology. “It’s the tip of the iceberg and there’s a lot more to come. The success of this project means we’re very open to further technological advancement,” he concludes.

“The invoices are sent by suppliers to a dedicated AP address which automatically sends them into Esker. With approved vendors, there’s straight-through processing and payment happens automatically. And best of all, we literally no longer have a single piece of paper coming through the finance team.”
Oliver O’Neill, Group CFO, Ruralco

Source: This article was originally sourced from Esker

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AT A GLANCE

• European Motor Distributors

INDUSTRY

• Automotive

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Reduce time and costs associated with manual workflow processes
• Improve the visibility of outstanding invoices in real-time
• Eliminate over-payments and double payments of invoices

SOLUTION

• Fuji Xerox’s Esker Accounts Payable automation solution

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• Increased invoice processing speed
• Eliminated the need to print out invoices
• A simple approval process via computer, smartphone or tablet
• Full visibility into the entire AP process
• Improved relationships with suppliers as invoices were not lost and always paid on time

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Esker
W: https://www.esker.com.au
E:  info@esker.com.au
T: +61 2 8596 5100

Background
European Motor Distributors (EMD) is a subsidiary of Giltrap Group Holdings, a large automotive group in New Zealand. EMD import and distribute a range of vehicles from brands such as Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen, Skoda, and SEAT.

Consistent growth over the recent years created a challenging workload for the company’s accounts payable (AP) team.

EMD relied heavily on paper-driven processes. This included manually entering data from the 3,500 invoices received each month in PDF format, into EMD’s financial software. On receiving the documents, the AP department printed out and circulated each invoice for approval. The approval process included verification of the invoice amount and coding. Once approved, invoices were handed back to the AP team for data entry and processing.

“It was about how it would be embraced by everyone in the business.”

This reliance on manual processes and the flow of paper around the organisation created significant challenges such as double-payments and lost or misplaced invoices. There was also an alarming lack of visibility of the AP operations and processes.

EMD knew that their AP process was too slow for a progressive business and were concerned that they had no means to quantify the full extent of the problems.

“With the paper-based system, there was so much of the unknown,” says Zainab Mussa, Financial Controller for EMD. “We had no accurate idea of how many invoices were awaiting approval. We could only estimate our monthly expenses. Although our managers tracked the major invoices, we were concerned about the smaller ones which could be slipping through the gaps.”

“Even simple things like filing invoices, then trying to find them for auditing purposes, or looking something up for a vendor query, took unnecessarily longer than it should.”

As well as wasting valuable time, the lack of transparency elevated the risk of costly errors such as double-payments or overpayments.

“If an invoice was being chased for payment, we wouldn’t know if it was because we’d missed it, if it was on hold, or if it was already in the system and we couldn’t find it because of incorrect data entry,” says Mussa. “It was all too easy to print out another copy and put it into the approval cycle all over again. Then, of course, we’d have approvers saying ‘I’ve already signed off that invoice two or three times, what’s happening with this bit of paper?’ It delayed invoice processing and created frustration for the AP team.”

The AP team spent far too much precious time in a seemingly endless cycle of trying to track down and manage the flow of invoices in the approval phase.

Solution
By the end of 2016, EMD knew they had to seriously look at automating their AP process to reduce time and costs. They realised electronically capturing invoice information, and matching and routing invoices for approval was of critical importance.

EMD evaluated several solutions, and it was Fuji Xerox’s Esker Accounts Payable Automation platform that won over the business users.

“We were really impressed with the interface that the approvers would see, and the ease of use from their end,” says Mussa. “We didn’t want to only focus on the benefits to the AP team; it was about how it would be embraced by everyone in the business. We knew our people would love being able to use it on their mobiles too. Everything about Esker seemed to fit with what we wanted.”

Fuji Xerox finished scoping the requirements in August 2017. Implementation started in November, and the solution was up and running in February 2018.

The Esker platform has a clean, easy and functional interface, which won the approval of EMD’s AP team and business users. The solution gives EMD comprehensive reporting and dashboards customised to the specifics of the motor business. Alongside archiving and image retrieval for the audit trail, Esker provides the transparency the company needs.

Invoice data is captured digitally regardless of format, over and double payments have been eliminated, and invoices are tracked in real-time. Staff and business partners retrieve invoices with just a few clicks, and there is a reliable and continuous flow of information throughout EMD’s business applications.

Mobile apps for iOS and Android mean EMD’s business users can review and approve invoices from anywhere, at any time. Mussa says it’s not unusual to see invoices being signed off when she knows the approver is traveling overseas.

EMD can now better manage cashflow because they can see exactly what their outgoings are. The solution’s workflow engine supports multi-level approval across multiple operations, and data entry is now 100% accurate due to intelligent capture by the system.

The perfect partner really clear guidelines of what we needed to do, and how to best prepare ourselves for it. Fuji Xerox took the time and effort to understand what we needed early in the process, and we were very honest with our requirements and expectations. At no time did I feel that they overpromised things.”

Esker makes processing invoices easier and faster for EMD while providing critical visibility into the entire AP process.

“We’ve gone from dedicating 3.5 employees spending time manually processing invoices to 2.5 employees using the Esker system. We have been able to re-purpose the additional employee,” says Vaughan Taylor, EMD’s CFO. “Even with an extra company coming under EMD’s umbrella, there’s still no need to add further AP headcount.

Source: This article was originally sourced from Esker

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