Challenge

Following a period of acquisition, Daisy Corporate Services experienced significant growth and as a result, their vendor base had grown substantially, with over 20,000 invoices being processed annually. This growth had led to a lack of visibility over central purchase orders and it was a labor-intensive process to match paper-based invoices as they arrived from vendors. Invoice approval was slow, as invoices had to be manually routed to approvers. Query invoices were growing in numbers and closing off month-end was a difficult process due to the lack of visibility over invoices. Daisy Corporate Services recognized they needed to implement a centralized purchase-to-pay solution..

Solution

As part of its implementation within the broader Daisy Group, SoftCo provides Daisy Corporate Services with an end-to-end Procure-to-Pay solution, incorporating all elements from eProcurement through to vendor invoice capture, matching, and approval ready for payment. SoftCo Procure-to-Pay allows all staff access to a standard catalog to purchase pre-approved goods and services from preferred vendors only. Requisitions are automatically routed for verification before a PO is then automatically generated and sent to the vendor. All vendor invoices are received electronically and captured automatically through SoftCo’s advanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. The auto-match function facilitates straight-through processing for 79% of Daisy Corporate Services’ PO invoices and reduces invoice processing times by up to 70%. Invoices that cannot be auto-matched are rerouted via dedicated workflows for exception handling. Fully automated and configurable approval workflows route invoices for approval to appropriate business users. SoftCo Procure-to-Pay fully integrates with Daisy Corporate Services’ Sage ERP system for payment posting. They also use SoftCo’s SÄHKE2 certified Compliant Archive to store and manage their vendor contracts. The solution’s Content Addressable Storage (CAS) capabilities, using fast magnetic media, index and categorize all contracts at the capture stage. Full lifecycle management also assists Daisy Corporate Services with contract storage, retrieval, auditing and renewals.

Results

With SoftCo Procure-to-Pay, Daisy Corporate Services now have full control over every stage of their procure-to-pay process, from procurement through to invoice capture, matching and approval. The solution has removed unproductive manual tasks and has completely eliminated paper from the accounts payable process. Procurement spend is now fully controlled, with purchasing from preferred vendors only and requisitions requiring verification. All stages of the AP process are handled more accurately and in a timelier manner. Queries and approvals, which were major roadblocks under the old manual process, are now automatically routed to designated approvers. Daisy Corporate Services have made significant savings from gaining control over their spend and automating their AP process. They have also achieved a significant decrease in vendor queries. With storage and lifecycle management of their contracts, Daisy Corporate Services have ensured full visibility over their contract spend, can view audit trails and are alerted to upcoming renewals.