Not using your Purchase Order System Cost Money

How to Turn Problems into Opportunities 

Case Study – Tourism

It costs businesses money when employees don’t use the PO system. Read on to learn what an online travel agency discovered when they started using More4apps suite of products.

Why Procurement Systems are Important 

Companies implement a procurement systems for a variety of reasons but the top three factors are listed below.

1. Visibility – Companies have visibility of what they are spending money on and can see the demand for items from suppliers. This visibility allows them to negotiate terms of trade from suppliers based on the “forecasted” spend.
2. Processing Efficiencies – Every Purchase Order (PO) made, approved, placed, and paid by a company costs money to process. Added up across the supply chain, these PO processing costs impact the bottom line and divert staff efforts away from other, more valuable tasks.
3. Savings – Terms of trade are vital to businesses because they result in discounts with suppliers. Goods purchased from non-approved suppliers do not qualify for discounts. The bottom line is negatively affected, therefore impacting the company’s profitability.

The Customer

An online global travel company that is well-recognized for planning experiences for its customers has a website that primarily focuses on fare aggregators and metasearch engines. With physical offices and staff around the world, the travel company needed to remove data bottlenecks to operate more efficiently.

Turning Problems into Opportunities

One region needed to improve its PO processing system. From meeting with More4apps experts, they knew that the PO Wizard within the EBS Toolbox would remove data bottlenecks, cut down on processing time, and improve the quality of their data.

After they streamlined their data process with the More4apps tools, the travel agency realized how not using a purchase order system cost them money. This is because the travel agency purchased items that weren’t at discounted pricing. Therefore, staff spent valuable time chasing receipts, getting approvals for individual invoices, matching POs, and manually processing data.

Most importantly, they were losing valuable leverage with suppliers as they were not delivering on transaction volumes.

The finance team needed to increase the ratio of purchase orders matched. However, they couldn’t do it manually without increasing the staff, which would potentially blow the personnel budget for the entire AP team.

That’s why they required a solution suitable for operations across the globe. Preferably, the solution needed to be in use quickly while not disrupting business and to account for costs and training expenses for the staff.

Initial Wins

The agency’s current system had multiple data sources, which made processing data complex and left room for error.

For example, third parties submitted invoices to Accounts Payable via WebADI files. However, WebADI didn’t load the files as attachments, so they were stored on a separate system. This was an issue because the company could not view the invoice unless they had access to that particular filing system.

The travel agency wanted a tool that would allow them to maintain their data in one environment. With More4apps products , an invoice image could be attached to the upload, so the information would be in one place and accessible to those that need it.

Furthermore, More4apps tools helped end-users manipulate, load, and check data using the familiar Excel environment. Therefore, making the workflow seamless, intuitive, and more efficient.

Get the Best Results & Maximize Time

The staff was free to focus on other business tasks when they improved their general housekeeping.

Using More4apps tools made it easier to find and identify all invoices on hold and address those holds. Therefore, speeding up payments and cutting time for debtors’ recovery. Also, they could quickly and easily identify invoices that were past due. Invoices were then triaged to determine which ones did not receive payment.

Change Internal Thinking & Automate Where Possible

Since the process wasn’t automated, the team manually entered one transaction at a time and checked for requisition approval. Requisitions got completed at once using bulk auto-create. By automating the process, the team was free to search for their suppliers’ best deals, resulting in money savings for the company.

Smart Solutions for Better Business

More4apps tools helped the travel agency identify how much money was spent by not using their purchase order system. The tools were easy to implement, improved process efficiencies, and released staff to tend to other tasks.

Do you want to save money and release talented staff from repetitive data entry for more productive work? Then, contact us and one of our experts will reach out to you to discuss how you can unleash the power of Excel.

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