EP 1: Driving Efficiencies in Accounts Payable with Charlotte Newman

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Tom Livock:
Hello, good morning, and a very warm welcome to this first installment in our new series, Finance Transformation Unlocked. My name is Tom Livock. I’m from Access Pay. We’re inviting key figures and businesses from the world of Finance and Treasury to tell us about their experiences in modernising and automating their finance operations. We hope with these discussions will be a value to those organizations seeking to improve those existing processes and increase their efficiency. We’re hosting the series live on LinkedIn, and the recorded content will be available on demand via YouTube and as a podcast for our viewers and listeners. A link will be shared via our website following the event. And if you have any questions, please use the chat facility on the right hand side and we’ll answer the questions as we go for this very first event. We’d like to welcome Charlotte Newman, head of sales from Compleat Software.

Charlotte Newman:
Morning, Tom, thank you for having me, really excited to be here to kick off this series.

Tom Livock:
Yes, great. Thanks, Charlotte. So Compleat’s a new partner of ours to AccessPay, and specialise in providing supply and voice automation accounts payable and purchase to pay solutions. If AccessPay sits between a corporate spec office system and the bank, then Compleat sits in front of their ERP or back office system, providing an invoice or purchase approval service. We’ve invited Charlotte along today to share some best practice in modern accounts payable processes, and in the next 30 minutes or so, we’ll be discussing how finance teams and in particular accounts payable are adapting to new ways of working remotely and how those customers are future proofing solutions heading into 2020 too, especially with the news yesterday from Boris. So without further ado, Charlotte, how has accounts payable changed?

Charlotte Newman:
I think what we’ve seen, particularly across the last 18 months or so, is that the way we work as businesses has fundamentally needed to change, and as such, the AP process has had to change with it. There’s been this huge shift to hybrid working and particularly after last night. This is very much kind of our new normal now, which means that financial operations have had to change and adapt to enable this function to continue to run successfully. So the biggest change, definitely and the impact has been around that area.

Tom Livock:
And what are the problems faced by financial operations with remote working or hybrid working?

Charlotte Newman:
So traditionally, AP teams would be in the office together, you know, in one place or a manual process of printing invoices, walking over to colleagues to ask questions, leaving invoices on desks for for signature, you know, having a chat over over a cup of tea. All of that was was very normal. And although a manual process like that has always been quite time consuming, what we see now is that it’s just become even more untenable. You know, we speak to a lot of companies who move to using email as the default option for managing their invoice process to kind of check financial analysis, coding, get things approved. But the problem that we see with that is the lack of visibility and control. You know, there’s no audit of where transactions are, what’s happened to them so far, what else needs to happen to them or why? And it very much leaves finance in the dark, but also provides no visibility or real time information to to other key stakeholders within the business. So by default, I think the biggest problem is is that it’s just a very disconnected process.

Tom Livock:
So that lack of visibility, lack of control, disjointed process and the fact it’s time consuming is a real issue for those finance teams. But what’s the real world impact for the finance teams?

Charlotte Newman:
So the impact sort of manifests itself across a number of different problems. It could be late payments where invoices aren’t seen and processed quickly enough that you could be getting duplicate invoices because you’ve got chase or invoices coming through from your suppliers. And that all feeds into things like problematic or inaccurate month end accruals because finance don’t know or can’t see exactly what they’re what they’re working with because they’ve got no real time information. You know, even email notes and such aren’t providing status updates in real time. And I think the big one is just lack of visibility overspend before it’s committed because purchases are just being made. So what we see is that the first time finance has a view on what’s being bought and where money is being spent is when that invoice comes in. Because of this kind of incredibly disjointed process, there’s a lack of real oversight and finance just becomes admin. They just need to book that invoice and get it paid at that stage. And finance teams have really far more important operational tasks they want to and need to be focusing on. And this sort of process can really impact their time resource to do that, but also impacts the quality of the data that they’re providing as part of kind of monthly reporting responsibilities to senior leadership. So finance need to be able to have an accurate snapshot at any point in time of what’s going on, and that’s incredibly difficult with this kind of manual fragmented process.

Tom Livock:
Yeah, as you say that that’s a real challenge, isn’t it? But I’m assuming there’s an impact on the wider business as well?

Charlotte Newman:
Yeah, absolutely. So increasingly, purchases are being made by staff where they are and they’re getting those items delivered to where they are, you know, potentially being being at home or remote. And then the issue is then around making sure that invoices are sent to wherever the AP team are, you know, in a in a timely manner. So something that should be simple and easy has become far more difficult. And we’re also seeing an increase in buying from kind of high street online suppliers, often on credit card as opposed to company account, because that’s what’s familiar and easy for for staff members. And they end up just sort of claiming these costs back on expenses at the end of the month. So all of that results in a lack of oversight for finance and additional workload for them at the end of that, but also kind of budget holders and department heads have no real view on what’s being spent by their teams with which suppliers, you know, has there been any due diligence in the selection of that supplier in the first place? And also, how does that impact their team budget ultimately? So even if they’re trying to be incredibly thorough tracking things on on spreadsheets and so on, it’s never going to be real time or or accurate enough when it comes to using that data to make informed decisions. And and all of that is a huge impact to the wider business outside of finance.

Tom Livock:
Yeah, I really get that. So this isn’t just about a finance issue that’s that Compleat are addressing. It’s actually about helping the wider business as well. Yeah. And in your experience, what are the key drivers for change when one of your customers or a prospect comes to you? What are what the key drivers are looking to when they come to you?

Charlotte Newman:
So I think there’s there’s kind of three common themes that will that we’ll talk about. And the first and still the biggest that we see is the desire to eliminate manual processes. And that’s from keying in invoices, manually allocating financial coding to every invoice that comes through or literally dealing with, you know, stacks of paper having to print and then re scan and invoices with physical signatures on, you know, we speak to finance team members daily at the moment who are very much reaching the end of their tether. They’ve got no time to handle what they already have, let alone any kind of increase in demand from an app perspective. And they don’t want to or can’t afford to hire additional human resource to manage the problem. And ultimately, businesses know it’s not the most cost effective way to to continue. You’ve got talented and qualified team members undertaking tasks that ultimately a piece of software could automate. So the desire to best utilize existing human resource and reduce or remove the manual elements of their workload is very much kind of that number one driver that we see. The second, I would say, is the is the desire and the need to have better visibility and control. You know, I’ve touched on this a little bit already, but organizations do need to have visibility of orders and invoices. You know that understanding of where a transaction sits, where it’s sat with and you know who it sat with and why. And they also need to be able to gain knowledge on on what’s being spent, who it’s being spent with, the status of, whether those goods or services have actually been received and how does that invoice been approved.

Charlotte Newman:
And then from a wider business perspective, you know how that invoice made it through to finance for four payments? I’d say that the third one is is around reducing costs ultimately. So it’s not a surprise that a lot of businesses have felt the pinch a little bit over the last 18 months or so. When we talk about costs, it’s kind of a twofold approach. The first is, you know, a cost in people time, which which we’ve already sort of mentioned, but also the literal cost on what’s being spent. So lowering or reducing business costs is very much a common historic goal of course. But we’re just seeing businesses under more pressure of late. We’ve got supply chain issues. Potentially there’s staffing issues. So it just becomes increasingly top of agenda for businesses. And you know, the big question is what can we do to reduce costs? So I think these areas of focus kind of feed into lots of different financial processes within a business. And obviously, I’m looking at this from from an accounts payable perspective, but I’d be interested from your side. Tom, when it comes to payments, what are the key drivers when you know a business looks at AccessPay, are they quite they’re quite similar?

Tom Livock:
Yes. So you’re absolutely right. So we focus on a number of different payment types. But let’s talk about maybe accounts payable to keep with the theme. And the reason why a corporate might come to AcessPay is because they they’re using bank portals currently or online banking. And the reasons why they come to us is the efficiency thing that you’ve mentioned already. So from a accounts payable team, they may be using online banking to manually upload a file into their banks. And obviously that’s a manual process and there’s an efficiency saving for being able to do that and we talk about AcessPay being the next generation of corporate banking being able to automate this process. But aside from the efficiency piece, there’s two other key elements to this, and the first one is is security. So corporates are providing access to their bank. Effectively, they’re banks using online banking for their employees to make those payments. And of course, we trust our employees and, you know, but at the same time, the security team from the corporate will say, you can no longer use online banking. You have to find another means because that’s not a secure method of making a payment in this day and age. And so they’ll come to AccessPay for that automation to be able to remove the need for online banking and bank portals to deliver the file automatically into the bank. And the other reason is human error. And this is maybe not as common as certain things, but it’s just needs to make a change in the value. For example, if there was a digit wrong or if actually the sort code account number was slightly wrong, or if I just change the name of the beneficiary, so it wasn’t quite the correct beneficiary, then the file could get rejected by the bank. Or even worse, the file could get processed by the bank, and it’s got 10 times the value that it should be, or even more so. Those tend to be the three areas that that the reason why a corporate will come to us.

Charlotte Newman:
Yeah, I think it’s very similar in terms of when you look at financial operations across the board, the kind of the drivers, the desire to get rid of manual intervention and the potential for human error. And that side of things, as well as just, you know, freeing up resource and driving those efficiencies through kind of digital practices as best possible.

Tom Livock:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s this idea that so if there’s any ERP system, if it was Oracle or Sage or Microsoft, then Compleat sits at the front end of that being able to help with the accounts payable and then AccessPay sits behind the ERP with that accounts payable file being delivered to the bank. Yeah. What do you find companies have done or try to do before they found complete or before they come to you? Well, what are the things they’ve they’ve tried to do to address these issues?

Charlotte Newman:
So I’ve kind of mentioned it earlier, but we see a lot of, you know, email cloud drives, Excel spreadsheets, they’re all very common tools that we use as businesses. But they’re they’re very much a stopgap as they’re not, you know, they’re not designed to optimize the accounts payable process. So companies have had to adapt to a dispersed workforce, potentially, and we’re seeing business levels kind of starting to return across lots of different sectors. And companies are very much starting to think if we want to keep this hybrid and remote working model or if we need to, then these stopgaps that they have implemented are not necessarily viable long term. So digital and automated solutions need to be reviewed and implemented to ensure that these areas can continue to evolve and are sustainable moving forward and not a drain on finance or other key internal resources.

Tom Livock:
And what would are the best practices that you and your team would advise this company to take as they move through a project to automate back office functions such as accounts payable or finance or procurement?

Charlotte Newman:
So definitely the number one best practice is the move to digital invoices across the board. And I would really urge that anyone who is watching or listening today to just please stop printing invoices, you know, it’s not only invisible and costly, but it’s it’s bad for the environment. We know that sustainability is becoming more of a focus for a lot of businesses across all industries, and we see that over 80 percent of the supplies that we automate invoice data capture for here at Compleat are already issuing invoices in a digital PDF format, so there should be absolutely no need to print those off. So that’s easily best practice number one. I say we also highly recommend that the purchase order processes are reviewed, so we suggest that businesses look to raise PO’s even for their indirect spend. So that kind of day to day office supplies requirements, because that can really be kind of game changing for the business. So definitely best practices to adopt digital methods where, wherever possible, get things approved and track those approvals. And all of that kind of makes day to day life a bit easier, but also supports with important things like audits. So with all of that, ultimately, it’s just about keeping it simple from our point of view and starting with those digital practices. And I think we’ve talked about where Compleat sits at the front end of the ERP, automating that purchasing and accounts payable process and at the tail end of that, obviously, we need to get those those invoices paid and a solution like AccessPay sits on the other side of the ERP. So you know, what do you guys recommend from a best practice point of view?

Tom Livock:
So it goes back to using bank portals and the fact that bank portals was an easy solution because a company would install an ERP system, for example, and then try and work out how to connect to the bank and either that becomes too difficult or it’s too costly. And so the default then is OK. So we’ll use a manual process and we’ll use our accounts payable team or Treasury team to make those payments. And that’s that’s really just not this day and age. That’s not an acceptable process for all the reasons we’ve talked about. So our best practice would be to remove that manual process, that manual process with bank portals and automate that as much as possible. And also what we tend to see along with the payments going out is AccessPay’s also able to bring in the statement information. So that’s the the bank statement data and the corporate can then use that to reconcile the accounts payable that’s gone out the door. They can then take the statements information into their ERP system and then reconcile that. And we see exactly the same processes happening where a corporate we use online banking to download that statement information and then use some manual process with an Excel spreadsheet to reconcile the data in the ERP. And again, that’s just not it’s not, you know, for all the reasons security, efficiency, manual error. It’s the same applies on the way back in as well, as well as the way our accounts payable.

Charlotte Newman:
Yeah, definitely. It’s not sustainable. And I think best practice from any financial transformation project needs to look at solutions that are sustainable moving forward and are scalable for growing businesses as well.

Tom Livock:
Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned that this idea of stop printing invoices, it’s almost like I can just see as a banner flying the flag saying, just stop.

Charlotte Newman:
Absolutely, please, please.

Tom Livock:
Yeah. And raise the PO’s, you know, even raising PO’s for indirect spend. And this idea of adopting digital practices rather than an archaic process with paper or even the email thinking email is an alternative. So how do you help businesses achieve those best practice goals with with Compleat?

Charlotte Newman:
So we will build a project with our customers that’s very much tailored to their requirements in the key areas of focus within their business. But as I say, everything starts with the digital invoice data capture. So that’s the core of everything within this P2P and accounts payable process. So businesses can just start with that. They don’t need to take every element of the solution in one go. If implementing something that’s that’s end to end feels a bit daunting or unachievable, we really recommend just starting simple focus on the invoice management problem first, as that’s usually top of the agenda anyway, and everything else can can follow through a layered approach to automation kind of once that core is in place. So, you know, accounts payable automation purchases pay automation is not new. There’s lots of different solutions in the market that offer elements of this process. And while at Compleat, we can offer an end to end solution, there might be people who are watching or listening today thinking, well, we already have some elements of this process in place, so maybe PO’s are being raised within their ERP or another third party solution that’s industry specific for example, and actually Compleat can handle that through integration.

Charlotte Newman:
So that side of things doesn’t necessarily need to change. But the question from us would then be if that’s just for four direct spend, those orders that are being raised, what about the indirect spend? How do you manage online supplies that were typically kind of sit outside of this process? We recommend taking a review of that because there’s bound to be what we would class as kind of maverick or invisible spend happening outside of that process. So from a Compleat perspective, we deliberately offer a pick and mix menu of features and elements of our software that allows businesses to either take everything from day one and kind of a Big Bang change if that’s what they need or to sort of look to layer up those automation elements over a phased rollout or projects. So our goal is really to support businesses with their specific areas of pain and focus on what’s important and most relevant to them. And that’s definitely the best way to achieve what’s needed.

Tom Livock:
So it sounds like that if I came to Compleat, rather than offering a big bank change, you can offer a customized approach depending on what my requirements would be.

Charlotte Newman:
Yeah, of course.

Tom Livock:
And how does adopting this way of working really benefit finance the points we raised earlier?

Charlotte Newman:
So I think the key thing to talk about is that this way of working is definitely not just for finances benefit. Although, you know, the return on investment for finance can be very quick and tangible from a resource perspective. It also impacts and benefits operational stakeholders across the business. So what I’d like to talk about is actually a recent case study with with one of our customers. So they’re a customer called White Horse Federation, and they’re a 37 school multi academy trust headquartered in Wiltshire. And they were very keen to work on spend optimization within their business. But their barrier to undertaking that activity was around the lack of being able to enforce any best practices when they identified preferred suppliers and items. So their priority with us was around implementing solution, which enabled them to not only identify but most importantly, achieve savings on what they were already spending. So the way that we did that with them was through the adoption of integrated online buying by all staff. It’s a it’s a tool and a feature that we have within our software. And they fed back that because the solution that we delivered had a, you know, a simple user experience and interface that the end user adoption wasn’t a barrier for them, and they’ve now rolled it out across nearly three hundred members of staff.

Charlotte Newman:
And the way that works is that each staff member has access to a more convenient and quicker purchasing practice using online suppliers that they were already familiar with. So, you know, an Amazon business a year ago, for example. So for Whitehorse Federation, it not only streamlined the administrative function from a finance perspective, but enabled all of their end users access to essential information and the power, therefore to make more informed decisions against available budget when raising or approving purchase requests. And interestingly, a recent analysis review undertaken by Compleat showed that businesses could buy, on average 32 percent cheaper from Amazon business compared to existing suppliers. So that’s just an example of the impact that working with online suppliers can have. So their main takeaway was the fact that they could now tangibly save money through utilising Compleat and the accounts payable function as a result has saved a huge amount of time, and they were able to focus on more important activity, so it very much achieve the project goals they set out with.

Tom Livock:
So this sounds really interesting. You mentioned, I think you touched on it before that you saw the twenty five percent that you’re showing on this slide is related to the manual process, the manual improvements, the automation of getting the efficiency better within the finance team. So effectively an FTE, a full time equivalent cost saving. But you touched on it there as well, and you said that effectively there’s also a thirty two percent improvement. In addition, I think that’s in addition to the twenty five percent. If I went to somebody like Amazon business, if I’ve got that right.

Charlotte Newman:
Yeah, absolutely. So when we look at that 32 percent that we’ve identified with Amazon businesses and example at Compleat we process kind of billions of pounds worth of invoices through our data capture tool, and we put that data into into what we call a data lake. And we categorize suppliers based on procurement standard categories and can review items. So that analysis that we did with Amazon business was looking at items that businesses were already purchasing from other suppliers and identifying whether they could purchase those cheaper from a supplier like Amazon business and they could. And I think the key thing here as well when talking about online suppliers is that, that move is also about supplier consolidation. So using a purchasing tool or a digital procurement tool enables you to see exactly who you’re purchasing with. And you might see businesses have, you know, 25 different suppliers from an office supplies perspective, and there’s no consistency in what those items are costing. And actually, if you consolidate that and put it through a supplier like Amazon business or a Lyrica, then there are savings to be made simply by purchasing the same stuff that you’re already buying.

Tom Livock:
So, the 25 percent that you mentioned on the slide is basically that’s what you’d see maybe as a minimum and the savings overall could be quite significantly higher.

Charlotte Newman:
That’s it. So the 25 percent is effectively a benchmark. So we can, like I say, categorize suppliers and we provide, you know, standard examples of a benchmark of if you’re spending x y z, you could look to save this amount within this particular category by making the shift to online suppliers.

Tom Livock:
Great. So if in the Whitehorse scenario that we’re talking about, what was the reason why they chose Compleat, why did they come to you?

Charlotte Newman:
So they came to us because they needed an end to end solution, not just for accounts payable, but that enabled the digital procurement side of things. So their key area of focus was around the fact they wanted to be able to undertake cost optimization projects. And in order to do that, they needed a solution which enabled them to have access to all of that kind of advanced spend data through the invoice data capture piece, but also to enforce best practices with all of their end users. Which is why the the online buying tool is a really great way to very quickly get users excited and utilizing a new piece of software. You know, it’s simple and straightforward. There’s a mobile application that comes with it, so it’s not a huge, cumbersome process and utilizing online buying and the Compleat solution enabled them to do that.

Tom Livock:
So, yes, it sounds like you’ve got a great customer there and a great reference. Yeah, just we’ve just got a few minutes left, so maybe if we turn to the audience and just ask if there’s any questions from the audience? Great. Just let’s have a look. So there’s a media company based in Manchester. Looks like a question from Sarah, and they have an Oracle ERP system. Can you integrate with Oracle?

Charlotte Newman:
Yes, Sarah. Absolutely we can. So Compleat can can integrate with with any ERP or accounting software that’s being used, either through an existing what we would call an out of the box integration that’s pre-built or we have APIs wrapped around our application, which enable us to configure that data feed with with any accounting software or ERP that’s being used.

Tom Livock:
Great. And the question from Peter in Doncaster. Works for a small manufacturing company and he’s asking is Compleat suitable for a small business because it sounds like we’ve been talking sort of about a mid-market potentially. And also we mentioned Oracle there, which tends to be a bigger sector of the market, so is Compleat suitable for a small business as well as a larger business?

Charlotte Newman:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the question, Peter. And absolutely it is. I think the key thing that complete offers is is a solution that can be implemented based on your requirements and your business size. Whether you’re, you know, SME up to kind of bigger corporate enterprise company. And that’s just because of this kind of pick mix menu that I’ve already mentioned. You don’t need to take the entire solution you can start small and also starting with these kind of automation projects when you are at a smaller business stage, if you’re looking to grow, there is no better time to look at automation than at that point because as you grow, those processes are already in place and you’re not relying on hiring additional staff. But yeah, absolutely great for great for small businesses as well.

Tom Livock:
And another question just come in about the case study, the Whitehorse case study. So you mentioned that Amazon business in LA, yeah. Which online suppliers can Compleat work with?

Charlotte Newman:
Yeah, it’s it’s a good question. So I have mentioned Amazon Business and Lyrica, and we have some other existing integrations with the likes of Commercial, YPO and Brown’s Books as as examples, but something that we’re really excited about and it’s in beta at the moment and will be released kind of formally in 2022 is we’re effectively building a Chrome extension, which allows for online buying to be facilitated within our product with almost any online retailer. So moving forward, customers will be able to say to us, you know, here are our top five online suppliers. Can we can we get the integrations built with them? And we’ll say absolutely, and we’ll just continue to build out on that, that online marketplace with within our platform.

Tom Livock:
So it sounds like you’ve got really flexible way of working with with not just the suppliers you’ve mentioned already, but many, many different suppliers, depending on what what your customers want.

Charlotte Newman:
Yeah, absolutely. Allowing customers to determine what’s what’s best for them and the suppliers that they want to work with.

Tom Livock:
Yeah, I’m conscious. We’re on time. So just one final question for me then what’s in your view? If you look into your crystal ball into 2022 and give them the announcement about Plan B yesterday, what does 2022 look like for accounts payable?

Charlotte Newman:
I think I mean, you’ve mentioned the announcement. I think we’ll very much see more of the same from, you know, purchased pay and accounts payable an increase in demand for automation as businesses have a more clear focus on streamlining their processes to enable different styles of of working and also that that key focus on looking to get the most out of their budgets and their and their workforce. So I think we’ll see very similar themes as we head into 2022.

Tom Livock:
Great. Thanks. Thanks, Charlotte. Thank you so much for joining. Really appreciate your your support and input.

Charlotte Newman:
Thank you, Tom.

Tom Livock:
And thank you for the audience for joining. The link will be provided. If you want to go back to this this webinar, then please click on the link. And if you have any questions, then by all means please come to me or Charlotte and we’ll come back to you with with those answers. So without further ado, thank you all for joining us and have a great day.

Charlotte Newman:
Thanks, everyone.

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