Painting a picture of healthy Purchase-to-Pay processes at Wattyl

Customer Success Story: Wattyl Group Painting a picture of healthy Purchase-to-Pay processes at Wattyl With a high volume of invoices received yearly from the factory to the shop floor, it was time for Wattyl to review its invoice handling processes. The company, which was previously manually processing each invoice it received, implemented Basware’s automated invoice processing solution. Wattyl’s IT, Procurement and AP departments all worked closely together to ensure a seamless transition. Wattyl is a paint and surface coating business Wattyl selected Basware from a pool of six which manufactures trade, industrial and retail vendors following a competitive tendering Customer products in Australia and New Zealand. process, citing Basware’s well established Established in 1915, Wattyl has grown from reputation in the market as one of the major Name humble beginnings and now employs over 1000 factors in the decision. staff across its 5 offices, three manufacturing Wattyl Group and distribution sites, and a network of over 130 “Basware’s solution achieved all our objectives retail stores and resellers. and their consultants were on-hand to offer us Sector support before, during and after the As Wattyl has grown, so too has the volume and implementation phase to ensure the solution Paint and surface coating complexity of its incoming invoices which was up and running as quickly as possible and naturally presents a huge task for its Accounts without any problems,” says Eduardo Lara – Location Payable (AP) team. In the past, the AP team Procurement Manager – Indirect & Resale had to manually code each invoice it received; Products. Australia and New Zealand a process that was time consuming and cumbersome. The solution was implemented in less than three months and Wattyl can now process invoices electronically as well as access archived Challenge Making the electronic switch invoices with a few clicks of the mouse. To achieve more efficiency in their Accounts Achieving financial visibility Payable department, Wattyl decided to invest in a solution which would allow it to remove ” W  e are using less paper, which is positive for the environment and allows Wattyl to reduce its document storage costs,” Paying suppliers on time manual, paper-based invoices and instead, process and archive all of its incoming invoices says Eduardo Lara. Streamlining the purchasing electronically. and invoicing approval process ” P  urchase-to-pay automation has completely changed the role of our accounts payable staff. Previously, their Basware solutions adopted Basware Invoice Automation work involved mainly coding but now they Basware Procurement are mainly policy compliance officers, Solutions overseeing the correct use of the Basware Purchase system.” Management Eduardo Lara, Procurement Manager, Indirect & Resale Products Basware Connectivity Services The Journey Phase 1:Finding an automated invoice processing solution Wattyl weighed up the options from several providers and considered Basware’s purchase-to-pay automation as the most comprehensive solution. Phase 2: Tackling the accounts payable challenges and improving supplier relationships With the invoice automation solution now ensuring supplier terms are met and bills paid on time, Wattyl has been able to improve its supplier relation- ships. Challenges are also being overcome: paper invoices are being turned into electronic with the use of Basware Connectivity Services. Getting rid of purchasing “We’ve become much more process oriented since the introduction of purchase management. roadblocks Previously, there was no formal supplier Phase 3: Implementing a wider Wattyl’s plans to achieve better efficiency within registration process which left room for purchase-to-pay programme its finance department didn’t stop with disputes, errors and a general lack of electronic invoice processing. Six months after agreement between parties. Now, vendors are Attention is now on integration Basware’s invoice automation solution went live, registered in a system so Wattyl can obtain between Accounts Payable and Wattyl implemented a solution to automate its quotes and write purchase orders electronically. Procurement to benefit the procurement processes too. Once the goods or services are received, our organisation more broadly and system will automatically cross check the the purchase-to-pay solution For Wattyl’s procurement department, purchase contents of the order with the invoice. If the plays a key role. autonomy is key due to the different locations order matches, the invoice is then automatically needing to procure goods and services. sent to the AP system to be processed,” says Eduardo Lara explains how this worked prior to Eduardo Lara.