Acco Chooses Basware to Streamline Pan-European Procurement
Acco Brands Europe, a supplier of office products, has implemented a pan-European purchase-to-pay (P2P) system in a move that will bring cost savings across the entire organisation. The implementation of Basware invoice automation and purchase management solutions will help Acco Brands Europe achieve its target for sustained growth through a group-wide move to centralised and automated P2P process.
Following a merger in 2005, Acco Brands Europe became a complex pan-European business spanning 12 countries. With key functional areas and local business teams all independently engaged in procurement and invoice payment processing activities, a proliferation of paper-based systems had built up. As a result it was difficult to achieve central visibility of spending or address issues such as compliance. Issue-tracking and resolution had also become a time-consuming activity and with no single purchasing system or standard in place, maverick buying was high.
“We wanted to maximise the decision-making capabilities of the business and enable the enforcement of smart procurement strategies alongside group-wide SOX [Sarbanes-Oxley] compliance,” explained Acco’s European project and process manager Jane Pilkington. “Basware offered the ERP [enterprise resource planning] integration and multi-language support we needed. More importantly, they delivered the all-important visibility and control of the entire accounts payable process.”
Acco Brands Europe began the process by implementing Basware Invoice Automation, removing time consuming, manual handling of invoices to significantly improve efficiency, achieve faster processing times and reduce the cost of processing. The company used Basware Invoice Automation to create a group-wide automated processing and management system. Basware’s Invoice Automation also delivers streamlined workflows and versatile reporting to boost compliance and enable real-time spend analysis.
To complement the visibility and control over spend, Acco Brands Europe implemented Basware’s Purchase Management solution to create the same efficiencies within its purchasing department. It wanted a user-friendly solution that could be rolled out across its multiple regions and required little training so it could be used by all of its employees, from non-specialist users to procurement and finance personnel alike.