The Rapid AP solution has provided cost efficiencies and improvements in processes, resources and internal controls. Overall the flow of work is much more efficient and effective. Rapid AP enables us to manage our purchasing and stock management systems more efficiently and has automated the processing of invoice information into our IT systems. Rapid AP also performs validation checks (tax invoices, purchase orders, creditor details etc) to ensure the accuracy of information entered into our core systems.

says Kim Collins, Executive Manager Finance for Twin Towns.

As with any hospitality and tourism based company, the amount of paperwork processed daily at Twin Towns is tremendous, particularly in terms of accounts processing.

Prior to investing in the Efficiency Leaders Automation Platform (Rapid AP), Twin Towns implemented inventory management and financial software (Micros™-FIDELIO Materials Control and TechnologyOne Financials systems) in a bid to increase business efficiency.

Some Managers were spending a minimum of fifteen hours a week just checking what goods were ordered, what had been received, what was invoiced and discrepancies between the three, and then manually entering the data

Micros™ was implemented to streamline inventory management processes and assist the company in electronic purchasing and stock management. Whilst Micros™ was a great system for the Twin Towns group, it still required manual inputting of data for the AP team. This process was time consuming, inefficient and in most instances required staff to manually enter basic invoice information a minimum of twice. Purchase Orders were manually raised and approved. Stock was ordered manually and once it arrived, the AP process required a second approval from management on the invoice to ensure the company had been invoiced correctly against what had been ordered. There was an incredible amount of time spent verifying that the invoices reflected what had been approved for purchase on the initial Purchase Order (PO).

There was also a lot of paper chasing between the Food and Beverage and Administration departments to confirm these details. Once management in Food and Beverage and Purchasing had approved the invoice and its details, the information was entered manually into Micros™. The invoice was then sent (via internal mail) to the AP team who manually entered the invoice information all over again into their accounting system, TechnologyOne Financials.

The costs associated with managing invoice processing, as well as the human labour required to catch and fix any errors along the way, was growing quickly.

We had a total of four AP staff employed full time just following up, manually inputting and checking invoices. In the last couple of days of every ‘end of month’, our accounts staff would be incredibly busy processing as a significant number of invoices for the company would land on their desk in that last week.

Twin Towns had not leveraged from its investment in software systems and the IT infrastructure. With the number of ‘touch points’ an invoice needed to go through in order to be processed, what the company needed was a powerful and tailored technology solution to efficiently manage and automate the inflow and outflow of information and data.

Twin Towns  Clubs and Resorts selected Efficiency Leaders to streamline, automate and simplify what was fast becoming a very complicated AP and stock management system for staff and suppliers alike. As the industry leaders in creating efficient business processes, Efficiency Leaders was the perfect team to improve Twin Towns’ accounts and stock processes. After initial consultation and analysis of existing business processes, Efficiency Leaders implemented Rapid AP.

Rapid AP is a powerful and intelligent automated AP solution which captures, extracts and transfers critical data from any document into back end systems (TechnologyOne Financials, Micros™ Materials Control for example) through seamless integration. Rapid AP’s intelligent document capture software automatically reads any invoice (or document for that matter), regardless of its format, layout, tabular data, fields or length. In real terms, this means the Twin Towns accounts process can now be carried out from start to finish more efficiently and effectively.

Purchase Orders are now raised electronically in Micros™ instead of manually. Before the order goes out, management still needs to approve orders over a certain dollar value, but this is now also done electronically. When the goods arrive to be delivered at Twin Towns, the invoice is checked against the stock. The invoice is then scanned into an office scanner. Rapid AP automatically extracts all the information from data contained on the invoice. This includes the PO number, invoice number, ABN, suppliers contact and address details, GST amounts, stock information and any other information required from the document. Rapid AP then automatically checks the invoice against the initial PO at a rate of 1000 characters per second (so on average up to 50 invoices per minute can potentially be checked). If 100% of the invoice data matches the PO, Rapid AP automatically updates Micros™ using B2B functionality and the accounts information is interfaced with TechnologyOne Financials.

One of the many benefits of Rapid AP is that it can be implemented to compliment any existing IT and business systems. The intelligent scanning and distribution solution is also a self-learning software system, meaning it will even “learn-by-example” and adapt to documents that frequent the business, allowing configuration to be quickly optimised. Intelligent software that improves data quality and reduces data entry costs, complimenting existing software systems – exactly what the Twin Towns team were after!

Thanks to the professional change management and internal communication skills of Efficiency Leaders, the upgrade to automated accounts processing for Twin Towns has been a smooth process.

Staff have truly embraced and taken ownership of the new Rapid AP system. They were involved in the initial planning and testing of the system and Efficiency Leaders, as a result of their feedback, tailored the system to suit Twin Towns’ needs.

Since Efficiency Leaders completed the Rapid AP upgrade project, Twin Towns are looking at how they can implement the Rapid AP system in other areas of the business – payroll, HR, staff surveys, membership processing etc. Our entire business is now leveraging from the IT investment and the business processes are becoming more automated and efficient thanks to the assistance from Efficiency Leaders.