The Challenge

Process Fusion and their partner worked with a leading Garden Centre chain, founded in 1864, with 17 centres, in addition to a headquarters and several commercial nurseries, across England. Established over 100 years ago, their workflow systems were ready for a refresh. Most of their process were manual and heavily paper based.

They first approached us, as they had identified an opportunity for improvement, within their accounts payable process. Being paper based, it led to a lack of visibility, human errors, long delays and large consumable waste.

Process Fusion and their partner conducted a thorough assessment of their original accounts payable infrastructure. Findings from the assessment identified multiple issues with their existing process, including (but not limited to):

• Month end reporting accuracy suffered as invoices were not accounted for until entered into the ERP system, which could be up to 20 days after receiving them.

• Supplier accounts placed on hold due late payment as a result of the total workflow time.

• The AP Team was stretched, as the company had grown by acquisition, taking on 5 new centres in 2019, but the AP Team remained the same size.

• Poor user experience – centre managers complained of significant time taken to approve invoices.