Konica Minolta accelerates end-to-end accounts payable process for Saltire Facilities Management

Saltire is one of the UK’s largest central heating and electrical service providers, working in partnership with private and public landlords and local authorities to manage more than 80,000 properties. Previously, Saltire’s AP team received purchase invoices primarily by email and post, with repetitive, manual paper-intensive procedures that were tedious for staff. Slow and expensive to perform, it was also difficult to extract meaningful financial insights from the data.
 
To ensure Finance is a proactive function, providing real-time financial insights to drive innovation, productivity and growth, Saltire wanted to take control and streamline invoice processes, ensuring finance data is managed in a timely, accurate manner. To address this, the Finance and IT team at Saltire engaged with Konica Minolta to discuss their AP challenges and needs.
 
According to industry research, the average cost of manual processing an invoice is £8.47 and takes 8.8 days to process. Automated invoice processing reduces this to an impressive £1.55 and four hours respectively.
 
Konica Minolta initially conducted a one-day workshop to examine the process in step-by-step detail. Scott McFarlane, Finance Manager at Saltire explains, “The Konica Minolta team were very well prepared. They understood our business, our goals, and our finance model. The expert team documented all the required processes and how we could connect our new automated finance model with the existing Sage 200 software.”
 
Konica Minolta created a comprehensive scope of works document which included planning and a detailed implementation roadmap for the automated invoice processing solution, which enables Saltire to capture incoming invoices and map them in Sage 200. This modern and intelligent account automation system captures all purchase invoices, both electronic and hard copies.
 
Invoice processing is now completed accurately in a fraction of the time it used to take using the old manual process. Scott comments, “The Konica Minolta digital invoice processing system has been a huge time-saver in our finance department, and the integration module to our Sage 200 couldn’t be any slicker. We would strongly recommend Konica Minolta for any forward-thinking organisation looking to digitise their account payable processes.”
 
Looking ahead, Saltire is exploring whether to deploy the document management and workflow automation system more widely in other business units. “Konica Minolta ticks all the boxes,” says Scott. “With their expert advice and guidance, we have seamless integration with our Sage 200 platform, resulting in fast, accurate and compliant invoicing at lower cost.”
 
For more information on Konica Minolta’s Automated Invoice Processing solutions please visit: http://www.konicaminolta.co.uk/en-gb/solutions/it-services/invoice-processing
 
For more information on Saltire Facilities Management please visit: www.saltire.co.uk