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PremierFirst Vehicle Rental UK Limited in Control

PROACTIS delivers greater visibility and control over spending to the UK's largest car rental organisation.

Profile

PremierFirst Vehicle Rental UK Limited operates under the brands Alamo, National Car Rental and Guy Salmon to make up the UK's largest car rental organisation. It has won numerous accolades, including "Best Daily Rental Company" an impressive 11 times and is part of a worldwide organisation that has 3,800 locations in over 80 countries.

Its UK operation has more than 160 branches, some 37,000 cars and processes in excess of 123,000 invoices annually. Gaining visibility of expenditure across so many branches was a real challenge.

Challenge

Traditionally, PremierFirst operated a central purchasing function from its head office that sourced, ordered and approved invoices for each of its branches. Its Accounts Payable utility was also managed centrally using a Smartstream AP ledger system. In addition, its purchase-to-pay process involved a series of manual procedures with limited use of departmental databases. This resulted in a lack of control over spending, delayed payment of invoices and limited visibility of information for the management teams.

Why PROACTIS?

PremierFirst needed a cost effective, automated purchase-to-pay software solution that would enable it to concentrate on more value-add activities related to its core businesses. The key benefits it was searching for included:

• Tighter control on business expenditure
• Greater visibility of actual spend and committed expenditure
• Better understanding of purchasing spend among management teams, through reports that could be created quickly and reliably
• Improved negotiation of supplier contracts
• Increase in overall efficiencies and cost savings

"The new system needed to cover the full process of raising a purchase requisition through authorisation, order generation and receiving, invoice matching and the recording, authorisation and accounting for employee expenses," says Kevin Patterson, Head of Procurement IT at PremierFirst.

Following its invitation to tender, PremierFirst selected spend control specialist PROACTIS to implement a complete purchase-to-pay solution. Its new system allows the car rental organisation to see when and where products have been bought and if it is getting the best price.

"Visibility of costs was crucial to our final decision," says Patterson. "We needed to centralise control of our purchase activity to increase efficiency and save money."

Results

The PROACTIS software application is helping PremierFirst control spending and streamline procurement by providing a fully functional eSolution. Through the software provider's spend control and spend analysis, it can automate workflow and authorisation of requisitions and orders, receipts, invoice registration and matching, internal supplies and stores management, and obtain full visibility of all costs and expenses.

The product's management and analysis capabilities turn transaction data into powerful information, enabling PremierFirst to make fully informed purchase decisions on regular orders and ad hoc items.

The PROACTIS purchase-to-pay solution has been rolled out across the UK to PremierFirst's 160 branches. There are now some 500 spend control users, a comparable number of spend analysis (reporting) users and 700 employee expense users.

PROACTIS has enabled PremierFirst to work more effectively with large suppliers who can maintain their own catalogues online. The system's management and analysis tools also allow PremierFirst to compare suppliers' prices, ensuring it is getting the most cost-effective product on the market.

"We are utilising the full range of automated services that PROACTIS offers," says Patterson. "Electronic invoicing has reduced the time taken to match purchase orders and chase unpaid bills."

"Most importantly, we have gained excellent visibility of our accounts and supplier relationships," he continues. "Automating these processes has alleviated the frustrations and problems inherent to paper-based, manual process systems."

Patterson concludes: "We are highly impressed with the PROACTIS system and keen to embrace more of the value it offers in the near future. The PROACTIS team offer us excellent advice and support and I am looking forward to taking the project to the next level."

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