The Tote Places its Bets on PROACTIS
One of Britain's principal betting organisations manages
spend, streamlines Accounts Payable and drives down administrative
costs.
Profile
The Tote is one of Britain's principal betting organisations,
with over 4,000 employees in 520 shops, operating on 59 racecourses
across the country, as well as Internet and telephone betting
facilities. The Tote manages over 74 million bets each year.
Challenge
The Tote began to look for ways to tighten control over
expenditure and improve the management of its cash flow, and
following the successful implementation of a new financial
accounting system, the organisation's procurement process was the
obvious place to look.
Joanne Seymour, Group Financial Controller at The Tote,
explains: "When we started to examine our purchasing process it
became evident that there was an opportunity to tighten control
over who could buy what, from which suppliers, and for how much
money. Like most organisations we were relying, to a certain
extent, on the honesty and goodwill of our staff when it came to
managing spend."
As The Tote began to examine the impact of its procurement
process, it became clear that there were other problems stemming
from the process. "Because we weren't fully controlling our
buying, we had no forward view of commitments and working out our
accruals became a difficult task each month-end. There was also the
risk that the invoices we received were not being paid because we
didn't know who to send them to for approval and we had many
instances of invoices being coded incorrectly," Seymour
continues.
Seizing control of the purchasing process at The Tote became a
top priority and the Board assembled a project team to select and
implement a spend control platform that would bring purchases under
control.
Why PROACTIS?
Following a thorough review of different types of eProcurement
solutions, The Tote selected PROACTIS. "We selected PROACTIS
largely because it seemed very easy to use. Like many
organisations, Bookmakers are less interested in back-office
systems than the core systems, so we wanted something that would
let them abide by a controlled purchasing process without
distracting from their main focus," Seymour explains.
The Tote first implemented PROACTIS across its Wigan-based head
office as well as a number of pilot sites, in a two-month project
that involved several "advocates" from the user community across
the business to help with the process of encouraging user adoption.
Over the following three months, the system was then rolled-out
across the UK in a successful project that has seen PROACTIS become
the de-facto method of buying all types of goods and services for
staff in The Tote.
"We were also impressed by the system's ability to help us
control different types of spend. PROACTIS extended the concept of
spend control beyond categories like stationery and IT, to address
critical areas of spend such as marketing, capital expenditure and
services, many of which are not really capable of being catalogued
in a typical eProcurement system" says Seymour.
Results
As Joanne Seymour explains, the impact of PROACTIS has been
far-reaching in The Tote. As well as controlling the purchase of
pens, paper and IT equipment, the system has been configured to
assist with many different types of purchases:
- Capex forms are now automated in PROACTIS, forcing users to
enter important data such as payment stages and project milestones,
as well as driving requests through an appropriate Capex approval
process.
- Purchases relating to the fleet of company cars validates the
user's registration number and vehicle type before allowing the
spend.
- Commissions payable to website partners for click-through
arrangements are automatically calculated and self-billed to
marketing affiliates, taking this workload out of the Accounts
Payable team.
- Building plans are attached to purchases made by the Facilities
department, to ensure that suppliers receive the correct orders
prior to commencing building or maintenance work.
One of the major beneficiaries of the new PROACTIS system has
been the Finance team in The Tote, who now have access to graphs
and reports displaying up-to-the-minute information on accruals and
commitments. Furthermore, budget holders such as Regional Managers
and Departmental Managers across the business, can now monitor
spending against their budget in real time.
Asked to summarise the benefits of the PROACTIS project for The
Tote, Seymour says: "Everything we buy is now appropriately
controlled, and without any of the paperwork or bureaucracy that
the Accounts Payable team used to have to deal with. Users find it
easy for them to adhere to the right process, and Management see
the benefit from the extra visibility we now have over
expenditure."
