Dura Vermeer digitizes invoice processing for better control of its P2P process

Objectives

Within Dura Vermeer, the Construction and Property Development division is active in residential, non-residential and industrial construction.

In 2011, the division still had a paper-based invoice processing system with the associated issues. "If you wanted an invoice to be approved, you had to go through the office building with the invoice in your hand to have it physically signed," says Mark ter Hark, Divisional Director Dura Vermeer Construction and Real Estate. "With ten decentralized operating companies that all had their own Accounts Payable departments, that was a lot of work."

This was at a time when digital invoice processing took off. "There were two important requirements for us. One was to raise invoice processing from a decentralized to a centralized model. The second was to make the process more efficient by automating it.” The Construction and Real Estate division of Dura Vermeer wanted to do this by moving from ten decentralized units to one Shared Service Center and one uniform process. "In short, we wanted to make a step change in efficiency," says Ter Hark.

Benefits

Invoices arrive in the Proactis system as digital files or are read via scanning software. Ter Hark adds: "[email protected] in de Bouw was completely new and not yet fully developed. It was technically complex to connect to and that took a lot of time. But it has borne fruit. 30 per cent of the invoices, especially from larger subcontractors, now come in via this process. That is pure profit. We now read the purchase orders in Proactis via timesheets and match the invoices accordingly." Digital invoice processing has clear advantages. "We are a project organization. We bring construction specialists together. For example, for a new house, 40 subcontractors work together, from tiling to back fitters. If we could automate part of this process, it would make a direct difference to costs. The Purchase-to-Pay process we have now is more efficient, we have better insight into the costs we incur for a project and we have control over the incoming invoice flows."

In cooperation with Proactis, the Construction and Real Estate division of Dura Vermeer wants to take the next step: Automating the hiring of flexible workers. "We have hundreds of temporary workers every day, who we invoice and pay on a weekly basis. This is a manual, time-consuming and error-prone process. Among other things, this is due to a lack of clarity regarding hourly declarations. To make this process more efficient, we also want to automate it in the system. So that we can sign off timesheets digitally. With proactis, the manager can send an invoice proposal to the supplier based on approved timesheets. That is called reversed billing. In this way, can ensure that invoices are sent error-free and are paid on time. We are currently conducting a promising pilot project for this. If it works well, we will roll out this solution on a broad scale."

Employees also reap the benefits of the reporting possibilities on a daily basis. "We can now also see where an invoice is in the process. If it is held up, you can intervene in the process." Ter Hark is happy with Proactis' solution. "To sum it up, we have the basics in order, and this is a huge help. In fact, we regularly receive other parties who want to see how we work with the Proactis platform. I am also a member of the independent advisory board that works with Proactis on the further development of their software, and this says enough."