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20 BACK OFFICE


GREGGS DRIVES PURCHASE-TO-PAY EFFICIENCY G


reggs the Bakers has implemented the Invoice4 hybrid invoice processing system from Intelligent


Capture, delivering 100% of its invoices electronically into Greggs’s existing UNIT4 Coda Financials system. As an existing customer of UNIT4 and


its partner Intelligent Capture, Greggs already benefited from an automated accounts payable solution within its Shared Service Centre. By introducing Invoice4, the organisation will drive further accounts payable and purchase-to-pay efficiency. The hybrid solution adopted will provide Greggs with 100% cleansed, electronic data delivered into its existing financial system. Paper purchase invoices continue to be scanned by Greggs, with the images being sent to the Invoice4 managed service. The relevant invoice data is extracted, cleansed for accuracy and then posted to Coda Financials without any intervention by the Greggs team. An additional key benefit is that invoice exceptions, such as suppliers not quoting purchase order numbers on the invoices, are highlighted at the earliest opportunity and handled in a dedicated, web-based exception handling process by Greggs, helping to drive straight-through processing.


“Invoice4 ensures we no longer manually


enter invoices into our Coda Financials solution and dedicated exception handling and reporting is absolutely key to our Shared Service Centre, driving out invoice exceptions,” said Lee Massingham, supply chain financial controller at Greggs.


“We were also delighted to see that UNIT4 and Intelligent Capture have come together to develop and market the Invoice4 solution.As a UNIT4 customer we clearly see the solution as pivotal to us achieving higher invoice match rates and greater purchase-to- pay efficiency.”


BIG BRANDS STRUGGLE WITH SINGLE VIEW


Businesses are yet to get to grips with ‘big data’ to gain a single customer view, according to a study by Henley Business School commissioned by business analytics provider SAS.


The research suggests that they lack


back-office systems powerful enough to handle the vast quantities of relevant data needed to create a single customer view, which captures all the interactions a customer has with a company or organisation, regardless of the channel used by the customer. Despite the Centre for Economics


and Business Research estimating that big data could add £216 billion to the UK economy by 2017, the study reveals that most organisations struggle to manage large data sets, let alone big data, to gain a single customer view.


RETAIL TECHNOLOGY NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012 The majority of information held by


organisations is unstructured with an estimated 80% of non-numeric data. At the same time, the current economic and regulatory climate means that priority is given to compliance projects. Another added pressure is that most organisations are ‘product’ focused, creating siloed departments, rather than organised by customer. This presents significant challenges


for customer-centric organisations looking to implement a single customer view, and a lack of skills and capital investment were the biggest barriers according to respondents. However, those organisations which are committed to a single customer view strategy – and that see it as more than an IT project – are


seeing returns. These include improved customer segmentation with more targeted marketing campaigns. One financial services company has seen a tenfold increase in response rates. Dr Charles Randall, SAS UK & Ireland solutions marketing manager, said: “It’s surprising to see that big companies are still struggling to get to grips with large data sets – never mind big data. While a lack of in-house skills and securing funding continues to be a challenge for organisations, there are options. Flexible solutions such as analytics-as-a-service or cloud-based offerings mean companies can buy in specific expertise to meet their needs without having to train up existing staff or commit to a large upfront investment.”


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