As a leading construction group that employs 3,300 people across the UK, digital transformation is at the heart of Galliford Try. Peter Rose, shared service centre director at Galliford Try, explains the journey from paper to Causeway Tradex
As one of the UK’s largest construction businesses, Galliford Try felt the paper invoice pain more than most. Over 200,000 invoices landed in their offices each year and managing them took time, resources, and lots of patience.
Ending the paperchase & strengthening supplier relationships
Before moving to e-invoicing, if the Galliford Try Finance Team worked 365 days a year, they would need to process 548 invoices every day to keep up – which relies on the invoices being mistake-free and good to go.
Galliford Try saw first-hand the difficulties of convincing their supply chain to join them on their e-invoicing journey with a number of suppliers hesitant to go digital.
After trying a generic e-invoicing platform, progress was too slow to be effective. Only 25% of suppliers were onboarded in the first three years.
For these reasons, Galliford Try sought to source a solution that was ‘built for construction.’
Embracing digital transformation
Automated e-Invoicing with Causeway Tradex
Causeway Tradex has ‘ended the paper chase’ and solved the adoption problem.
Galliford Try rapidly sees all the costs in the pipeline that need paying, and validated invoices are available in their accounting system the day after they are submitted by the supplier.
Suppliers, therefore, have good visibility of rejected invoices (and rejection reasons), normally rapidly correcting and resubmitting them.
The Causeway Tradex Community Management Team used its mix of construction expertise and experience to drive adoption.
Suppliers found many of their customers already using Causeway Tradex, making the transition an easy choice as they can handle payments with other companies too.
“It’s fair to say that Causeway Tradex has been instrumental in substantially improving our PPC Compliance. Now, we pay more than 95% of invoices within 60 days of receipt – it was a fraction of that 5 years ago.”
Peter Rose, shared service centre director
Ending the paperchase
Causeway Tradex has drastically reduced the volume of paper invoices received each year.
At the same time, it has automated validation and significantly improved straight-through processing rates. Only validated invoices land in Galliford Try’s ERP system.
Peter Rose commented: “Causeway Tradex captures everything on the system and validates invoices for us.
“Any mistakes get picked up and returned to suppliers that day. We don’t even see them. That’s massive for us and it means our Accounts Payable team don’t start working on invoices that cannot be processed, making them much more efficient.”
Driving compliance with ‘Supplier Golden Rules’
Peter added “Causeway Tradex has helped drive compliance with our ‘Supplier Golden Rules’ which help us process efficiently but more importantly allow us to pay on time, supporting our compliance with the Prompt Payment Code.
“Causeway Tradex ends the paper chase. We see everything in the pipeline that needs paying. Whereas before, you could easily lose sight of what you have and what needs dealing with.”
Community and benefits outweigh the resistance to change
The Causeway Community Management Team were crucial to this deployment with their unique blend of expertise and experience helping suppliers to see the benefits of e-invoicing, while also supporting the Galliford Try through their internal changes.
Peter said: “Our Causeway Tradex Project Manager was a shining star. We credit him and the Community Management team with the speed of our mobilisation, which made a huge difference to us.
“We were impressed with the flexibility shown during the implementation stage. We gave Causeway a headache in terms of validation rules and changes in business structure, and they always responded very well.”
Causeway Tradex has the largest online trading network of UK construction suppliers onboarded onto the platform. Contractors and suppliers get instant access to thousands of other businesses trading on the platform.
“Once the supplier joins Causeway Tradex, the penny quickly drops about one of its biggest advantages. They join a large community of customers and suppliers already on the platform,” added Peter.
‘Prompt Payment’ speeds up the onboarding process
Galliford Try did try e-invoicing before Causeway Tradex and chose a generic solution to do the job. However, progress was too slow to be effective. This is why they decided to invest in Causeway’s ‘built for construction’ solution – and progress sped up rapidly.
Galliford Try and Causeway agreed on an initial onboarding goal of 65% of eligible invoices in the first months. Since hitting that target with relative ease, the number of onboarded suppliers has grown to 85% and is still climbing.
For Peter, there are many reasons for this jump in adoption, like the Community Management team, but Prompt Payment stands out too.
“Galliford Try paying on time is a strong incentive for suppliers to join Causeway Tradex. We endeavour to pay promptly, but processing invoices manually uses too much time and resources.”
Causeway Tradex is a true e-invoicing solution that uses Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to bring the risks of mistakes down to almost zero.
“It’s fair to say that Causeway Tradex has been instrumental in substantially improving our PPC Compliance,” said Peter. “Now, we pay more than 95% of invoices within 60 days of receipt – it was a fraction of that 5 years ago.”
Strengthening supplier relationships
Chasing paper has more downsides than ineffective invoice management and wasted resources.
Supplier relationships suffer when invoices are constantly sent back due to missing information and mistakes – delaying payments. Galliford Try wanted to pay on time, but manual processes were a stumbling block.
Peter stated: “Causeway Tradex has improved our supplier relationships significantly due to the additional controls over the returns process that it provides. If the supplier submits an invoice that doesn’t meet our business rules, it’s instantly rejected back to the supplier explaining to them, what is missing.
“They can easily make the corrections and resubmit for processing. It gives greater visibility on both sides – before the supplier may even have missed that we’d returned the invoice for correction. Now everyone can quickly and easily see where the invoice is in the approval and payment process.
“Our Head of Procurement has also spoken about how little supplier debt is on the purchase ledger. We have one large plant supplier account which runs with overdue debt < 1% of total debt, at one stage it had no overdue debt and that’s unheard of in this industry. They were very pleased.
“The other added benefit is that we can instantly identify when we receive a valid invoice as the information that comes from Causeway Tradex is time stamped. This gives us a digital, accurate way to record receipt of an invoice for PPC purposes.”
