Pon Holdings, an international trading and service organization (which, among other things, manufactures bicycles and marine engines and imports VW, Audi, Porsche, and Bentley), employs a total of 13,000 people. Power and Equipment together account for about 2,500 employees.

Whether it’s the construction of railways and waterways, in shipping and the offshore sector, or in providing power to businesses and hospitals—you’ll find Pon’s heavy-duty equipment in all these places.

Digitizing, standardizing, and centralizing incoming invoices

Marc Engelen and Martijn van der Horst have long been the financial linchpins at these heavyweights. Both companies took a significant step forward in their financial administration by digitizing, standardizing, and centralizing their invoice flow using software from Basware and Kofax.

And it was about time, the pair agrees, because each year the two companies receive some 60,000 invoices. The amounts vary widely—from well over half a million for an excavator to a bill of a few tens for a couple of packs of coffee.

And all those invoices used to be processed manually. Several people in the accounting department were busy with this, and because it was manual work, things sometimes went wrong. An invoice would occasionally go missing; sometimes a bill would be left in a drawer because there were questions about it.

Peace of mind in Accounts Payable

With the digitization of the invoice flow, that’s a thing of the past. Martijn: “With the push of a button, we have insight, control, and we forward the invoice to the right person. Just compare that to the minutes people used to spend checking a single invoice.”

Marc adds: “And accounts payable is no longer burdened with calls from suppliers about unpaid invoices, which used to lead to time-consuming searches. A single glance at the screen shows the status of each invoice and indicates who the designated contact person is.”

Cost savings through automated invoice processing

The approximately thirty employees in the financial departments of both companies did have some concerns about the automation initiative. For example, would this cost jobs? Martijn: “The answer is no. This step didn’t cost any jobs, but it did save costs.”

“The accounts payable department is no longer bombarded with calls from suppliers about unpaid invoices, which used to lead to time-consuming investigations.”

The reason for these cost savings lies in the fact that those responsible for reviewing and approving invoices can now do so much more quickly. This frees up time for other, more value-added work.

Marc: “Previously, the focus was on data entry. That has shifted to tasks with more added value, such as conducting analyses. ‘How much coffee do we actually buy? Wow, that’s quite a lot. Can we manage that more efficiently?’ That makes the work much more interesting.”

4CEE’s help desk has fast response times

The implementation and transition to the new programs by 4CEE went virtually smoothly. Martijn found it a nerve-wracking moment: “We’ve got a train running here with more than 200 invoices a day, and you don’t want that train to come to a halt.”

The way 4CEE handled the hiccups during the transition confirmed to Marc that he’d chosen the right partner: “They don’t get flustered easily when going live, and their help desk has a fast response time. It’s nice to have a strong partner behind you with plenty of knowledge and experience. Their calm demeanor also put our minds at ease.”

Next step: matching invoices to purchase orders

The transition from manual to automated invoice processing was a “huge leap forward” for the companies. The quality of the work improved, and turnaround times decreased. Meanwhile, both companies are already hard at work preparing for “the next step”: “By automatically matching purchase orders with invoices, we can achieve even greater efficiency. That will significantly reduce our administrative workload.”