The Company

The Aarsleff Group is a international construction company based in Denmark. The company was founded in 1947 and as been growing ever since. The original workforce of 14 men has now, half a century later, grown to approximately 2,400, employed in the parent company, the subsidiaries and the associated companies.

All in all a group enjoying professional respect both in Denmark and abroad. The annual turnover, which peaked at DKK 40,000 the first year, reached almost DKK 3.5 billion 50 years later.

Read more about Per Aarsleff: www.aarsleff.com

The application

The challenge

For a construction company with more than 2,000 employees engaged in many simultaneous projects, where not only crew but also project managers and assistants move from project to project and from building site to building site, getting 90,000 supplier invoices each year processed, approved efficiently and fast poses a huge challenge.

Per Aarsleff has been handling this work manually for many years with good results but also some shortcomings:

Too much time spent processing invoices in the organization
Too much time spent locating misplaced invoices
Too much time spent acquiring invoice copies from suppliers 
Heavy dependency on experienced employees in finance department
Limited compliance with defined rules of approval
Limited control of cash flow
Excessive resources used to prepare monthly financial report
Almost no early payment discounts
High costs associated with unnecessary internal copies
High costs associated with distribution of invoices

The Solution

Phase one

The first phase of the project was to start scanning all supplier invoices, even if the actual processing and approval was done manually as always. The direct benefit of this pure "Scan and file" solution was immediate, as all employees now could access the invoices directly from their desk right after the scanning had taken place. Not only did this relieve the finance department from much tedious work, but it also made employees consult the invoices more often reducing errors.

This "frontend scanning" requires all invoices to arrive at one or more scanning locations, and therefore enabled Per Aarsleff to perform pre-registration and initial account specification together with phase one of the scanning project which again has provided Per Aarsleff with many advantages with regard to financial control.

Phase two

The next phase of the invoice project was to add electronic workflows to the solution. Instead of basing the approval process on the knowledge of skilled employees in the financial department and the discretion of each employee, the process should now be based on well defined and well documented rules. With the MultiArchive Workflow module, that integrates fully with Per Aarsleff's ERP application, we designed workflows in accordance with the defined business rules and at the same time utilizing the dynamic information from the project management module of the ERP application.

Now everything is carried out in accordance with the rules - every time!

The benefits

According to Susanne Grumløse, project manager at Per Aarsleff, the implementation of online invoice approval has been a huge success at Per Aarsleff. "It used to take three to four weeks before the person responsible could take the time to approve the individual invoice and send it back to the accounts department. Today the electronic system prompts the employees to approve the invoices in only a few days and, accordingly, the payment can take place almost immediately. Among others, this means that piles of unapproved invoices can no longer heap up in the accounts department." 

In addition, Susanne mentions the following benefits :

• Easy to follow up on accounts in the bookkeeping department
• Better overview of cash flow
• Larger discounts from suppliers
• Full integration to the ERP system - ASPECT4
• Everybody can see who approved a specific invoice
• Follow-up on credtiors is easy
• No filing costs
• More and more invoices are handeld - same staff !!

Contact

If you want to know more about the solution at Per Aarsleff please contact:

Susanne Grumløse, Per Aarsleff - sgr@(if you can see this please update your browser)aarsleff.com

Kim Olsen, Multi-Support - olsen@(if you can see this please update your browser)multi-support.com