Case study: Driving growth with global fashion distributor True Alliance

Achieving transparency and scalability through invoice and expense automation.

Established in 1982 and headquartered in Sydney, True Alliance is one of the largest distributors in the Australian and New Zealand markets. True Alliance is home to some of the world’s most famous “must have” brands including: Ben Sherman, Lacoste, Lee, Nautica, Riders, Rockport, Speedo, Teva, The North Face, UGG and Wrangler.

Why True Alliance choose SAP Concur solutions?

• Increased visibility and transparency across spend management
• Usability and easy navigation
• Time saving through improved efficiencies

True Alliance case study

True Alliance looked to SAP Concur and automation to assist with managing and controlling spend across the company while providing increased transparency.

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True Alliance looking to scale following strong growth

Following six years of strong growth True Alliance were looking to add efficiencies to back-office functions to help support an increase in scope and scale across a diverse brand portfolio.

“True Alliance is the distributor and licensee and shared services provider for 18 global fashion brands, outdoor brands, sports brands, and we’ve got denim brands, so we’ve got a vast amount of diversity in our brand portfolio,’ says Noel David, Group Financial Controller, True Alliance.

True Alliance looked to SAP Concur and automation to assist with managing and controlling spend across the company while providing increased transparency. “As we have been growing in the last six years, there’s more paper, there’s more work effort and it was a manual based process for expense and invoice.

“What’s important to me is driving growth and driving growth means having seamless back-office functions to allow the business be a front-end focused business and not a back-end focused business.” Noel David, Group Financial Controller, True Alliance

We had paper flow in the mail and travel was disconnected from our main ERP system. We’ve got brand managers, marketing managers, and account managers and they are always on the road in remote locations. Today what we’ve got with SAP Concur, is workflow status, we can see where things are in the system and there is transparency in the business.”

“Change is important to me and if we don’t keep on changing then we’ll be left behind. For myself and for the team it has been a great transformation,” continued Noel David.

True Alliance Adopted Concur Invoice to Automate Accounts Payable and Get Full Visibility into Spend

Concur Invoice relieves True Alliance staff of manual input of invoice data, improving their accounts payable process and visibility, allowing employees to focus on what matters most.

“When the invoice is in Concur, we know about it. It is easy to approve. Usually you would have given an invoice on paper to someone to sign, now you can just allocate it to them electronically and they can just approve it with a click of a button in Concur,” says Mari Vermooten, Financial Accountant, True Alliance.

“It’s just easy to find information. When we have the audit, we usually would have gone to the storage room and looked for these invoices. Now we can just look up the vendor in Concur and you would have the full history right there”, continues Vermooten.

“Retail is fast paced so we can’t wait around. Having that approval mobile active is really important to have the business running.” Noel David, Group Financial Controller, True Alliance

The User Experience and Saving Time with Automated Expense Management

True Alliance have adopted Concur Expense to automate and integrate the company’s expense management, capturing spend from multiple sources and simplifying the process for everyone. A positive user experience has been at the forefront of the positive transition.

“Having a younger team at True Alliance, it means that mobile active is really important to them, so we looked for a system that was for the users, they’re capturing their receipts as they go which is key and they’re capturing their photos and throwing their receipts away,” says David. “We get good feedback on the users’ side for Concur. Most users enjoy using it; enjoy the capture of receipts, they enjoy booking travel via concur, yeah it’s all positive.”

For Kimberly Frittum, Marketing and Communications Manager, for True Alliance brand Wrangler, it is all about time saving and efficiency.

“It is so much more efficient for me. My expenses, I can upload them on the go and just code at the end of the month and invoice as they come through. I can track them on there as well,” says Frittum. “Travel booking is easier, I love having the car, hotel and flights in one place as well. Yeah, it’s just super convenient.”

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