Case study: McGrathNicol improves governance and visibility with Concur Invoice

McGrathNicol is a specialist advisory and restructuring firm that has built a reputation for managing complexity and consistently delivering the results its clients need. Its team of independent experts work across all industry sectors and business sizes delivering valuable advice and high-quality outcomes. McGrathNicol Advisory helps companies improve performance by mitigating risk, managing change and achieving growth. McGrathNicol Restructuring helps restore stability and delivers value to businesses experiencing operational or financial challenges.

Why McGrathNicol choose SAP Concur?

• Improved control over compliance and governance
• Increased accessibility and visibility of spend
• Digitalisation and automation of processes

McGrathNicole case study

“The savings this has delivered across hundreds of invoices per month has meant our investment in Concur Invoice has really paid off.” Brendan Tanner, Head of Finance, McGrathNicol

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Financial system overhaul presents AP automation opportunity

McGrathNicol has made a concerted effort to digitalise both its client facing and back office processes in recent years. Believing that the firm’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was unlikely to cater to their business requirements in the long term, they embarked upon a journey to improve the firm’s financial systems.

Brendan Tanner, Head of Finance, McGrathNicol, said, “From a financial management perspective, when the ERP isn’t fit for purpose, everything attached to it also becomes problematic. This meant that McGrathNicol had to revisit the way it managed expenses, accounts payable and other processes, so the entire financial management system was up for review.” Knowing that the firm would need to upgrade its ERP solution, the finance team could see an opportunity to streamline its invoice management processes.

“Our fortnightly pay runs are now a lighter touch as a result of both the process and workflow within Concur Invoice.” Brendan Tanner, Head of Finance, McGrathNicol

Integrating Concur Invoice with SAP ERP solution S/4HANA Cloud

McGrathNicol chose to automate its accounts payable process with Concur Invoice, which simplifies and speeds up the capture and payment of invoices, while providing greater visibility into every step of the invoice management process.

Brendan Tanner said, “Prior to commencing at McGrathNicol, I had used Concur Expense in another role and developed an appreciation for the solution. Through the ERP review process, we became aware of Concur Invoice, which had the potential to solve the team’s challenges around invoice processing. Based on prior experience and input from certain reference customers, it was clear that SAP Concur offered the right solutions for our needs.”

At the same time, McGrathNicol selected SAP ERP solution S/4HANA Cloud – with a strong desire to realise further benefits by integrating Concur Invoice into their ERP’s financial system.

Brendan Tanner said, “We integrated SAP Concur and S/4HANA Cloud via SFTP, enabled through the integration i-flows of the SAP Cloud Platform. Supplier information is passed from S/4HANA to SAP Concur; journal entries arising from the invoices processed in Concur Invoice are passed back into S/4HANA.”

Gaining back-office efficiencies and halving invoice processing times

Concur Invoice has generated efficiencies across the firm, taking a significant level of data entry from the admin team located across McGrathNicol’s various offices.

“While the overall finance team effort has remained relatively stable, finance has pivoted from having a ‘peak’ invoice review and re-work period prior to every pay run, to a day to day focus on upfront data accuracy before invoices are released to the business for allocation and coding steps. By locking in those details previously prone to error (including vendor, invoice number and GST value) using the accuracy of the scan and finance verification, the manual steps previously undertaken by the business have been automated. This has resulted in a reduction in the instances of re-work from 5-10% of approved invoices in our old system, to effectively zero. Our fortnightly pay runs are now a lighter touch as a result of both the process and workflow within Concur Invoice.”

The process of managing each invoice prior to implementing Concur Invoice required, on average, 12 minutes of touchpoints from different employees involved in the process. This, multiplied across hundreds of invoices every month, created substantial cost inefficiencies for McGrathNicol. This needed to be addressed through automation.

Brendan Tanner said, “Using Concur Invoice has cut invoice processing time in half. Instead of 12 minutes of touchpoints, the automated solution means that each invoice now requires just over six minutes of touchpoints, which we consider to be an exceptional result. The savings this has delivered across hundreds of invoices per month has meant our investment in Concur Invoice has really paid off. The feedback from the team has also been very positive.”

The efficiency provided by the SAP Concur mobile app has also proved beneficial to McGrathNicol, a benefit emphasized during COVID-19 and the move to working remotely during periods of lockdown.

Brendan Tanner said, “The ability for our approvers to review and approve invoices through the mobile app has been well received and enabled our new Concur enabled process to operate throughout COVID-19 lockdowns with almost no adverse impacts.”

Improved visibility of spend with Concur Invoice

Concur Invoice has also improved governance and oversight for McGrathNicol by offering valuable information in the Invoice Manager view. This view delivers a dashboard showing how many invoices have been received, how many are awaiting approval and how many have been approved and are awaiting payment.

Brendan Tanner said, “The Invoice Manager screen is a simple, yet extremely useful dashboard where we can view the status of every invoice. The ability to search easily on invoices in all phases of entry to approval has given us increased visibility and foresight for short term cash flow purposes. The system we had previously offered nothing like this kind of information. From a governance and oversight perspective, Concur Invoice delivered a huge win for us that we weren’t expecting.”

“The reporting we have been able to generate through Intelligence has added to the visibility that the Concur Invoice Manager provides. In addition to this, the easy to access audit trail available on each transaction has given important visibility to the finance team around the entire invoice process,” continued Tanner.

“From a governance and oversight perspective, Concur Invoice delivered a huge win for us that we weren’t expecting.” Brendan Tanner, Head of Finance, McGrathNicol

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