Saint Laurent frees up time and gains control of Procurement processes

The Goals

• Define and implement an expense commitment process
• Control and analyze indirect purchases
• Facilitate expense management and budget tracking (with multilevel, multi-company and multicurrency approval rules)

The Challenges

Using paper purchase orders and Excel spreadsheets, Saint Laurent did not have a software technology tool capable of tracking expense commitments, requesters or order receipts. Approvals were done manually using sign-offs that were passed from department to department and often lost.

Paper invoices were not centralized, making spend management control and expense analysis difficult. This lack of visibility generated an enormous time and resource waste for the Finance Department.

Following an internal audit, their Finance Department wanted to improve its procurement processes, from purchase request all the way to invoice reconciliation.

The Solution

Saint Laurent was looking for a solution that would allow it to:

• Centralize purchasing data
• Quickly retrieve information related to each expense commitment (requester, approver, amount, receipt status, etc.)
• Allocate different budgets according to the purchase request
• Automate the entire process and save time for all stakeholders

“We needed a robust technology tool for our procurement and supplier management processes that would enable all operational staff and departments to work together seamlessly to accurately monitor budgets, invoicing and authorizations,” says Virginie Bonneau, Accounting and Tax Manager for Saint Laurent.

Saint Laurent’s Finance Department, with the support of the IT Department, initiated the project to implement a purchasing information system and chose Corcentric’s Procure-to-Pay solution.

The Results

All purchasing categories (except for travel and transportation purchases) are now managed via the cloud-based Corcentric Procurement solution, which represents a volume of 82 million euros and 20,000 orders.

In order to ensure the adoption of the procure-to-pay tool by its 300 users, Saint Laurent favors a flexible purchasing process that allows orders to be placed after the fact. Thus, 80% of purchase requests are regularization requests.

IT and general services purchase requests, on the other hand, follow the classic procurement process where the order is sent to the supplier only if the request has been formulated and approved on the Corcentric Platform.

“This strategy ensures reliable budget tracking and facilitates expense management by allocating requests to the right cost center with the right account,” says Bonneau. “Budgets are now updated automatically and we are able to anticipate any overruns.”

Since implementing the Corcentric Procureto-Pay solution, Saint Laurent has achieved a number of substantial benefits:

• Centralization of purchasing data on a single platform with automatic updates in real time
• Time savings, visibility and traceability throughout the spend commitment process
• Reliable budget tracking and optimized expense management
• Automated purchasing processes that allow stakeholders to focus on higher value-added activities
• More flexibility through multilevel management of budgets and approval rules