By now it should be clear that a lot of things need to change if we want to avoid a climate emergency and all the downstream effects it will bring with it. And since these downstream effects will also affect businesses, the responsibility to take action lies on everyone’s shoulders. Governments and institutions are rolling out more and more regulations for sustainability measures such as the CSRD by the European Commission, and organisations are required to implement these. This is often easier said than done.

At Esker, we embarked on an ESG journey a few years ago and have, in the meantime, implemented several policies to reduce our carbon footprint. One factor remained difficult to gauge, however: the supplier side. In France, for example Esker requests its suppliers to sign a Code of Conduct, which addresses the main ESG aspects such as corruption, fair labour practices and environmental considerations. For our own ESG performance data, however, it was challenging to quantify the impact the procurement side of our operations had.

Since we’re not alone in this dilemma, we decided to make it easier to track a supplier’s ESG performance indicators, not just for ourselves, but also for our customers. Esker Supplier Management now displays risk rating panes that indicate downgraded or upgraded ESG scores, which allows you to verify that ESG standards are met before engaging with a new supplier. It also enables continuous tracking of the ESG score in real time, so that you can rest assured that your supply chain meets the defined standards.

Starting in 2024, the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires mandatory reporting of ESG metrics for a number of European businesses. To prepare for these requirements, Esker developed AI-supported capabilities that extract energy consumption from utility bills and travel expenses. This feature will make meeting the reporting requirements much easier.

The recent Forrester report “The Environmental Sustainability Procurement Technology Landscape, Q3 2023” gives clarifying insights into how to work with vendors of solutions that are meant to track an organisation’s carbon footprint. We are excited to be mentioned as a Notable Vendor. The features in Esker Supplier Management assist in reducing the complexity of ESG reporting and in managing compliance with ESG regulations, of which many more are expected to be implemented in the near future. We are happy to be considered part of the solution for the huge challenge that humanity is facing.

Feel free to contact us! We’d be happy to discuss all things ESG with you, and help you figure out how Esker can help.

Catherine Dupuy-Holdich

Catherine has been with Esker for 20 years. As Source-to-Pay Product Manager, she is the market and business expert of all things S2P. She is responsible for overseeing the development of Esker’s S2P suite, including product strategy and vision. Catherine works closely with R&D, sales, marketing and support to ensure customer satisfaction.

Read more insights from Catherine Dupuy-Holdich

Increasing uncertainty in the global economy has led to increased pressure on the procurement function to lower costs and maximise efficiencies. At the same time, finance teams are also under pressure to maximise the bottom line whilst providing visibility and accountability at any given point.

Finance and procurement are undoubtedly two essential functions within any organisation. While they may individually have different goals and responsibilities, when they work together effectively, they can create a dream team to drive Source-to-Pay (S2P) excellence. Just like a football dream team, finance and procurement can complement each other’s strengths and work towards a common goal of achieving cost savings, improving efficiency, and mitigating risks.

One of the key areas where finance and procurement can collaborate is in strategic sourcing. Procurement teams are responsible for identifying and selecting suppliers, negotiating contracts, and managing relationships. However, finance teams can provide valuable insights into the financial health and stability of potential suppliers. By working together, they can ensure that suppliers not only offer competitive pricing but also have the financial capability to meet the organisation’s needs in the long term.

Another area where finance and procurement can make great wins together is in spend analysis. Finance teams have access to financial data and can provide insights into spending patterns, budget allocations, and cost-saving opportunities. Procurement teams can leverage this information to identify areas of potential savings, negotiate better contracts, and optimise the overall procurement process. By combining their expertise, finance and procurement can drive cost reductions and improve the organisation’s bottom line.

Risk management is another critical area where finance and procurement can work together effectively. Procurement teams are responsible for assessing supplier risks, ensuring compliance with regulations, and managing supplier relationships. Finance teams, on the other hand, can provide insights into financial risks, such as creditworthiness, liquidity, and solvency of suppliers. By collaborating, finance and procurement can identify and mitigate potential risks, ensuring the organisation’s supply chain remains robust and resilient.

Technology plays a crucial role in achieving source-to-pay excellence, and finance and procurement work well as a team in this area as well. Finance teams often have expertise in financial systems and technology, while procurement teams are well-versed in procurement software and tools. By working together, they can select and implement integrated source-to-pay solutions that streamline processes, improve data accuracy, and enhance visibility across the organisation. This collaboration can lead to increased efficiency and visibility, reduced manual work, and improved decision-making.

Communication and collaboration are the keys to success for finance and procurement teams. Regular meetings, joint planning sessions, and shared goals can foster a strong partnership between the two functions. By aligning their objectives and working towards a common vision, finance and procurement can create a synergy that drives an efficient and effective end-to-end source-to-pay process.

In conclusion, finance and procurement can work together like a football dream team to achieve source-to-pay excellence. By leveraging each other’s strengths, collaborating on strategic sourcing, spend analysis, risk management, and technology implementation, they can drive cost savings, improve efficiency, and mitigate risks. Just like a successful football team, finance and procurement can achieve remarkable results when they work together towards a common goal.

Esker’s AI-driven Source-to-Pay suite equips companies with the technology and tools for finance and procurement teams to collaborate to meet shared goals and streamline the end-to-end S2P process.

Jennifer Ball

As Marketing Co-ordinator for Esker UK, Jennifer manages Esker UK's marketing campaigns and events for S2P solutions. She has been part of the Esker family since 2019.

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Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, today announced that Arco, the UK’s leading safety company, has automated its accounts payable and procurement processes with Esker’s full Procure-to-Pay suite.

Arco was originally looking at only an accounts payable solution to gain greater visibility and control over their vendor invoice process. However, the finance, procurement and IT transformation teams also saw the advantages of automating their purchase order process, particularly with the management of their purchase orders for ‘goods not for resale’.

Due to recent growth, Arco had outgrown its current systems and processes. The ability of Esker to allow Arco to control spend and audit trails was a crucial reason for taking on these new solutions, as well as being able to tailor the solutions to its individual needs. 

Esker was approached in the first instance due to its positioning in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites. Arco liked Esker’s flexible approach as well as its supplier enquiries management option which classifies non-invoices such as statements and supplier queries.

Amanda Henderson, Accounts Payable Manager at Arco, said, “We have already seen some great results since we went live with Esker in the summer. 71 out of the 88 vendors targeted are now automatically processed, with some 14,300 invoices actioned with no intervention whatsoever.”

This all-encompassing suite of solutions means that Esker will help transform Arco’s accounts visibility and control. Esker’s solutions will remove all manual touch points and reduce maverick spend, meaning staff can concentrate on more value-added tasks, such as enhancing customer relationships.

Read full press release.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for finance and customer service functions, announces that it has been selected by Sanden International (Europe) GmbH, a manufacturer of automotive and electrical equipment to some of the world’s leading companies, to automate the processing of its accounts payable, accounts receivable and procurement documentation through AI-driven technologies.

Implemented as a cloud service, Esker’s Accounts Receivable (AR) Accounts Payable (AP) and Procurement automation solutions have given Sanden International (Europe) GmbH the ability to streamline its accounting and procurement processes and benefit from eliminating manual inefficiencies.

Sanden International (Europe) GmbH was keen to streamline its AR processes and wanted to create a web portal to help facilitate communications initially between themselves and their customers. This would allow real-time joint visibility and access online to any invoice status, plus, freeing up internal financial and IT resources dedicated to managing this process. 

Also, having the ability to automatically send invoices in customer-preferred formats (either paper or electronic), reduce internal support for AR invoice delivery, archiving invoices and associated documents, would all be of benefit, as well as the advantages gained by being able to easily adapt when more customers adopt electronic invoicing.

Having implemented the solution quickly and realising the benefits to be gained, Sanden International (Europe) GmbH soon turned its focus to the AP function to see if this could also be improved through automation. Like many organisations, Sanden International (Europe) GmbH experienced slow invoice processing times because of manual routing and sign-off requirements, reduced accuracy with manual data entry, a lack of visibility as to whether an invoice had been received, processed or paid, and the difficulty of retrieving manually stored invoices.

Esker was able to allow Sanden International (Europe) GmbH to automatically capture, route and prioritise its invoices according to predefined rules matched to particular attributes on the invoice, such as supplier, amount, buying entity, etc. Intelligent data capture would then extract the information for multi-level approval across multiple European countries, including mobile approvals. Upon the data being validated, this was then pushed into their SAP system automatically. Once the invoice was paid, the invoice status was updated before an electronic copy of the original document image, corresponding audit trail and history of modifications were created, should the information be required at a later date. 

The Finance General Manager, Sanden International (Europe) GmbH, says, “The benefits of having a single platform to manage three key business processes were huge. We gained faster response times to invoice status calls, improved accuracy of our data entry, less time required to process invoices with automated and mobile multi-level approval, as well as increased visibility and heightened security with electronic archiving”.

Sanden International (Europe) GmbH will also use the Esker Procurement solution which allows different departments (e.g., purchasing, accounting, marketing, etc.) and different users (e.g., requester, budget owner, buyer, manager, etc.) to better manage indirect purchasing through an automated workflow. Every spend gets the required authorisation and every invoice can be matched with a purchase order (PO) all of which generally takes place outside of the ERP system. Any business, regardless of order volume or number of employees, can automate its entire purchasing cycle in a relatively short period of time.

“This allows us to control our budgets in real-time with greater process control and more efficient cash flow management. It’s great to have these key processes automated, using a single cloud solution”.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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We asked Neil Palmer, Business Development Manager for Esker’s Procure-to-Pay solutions, about his 24 year career at Esker, how the solutions have developed over his time with the business, and what benefits can be realised by organisations that are using Esker’s P2P solutions.

A discussion between Esker’s Head of Marketing, Sam Townsend, and Business Development Manager for P2P, Neil Palmer.

This discussion is also available as a podcast . Listen here.

ST: Hello everyone, and thanks for joining us again for another of our Esker On Air podcasts. I’m Sam Townsend, Head of Marketing at Esker Northern Europe, and I’ll be your host for this session.
Today I’ll be speaking with Neil Palmer, one of Esker’s longest serving employees of almost 24 years’ experience.
So, let’s get started.
Firstly, welcome Neil, and thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to speak with me today.

NP: You are very welcome Sam, thank you, and good morning everybody, or hello everyone, it’s a pleasure to be here.

ST: Well Neil, having almost 24 years’ experience at Esker it’s certainly a great achievement, and definitely deserves some significant recognition. I’m sure that throughout this time you’ve seen a considerable amount of changes within Esker; the external marketplace, and personally, with where you are today as one of Esker’s senior business development managers for our procure-to-pay solutions.
I guess a good place to kick things off would be if you could explain where it all started for you working at Esker, and how this evolved for you over the years to where you are today in your current role.

NP: Yes no problem, well it’s absolutely, well it’s hilarious, actually. Only yesterday I was writing a LinkedIn post, and the first thing that I wrote on there was, “I had hair when I started!”, it’s been quite a journey! But it’s been a great journey. I’ve always considered it, it sounds quite cliché, but I’ve always considered Esker to be a family. It’s a great place to be, lovely people, and I’ve learned a lot over the years, but it has been a journey. I’ve done lots of different things throughout that time, and we’re going all the way back to 1998, so getting on for 24 years ago. I think that maths is right! I was a young lad of 19, and it was my second or third job after a failed attempt at kitchen fitting, and a little dabble with being a junior programmer. I got made redundant, and just speculatively wrote for a job at Esker. The old MD, Bashrat Din, he gave me an interview, I got on board with Wynne and his team in the Technical Department. So I started off back in 1998, my first role was actually answering the ‘phone, dealing with customers, and that’s always where my love has been; helping customers. We used to sell an emulation solution, so back in the day where you had a Windows PC on your desk and also a terminal; the software we sold effectively reduced the need for two machines on your desk, so it was an emulator that sat on Windows to allow you to talk to your mainframe system, that’s what we sold primarily, in fact we still do! There are still people that use that to this day. My position was to answer the ‘phone, when people had bought copies of the TUN Plus software, they got a serial number in the box, and they’d ‘phone me, and I’d give them the details of how to get the licence installed and working, and they could register their details. That gradually transitioned into a support role as well, taking first line support calls, and for the first few years that was pretty much what I did, and it was great. I made some great relationships with customers.

ST: Was that technical support then Neil, that you were doing?

NP: Yes absolutely, so taking any issues with the software, any connectivity problems, I’d just dive in there and try to help the customer to solve those problems, escalate anything to the senior guys if there were any particularly difficult ones, but most of that was interacting with customers, solving problems. I worked along-side Paul Scrivens-Smith who’s now moved on to our US Office, and he’s one of our other long-serving guys. So that happened for a while and I gradually moved towards internal systems, so I was also looking after printers, and installing new PCs. In fact I put in an old Sisco ‘phone system; I’ve tried my hands at a lot of things! This sounds like a job interview! And then also I did a little bit of professional services, so I went out to visit some customer sites, and I did some implementations of our solutions. So it was really nice because it was a very varied and diverse journey through technical solutions and visiting customers, so it’s always been changeable, there have always been lots of things that have kept it very interesting. And finally, back to 2009, 2010, I moved into the world of Sales! At the time I referred to that as the dark side, but it’s actually been a brilliant transition for me, and I think one of the main reasons behind that is that, is actually, as a sales person, to have the technical knowledge and the understanding of the solutions puts you in quite a good position. So it’s been really nice to serve customers and help them with the commercial side of things, but also with the technical; how does it work? So whilst I still need assistance from the pre-sales and technical guys, I’m quite self-sufficient most of the time to go and see customer, just on my own. Often you’ll get to a room of 10 people and they are like, “Who else is coming?” and I’ll say, “It’s just me! Here I am!”.

ST: So I guess where you are now, in your current role, you look after specifically procure-to-pay; solutions for procure-to-pay?

NP: That’s right.

ST: Could you tell us about that?

NP: So we’re split into teams here at Esker, so we have both the order-to-cash side and the procure-to-pay side. So I work on procure-to-pay, handling accounts payable, procurement, and all of the other parts of that solution such as expenses, supplier management, contract management, and it’s a really nice place to be. We’ve got a lot of very well known customers around the world. But it is a mixture of both helping customers to choose and buy their solutions, but also looking after existing customers and making sure things are working well for them. But it was a choice I made to go into P2P and I thought that it was an area that I, well, it just resonated with me, it’s a nice solution, there are a lot of benefits of the solution.

ST: Yes, I was going to come on to that and say, in different organisations, where there’s a focus on order-to-cash and procure-to-pay, and on the procure-to-pay side, what would you say are the main benefits experienced by an organisation?

NP: It’s quite wide-ranging of course, there’s a lot of different components to our solutions, and there’s various benefits that a company will gain. I’d say that if I had to pick a single one as the thing that really stands out I’d say it’s visibility. If you consider, before any automation, you have lots of companies, I mean really, looking at accounts payable as an isolated area for the moment, the amount of times that I’ve spoken to potential customers and they say we have an approval process for our invoices and we put them in a folder and we walk them from one office to the next. I went to visit a potential customer in London, and they had office juniors walking invoices from office to office, so if they ever had a query, an audit, they just didn’t know where the invoices were, they were just on desks waiting for someone to sign them, so there were late payments. So having all of those invoices in one place in a solution, where you can track where they are, you can see which user is approving them, you’ve got dashboards and charts and reports, it’s just revolutionary things. For most people, they don’t understand where a document is in the cycle, so that will probably be the biggest benefit that most people see when they get away from this manual handling of paper, even scanning them in and putting barcodes on them, there’s lots of manual steps required, so to remove the paper and give people control and visibility is just the number one benefit that I’ve seen for most customers.

ST: Thanks Neil, so yes that’s very interesting with visibility being the number one benefit, and I’m sure as you say there are many other benefits that a department can gain, and organisations internally, but what about externally? What sort of benefits are brought? I know these days everyone is talking about relationships outside of the organisation and strengthening those, and they talk about harmonious ecosystems. How does that work in terms of Esker and the benefits that that brings?

NP: Well I think you are right, automating something like accounts payable and the procure-to-pay cycle, you’re going to get benefits right the way across your company, with departments working closer together. I mean AP is quite a strategic part of the business anyway, I don’t think people really give it the full credit that it deserves, but outside of your company, we are trying to encourage a collaborative approach where we have ways of allowing your suppliers and customers to self-serve. We want to be able to have them accessing documents in the Esker portal. I mean Esker really sits as a front end to most processes, whether it’s order management or accounts payable, to get documents in, to have them processed and approved quickly and then flowing into the ERP system. But it’s getting users, suppliers and partners involved in that process, like, we have a conversation tool, for example. If you have any queries you can easily bat those off to the relevant people. In the old days, and before automation, you’d have lots of information in silos almost. Everyone knew what they were doing but there was no real concept of sharing. So a collaborative platform where you can process your documents but pull in all of the relevant approvals and documents, and even have your suppliers updating their information within the supplier management module, and that information can then be vetted and approved before it’s pushed into the ERP, so we can make sure that onboarding is very quick and easy, and that suppliers can really make the most of the communication that we bring, so there’s a lot of benefits both within a company but also out into the wider community as well.

ST: Yes, that’s excellent, and I guess leading on from that, that would have been a benefit during these tough economic climate times that we’re in, and a global pandemic and the like. How has that allowed for stronger business resilience?

NP: Yes the pandemic, well there’s a large topic. It’s changed a lot of things for all of us hasn’t it? From our working patterns to our day-to-day routines, everything has changed. Even in the early days of the pandemic, I have a customer in South Africa that I spoke to, and I did ask them directly, “How have things changed for you?”, and they were really grateful to have the Esker tool because they transitioned to home working really fast. The tools were there, they just need a web browser, and their connection to SAP is directly available to them within the Esker tool, so they could just push their team in a shared service centre out to home. They were working without any problems, without any configuration, it was just ready to go. So that’s really helped them to transition, and of course, we would all like to be back in the office, I am speaking to you from the office right now, so we are starting to see that process, but it feels like the future is the hybrid approach, with working from home and working from the office, so the Esker tools being cloud-based are perfect for that really because it gives you the flexibility, the choice, to work from wherever you need to, and all of the tools that you need to process your documents and handle the day-to-day tasks, they are all available at your fingertips. So it’s a nice way of bridging that gap that the pandemic has caused for us.

ST: Yes, that’s fantastic. And then, I suppose, as we move forward now, and hopefully as we get through this global pandemic, we can start now to think about the future, and understand what are some of the developments that we can really push forwards now. I know we talk about artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Is there anything on that side that you are particularly interested in or excited about for the future?

NP: Yes, well I guess this is where I show myself up as being a bit of techie, because I genuinely think that if I’m out there in the world, I don’t want to use the phrase ‘selling Esker’s solutions’, because actually we’re here to help customers buy, and that is a bit of a cliché, but it’s true. The techie in me; I absolutely love the solution that we’ve got, the way that it reads documents and the way we use artificial intelligence to learn what we’re doing, and to suggest things. I mean, it even , behind the scenes, it uses facial recognition technology to identify anomalous entries, for example, in the world of orders, if we see a quantity that we’re not expecting, it sits outside of the usual face, it flags an alert, and the technology is actually really exciting! It’s a pleasure to be involved in the development. All of Esker’s solutions are developed and rolled out in an agile way, so it’s constantly developing according to what our customers are looking for. We’ve got product management teams who are always driving the development of what the solutions are going to do, but it’s really exciting, with the technology and some of the ways that we’re trying to help automate processes for our customers, it’s really a nice place to be. And every time that we have a product release and we see what’s going to be the latest new features that are coming in, it’s genuinely an exciting time to see what we can take to our customers next, because there’s some great things coming down the pipe, some I probably can’t mention straight away. But one of the big areas of focus also, which ties back in with my history is that we have a Customer Experience (CX) Team as well, and this bridges the gap perfectly because we’ve got the solutions out there, in the world with our customers using them, and what we really don’t want to have is frustrated customers, if anything’s not working as it should do, or if they need extra training, and this is where the CX Team come in, because they sit with the customers and they understand the requirements, and they give training, and it just really helps them to get the most out of the solution and helps to improve their experience. So you know, yes, lots of things to be excited about at the moment. From a product point of view, there’s a couple of things that have come out recently, and I’ve mentioned this already, Supplier Management. That’s a really nice way of helping to onboard suppliers, and ensure that all of the documentation is up-to-date and that their information is correct, and it just helps to keep the data cleansed in the ERP. And also now Expenses. It’s an extra part we’ve added on into the P2P module, and that’s promising to be a really exciting thing that we’re doing. And of course it’s developing all the time, so lots to get our teeth into.

ST: Fantastic, sounds like there’s a lot coming!

NP: Absolutely, yes, there’s never a dull day, and also as a general point, every day is a school day, you know, we’re always learning from our customers, and trying to help them as best we can.

ST: Sure. That’s great! Superb! Thanks Neil. That was really insightful and it’s amazing to understand how far Esker’s developed its business from the early days of terminal emulation, and right up to the present day with it’s global cloud-based automation platform. And as you say, for managing an organisations’ order-to-cash and procure-to-pay cycles, so I really appreciate that.

NP: Yes, no problem, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you. Like I said at the start, it’s been a journey, from the days of doing terminal emulation, Esker have done a lot of things, even into faxing, postal mail delivery, SMS messages, you know, we’ve done a lot over the years. Of course, we’re fully cloud based these days, all of our solutions are available and all you really need is a web browser, we can pretty much talk to any ERP system, so there’s no real restrictions to what we do. I don’t want to keep using the word exciting, but it really is! It’s a great time to be involved in looking at solutions to help your business, so it’s a pleasure to be part of that.

ST: Fantastic, and I guess, fundamentally, although those technologies have changed over the years, the fundamental of the foundation, has always been putting the customer first, and understanding what the customers’ requirements are. I guess that’s sort of a take-away message and listening to the customer and putting into practice, and making sure that we get a good mix of understanding between people, process and the technology.

NP: Absolutely, you know I couldn’t have said it better Sam, I think the customer is always going to be king, and we’ve got to make sure that we are serving them as best we can, and that solutions are helping them in their specific industries. We don’t really target any specific industries, so we’ve got to make sure that we are listening to all the requests that we get, and that we’re heading in the right direction, but both from an account management point of view, support department, professional services team, everyone in the flow, all the way through the business, the customer is king, because without the customer, there’s no real point is there? If we’re not providing the service that we should be. It’s always been based upon helping people to automate various different processes, in their business, and just to provide a better experience for the user, rather than documents coming in and having to be manually keyed in and passed from desk to desk. It’s about helping the user to provide more value in their business really. We’re not trying to replace people, far from it, it’s about helping those people to do their job more effectively. I mean, we’re talking today primarily about procure-to-pay, but just going back for a moment to the order side, if you have typically people keying in orders in a business, and they are called the customer service team, how much customer service are they actually providing when they are keying orders? There’s not really much service going on, so if you take away the manual element of keying those documents in, then you’ve got a team who can then talk to customers and make sure they are happy, potentially upsell to them, if there’s chance to improve what they are buying or give them some ideas of promotion. So it’s just about giving the staff more time to do their job and, it sounds again quite cliché to say value-add, but that’s the point, give the people more time to get their job done effectively, remove or reduce the errors, and make sure that as a business, you’ve got people being assisted by technology, ultimately providing a better service to your customers, avoiding costly disputes and unpaid invoices. From end-to-end, you’re improving your business cycle and helping to improve your reputation, and keeping your customers happy, effectively, and that’s what we’re all trying to do.

ST: Excellent. Thanks again Neil for that, it was very insightful, and thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to join us today. So just to finish up, to listen to more Esker On Air podcasts, please visit https://www.esker.co.uk/esker-air/. Thanks again to everyone, and thanks Neil.

NP: Thanks Sam, thanks everyone, see you soon.

This discussion is also available as a podcast . Listen here.

Episode 1 in this series can be found here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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