Case Study: Toppesfield improved control over supplier costs

Existing system was unable to keep up with the rapid expansion of the business

Due to the sudden growth of Toppesfield, Mark found that the back office function wasn’t robust enough to keep up with the front office. ‘We had a huge growth in employee numbers and we needed to make sure that the systems and control in place were operating efficiently within the finance team but equally across all the other support functions as well.’

One of the biggest challenge was due to rapid growth with numerous locations and managers, who needed to be able to see and approve invoices plus have full visibility of costs that affected them. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a centralised way of showing this financial information. Some of the other inefficiencies that Mark discovered included the lack of clarity on expenses plus the lack of a centralised data hub which made understanding the financial situation of the company difficult and labour
intensive.

Toppesfield started looking for new financial software

Mark started to research a variety of different solutions to find one that would fit all the requirements including providers who had expertise in the construction sector. “After going through an intensive tendering process, I found that Access could not only deliver everything we were looking for in an ERP system, but also provided extras such as online expenses, credit card approvals and other online applications that other providers couldn’t deliver.”

Once the software decision was made, Mark and the Access implementation team worked closely to outline the strategy of a phased project approach. The strategy included implementing the core financial system to ensure the new finance software was quickly adopted by the rest of the company, especially the off-site team.

“I have really enjoyed the Access sales process. They were extremely professional and brought a lot of expertise with their pre-sales team. The handover to the consultancy team was excellent, and I can’t fault the consultancy team for what they have delivered. Our consultant really went the extra mile too, he always completed the task that he set out to do for the day, so much so that we actually completed the project with two days to spare.”

Implementing Access finance software has reduced inefficiencies

Mark noticed how quickly Toppesfield was able to reduce inefficiencies, especially with the introduction of a document management system which meant that they had greater visibility of costs for a job allowing them to understand the operational efficiencies.

“Upon implementation, we were able to link the systems straight from approvals to remittance and directly to our banks which has removed a massive amount of manual processing. By introducing the document management system, we were able to reduce the purchase to pay time by at least half as there were no longer bits of paper being passed around the business.”

Before implementing Access, Toppesfield lacked visibility in their credit control and debt management process. The introduction of the Workflow Form module immediately gave them full control and visibility of every step of their credit control process, allowing them to work more efficiently and ultimately improve their cash flow.

Toppesfield found the CIS module a ‘life saver’ when the business grew rapidly and the finance team saw the number of purchase ledger invoices doubled. “We were crying out for a system to make a very manual process more efficient. It used to be an afternoon’s work for someone in the team, but now we can do this at a click of a button – freeing my time to get on with other tasks.”

“Finally, we have also introduced an online expenses and credit card function with our system. This has allowed us to ask for justification on what our staff are spending, which immediately goes to their line manager for approval – this has meant that our staff are thinking more about what they are spending.”

Greater visibility, greater control

"Having implemented the software has really helped reduce our management account time – we have taken a day off this time immediately, as we didn’t have to reconcile a myriad of spreadsheets as everything is done within the software itself. Now in the morning, I can look at my dashboard and know what i need to concentrate my management time on, where previously I would have had to manually plough through various different spreadsheets to get the information that I require to do my job”.