Delicato Family Vineyards Chooses Esker’s Accounts Payable Solution to Facilitate Growing Invoice Volumes in an SAP® Environment
Derby, UK — October 15, 2018 — Esker, a worldwide leader in AI-driven process automation solutions and pioneer in cloud computing, today announced that Delicato Family Vineyards, one of the fastest growing wine companies in the United States over the past five years, has selected Esker to automate its accounts payable (AP) invoicing process. Esker’s Accounts Payable automation solution was chosen for its easy-to-use interface, robust capabilities and direct integration with SAP® systems.
Approximately 75 per cent of the invoices Delicato manages are non-purchase order invoices, with a large majority of those arriving into a centralised email address. With Esker, those invoices will now be automatically entered into an electronic workflow — eliminating virtually all of the manual printing, scanning, coding and routing activities that had previously been a part of Delicato’s AP invoicing process.
“When you do things manually, there is always potential for delays,” said Ana Simoes, Treasury Manager at Delicato. “Not only does it take valuable time away from team members, it makes it harder to resolve invoicing issues, such as incorrect pricing or compliance with spending authority. It’s very difficult to verify that people are following the correct policies.”
Keeping up with company growth
Delicato has grown significantly over the past few years, mostly through the organic growth of its own brands, and accompanied by several acquisitions the last two years. As a result, the company has seen a 15-per cent increase in its AP invoice volumes in the last year alone. This was a significant contributing factor in the decision to replace its manual AP invoicing process with an automated solution.
“One of the biggest challenges in front of us was keeping up with company growth without having to add more people,” said Juan Valdes, Vice President and Controller at Delicato. “Esker gave us what the other vendors we considered couldn’t: a solution we can manage ourselves that wasn’t dependent on scanning. We don’t have a large technical team, so that’s a huge benefit to us.”
New capabilities, high expectations
Delicato is also looking forward to using Esker’s customisable dashboards, which provide users with real-time visibility of essential data and allow key performance indicators (KPIs) to be easily followed. In addition, the company has plans to leverage Esker’s mobile application, Esker Anywhere™, which allows managers to approve invoice payments while they’re on the road, resulting in faster invoice processing and increased convenience and efficiency.
“I can’t imagine the benefits that Esker’s solution is going to bring to the low-value tasks we perform on a daily basis,” said Simoes. “We’re going to have much more time to focus on value-added tasks, like issue analysis and reconciliation. And, as we continue growing, Esker is going to support our increased needs.”
Delicato’s AP project follows a successful implementation of Esker’s automated Order Management solution. The solution integrates directly with Delicato’s SAP system, minimising the number of repetitive manual tasks and making order processing faster, more accurate and fully transparent from reception to fulfillment. Today, 95 per cent of Delicato’s orders are processed electronically through Esker.
About Delicato Family Vineyards
Delicato Family Vineyards is a fourth generation family-owned company founded in 1924. One of the fastest growing top-10 wine companies, Delicato produces a unique range of California wines including Bota Box, Gnarly Head, Noble Vines, Black Stallion Estate Winery, Z. Alexander Brown, Diora, Brazin, Irony, and Earth Wise, and is the importer for Santa Rita wines from Chile. Delicato’s portfolio also includes the V2 luxury wines from top wine-growing regions such as Napa’s Merryvale and Starmont Wineries, Sonoma’s Toad Hollow Vineyards, Paso Robles’ Donati Family Vineyards, Oregon’s Wine by Joe, Provence’s Coeur Clementine, and Torbreck Vintners of the Barossa Valley. For more information, visit http://www.delicato.com/ and v2winegroup.com.
About Esker
Esker is a worldwide leader in cloud-based document process automation software, helping financial and customer service departments digitally transform their order-to-cash (O2C) and purchase-to-pay (P2P) cycles. Used by more than 6,000 companies worldwide, Esker’s solutions incorporate technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to drive increased productivity, enhanced visibility, reduced fraud risk, and improved collaboration with customers, suppliers and internally. Esker operates in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific with global headquarters in Lyon, France, and U.S. headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information on Esker and its solutions, visit https://www.esker.co.uk. Follow Esker on LinkedIn at Esker – Northern Europe, or on Twitter at @EskerNEurope and join the conversation on the Esker blog.