Customer Story
Olympique de Marseille
Wins Big by Building Business Resilience
- greatervisibility over expenditures and outstanding invoices
- enhancedtrackability due to optimised approval workflows
- time savingsand simplified financial close processes
Sports clubs like Olympique de Marseille need to maintain agility in all areas of their activity – not just on the pitch. The ever-changing game calendars and competition dates, together with hundreds of suppliers to manage, require flexibility of the club’s financial functions as well. This results in constant updates and adaptations to the budgets on an almost daily basis.
CHALLENGES: A MANUAL P2P PROCESS WITH LITTLE VISIBILITY OVER EVER-CHANGING BUDGETS
Purchase requests at Olympique de Marseille were processed entirely in paper format, risking the loss of documents and errors at almost every turn. This added layers of complexity to workflows and caused a lack of visibility over outstanding invoices.
To begin the process of digitising expense tracking and purchase requests, Olympique de Marseille started the search for a scalable solution that would give the financial teams a complete overview of the data in real time.
OBJECTIVES
- An agile budget interface that aligns with Olympique de Marseille’s game calendar
- A scalable P2P automation solution that provides visibility over expenses and budget tracking
- An easy-to-use & intuitive solution for its 120 users
SOLUTION: AUTOMATING THE ENTIRE P2P PROCESS REMOVES BLOCKAGES FOR SUPPLIERS AND USERS ALIKE
Esker provided scalable solutions that are fully aligned with the specific needs of sports clubs: flexibility and visibility.
Already equipped with another solution since 2013, Olympique de Marseille was ultimately convinced by Esker’s expertise and decided to substitute players. Starting implementation in 2019, all of Olympique de Marseille’s seven business branches were to be taken to the next level of procure-to-pay (P2P) automation by taking a 360° approach to optimising supplier management, procurement, accounts payable and expense request processes. Before the pandemic, over 300 vendors were sending nearly 1,500 invoices per month, making the transition to a digital and streamlined process a necessity.
The pandemic threatened to hinder the implementation of Esker’s solutions, but adjustments were quickly made and the new tools could be deployed remotely. The 120 users were able to quickly adopt the new platform thanks to the intuitive and user-friendly solution interface, resulting in widespread acceptance by all project stakeholders. "Esker's support and collaboration led to a successful solution adoption." said Marjorie Bouet, AP Manager at Olympique de Marseille.
Olympique de Marseille also decided to deploy Esker for a wide range of additional functionalities, thereby sweeping all blockages from inefficient manual processes out of the way.
Additional solution functionalities help make Olympique de Marseille's work processes more fluid, including:
- Auto-fill of form fields simplifies & accelerates purchase request data entry
- Graphs & dashboards enable real-time budget monitoring
- New supplier forms facilitate onboarding
- Integrated approval workflow optimises expense and payment validation processes
The adoption of Esker's Procure-to- Pay suite has been a real plus for my job and has enabled me to save significant amounts of time on a daily basis. The quick reconciliation with purchase orders makes it much easier to enter invoices.
RESULTS: PROCESS VISIBILITY AND TIME SAVINGS ENHANCE FUTURE-PROOFING
Olympique de Marseille was able to identify several notable benefits after only a few months of using Esker’s solutions.
The financial teams have much greater visibility over expenditures and outstanding invoices, while optimised approval workflows provide enhanced trackability.
Users observed considerable time savings and simplified financial close processes due to reporting data that is structured and complete. Being able to analyse real-time data allows for precise forecasting, thereby forging financial resilience that is vital for a sports club like Olympique de Marseille.
From the moment we met the Esker team, we felt that they had a modular solution that fit perfectly with our needs. We now have a highly efficient collaboration process in place!
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