Woolworths Group steps up for small business

[Visual: Introductory graphic appears with text "Here's why Woolworths Group is taking invoicing's next step."]

[Visual: Title card appears with text "Rob Fellowes, Transactions – Finance Shared Services"]

[Audio: Rob Fellowes speaks]

So, the Woolworths business adopted electronic invoicing very early. When we think about scale, we've got over 250,000 invoices being received into our business each and every week.

And we see a direct correlation between electronic invoicing and a higher level of on-time payments and the importance of that is around reliable cash flow for our suppliers.

Like any electronic way of doing business it provides a level of consistency and efficiency.

So certainly our focus has been around supporting our suppliers but there's no doubt there's been a significant benefit to our organisation around being more efficient and removing areas that can break down in the end-to-end processes between our suppliers and the countdown business.

[Visual: Graphic appears with text "What has it meant for doing business?"]

I think historically people view electronic invoicing as going from a paper-based invoice to PDF or email PDFs.

[Visual: Icon animation – showing paper / Email / PDF delivery being replaced by / contrasted with direct exchange between systems]

The challenge with that though is that you don't get real transparency throughout the process. E-invoicing provides that.

Electronic invoices are really just the way in which we transmit and transact that transaction, but once it's received into our network, all of those approval processes remain unchanged. All of the review of tax compliancy is unchanged.

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There's very structured standards, and inherent security features throughout that that are aligned with global data digital standards.

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And so we certainly see that there's greater benefits from a security point of view in moving into the e-invoice model as well.

One of the other great benefits over and above those to the organisation is the benefits had on our team and the culture within our teams.

[Visual: Graphic/icon over picture – Resource efficiency]

No longer are they working on inefficiencies and process breakdowns and they're focused more on value add creation for the business.

[Visual: Graphic appears with text "What does it mean for suppliers?"]

So one of the primary benefits of e-invoicing is our ability to pay suppliers on time. We remove the manual nature of processes where things can break down.

[Visual: Graphic/icon appears over picture – Improved cashflow]

So we would encourage all suppliers, small, medium, and large, to benefit from that.

Our experience as we've transitioned over 6,000 suppliers to a form of e-invoicing is that organisations tend to overestimate the effort to move to electronic invoicing. Our experience is it's very simple.

When we think about costs, most providers these days, it will be free and if there is, it's a very marginal cost and the benefits are significant, both for your suppliers, the relationship with suppliers, and your internal efficiency.

We would just encourage you to speak to your software provider.

We do think though it is inevitable that with digitization across many areas of businesses that e-invoicing will be a standard way of doing business as software providers continue to offer that through their solutions. So we think it is inevitable and we see the benefits so we would just encourage any supplier thinking about it to maybe move earlier than later.

[Visual: Graphic appears with text "What's the message to New Zealand Business?"]

At the end of the day, e-invoicing is really a no-brainer. You know, if we think back, we used to write out the majority of payments through cheques. No longer do we do that. It's all digitised. E-invoicing is going in the same direction. It's simple, it's easy and you'd be surprised with the benefits, tangible and non-tangible, that your business will benefit from.

[Visual: End graphic, eInvoicing icon appears with text: "Faster. Smoother. Safer. Take the next step, for Kiwi business."]

[Visual: Introductory graphic appears with text "Woolworths' Head of Finance, talks invoicing's next step."]

[Visual: Graphic appears with text "Here's how eInvoicing, has changed Woolworths Group Finance."]

[Visual: Title card appears with text "Neil Padley, Head of Finance Shared Services"]

[Audio: Neil Padley speaks]

Woolworths chose to implement e-invoicing because we committed to building a strong long-term partnership with our suppliers and our service providers.

For me, using einvoicing is an absolute no-brainer. It's simple, it's easy to use, there's benefits for both you as an organisation, you as suppliers and your business partners.

The real benefits / are around the on-time payments for suppliers, the reduced administration associated with it, and we just want to partner more strongly with those suppliers to enable them to succeed as we succeed as well.

[Visual: Graphic appears with text "How significant is the benefit?"]

In terms of the impact for our team, we do about 13 million transactions per annum through Accounts Payable.

it used to be entered manually, it used to be then filed manually. Now we get everything electronically, it's automatically matched and the payments get scheduled automatically.
We only really manage exceptions now these days.

We've reduced by our team in the accounts payable area by close to 50% as a result of e-invoicing. The number of queries for suppliers have gone down by at least 70% and it used to take us around 14 days to sometimes respond to queries. Now we can respond within 24 hours.

[Visual: Graphic/icons appears over picture – “Accounts payable resource reduced by 50%” “Supplier queries reduced by over 70%” “Response time reduced from 14 days to 24 hours”]

From a partner point of view, our suppliers love it in that they're paid on time, their queries are resolved quickly and so from their point of view, electronic invoicing has been a huge boost for them.

We know that we get anecdotal feedback from suppliers saying how great it is to work for us. / And e-invoicing has been the enabler for that change, given that everything's now digital, everything's based in our systems, we can respond a lot quicker than we ever used to be able to do.

[Visual: Graphic appears with text "Can small businesses manage the change?"]

We've got a lot of small suppliers, a lot of country people that don't have technology, don't know, haven't used technology before. / And I think once someone's shown one-on-one or in groups how easy it is to use, the adoption is really high and the confidence in it skyrockets.

So I think from a really small supplier's perspective that they're the two keys for them, reduce their administrative burden, but also confidence in where they're gonna get paid and their cashflow.

They don't have to spend as much time in doing all the back office type tasks.

And so the benefit for them has been I've got rid of some of those mundane tasks and now I can actually add some greater value to the business.

And once people take that step, they find, oh my God, why haven't I done this previously?

Don't overcomplicate it. It's really simple. Go to your provider, whether that be Xero, MYOB, whichever is provided, they all have a range of tools now.

[Visual: Graphic appears with text "What does the future hold?"]

Oh, look, I think e-invoicing will become an inevitability for all businesses. I think in the way that the world is moving towards more digitisation of everything, you know, if you look at the banking industry, for instance, people don't go to the bank, they do everything online.

So I think it is just a mindset shift and a slight capability shift, but it's more on the confidence side I think more than anything else.

And so I would encourage any organisation to just take that leap of faith. It's simple, it's easy to use, it's straightforward.

If you're still in that scenario of / manual processing data entry, you're back 20 years in time. E-invoicing is here and we all need to move to that as soon as we can for the benefits of both your own organisation but also for those of you, suppliers or partners.

[Visual: Graphic/icon appears with text " Faster. Smoother. Safer. Take the next step, for Kiwi business.”]