Evolve Education has undergone
massive growth since launching in 2014 – acquiring more than 100 early
childhood centres throughout New Zealand in its first year. Thanks to a clever
solution delivered by Sharp, Evolve has been able to effortlessly manage the
growing demands of its accounts payable function.
Evolve Education now employs
more than 2,000 people – as well as delivering early education to thousands of young
New Zealanders. The company first listed on the New Zealand and Australian
stock exchange in December 2014 after acquiring two well-known businesses,
Lollipops Educare and PORSE. By the end of 2015, they had acquired over 100 ECE
centres in New Zealand, and two additional home-based childcare businesses. Evolve
now has a central support office, based in downtown Auckland, which provides
operational support to all centres around the country.
Vivek Singh, Chief Financial
Officer for Evolve, explains how the Sharp solution came about. “Lollipops was
already a Sharp client, using their Multi- Functional Device (MFD) solutions.
So when Sharp discovered we were looking for an AP solution, they were
proactive about introducing us to Sharp AP.”
Vivek was already familiar
with the benefits of automated Accounts Payable Solutions and knew it would
prove valuable in their fast-growing business. “The beauty of an automated
solution like Sharp AP is the efficiencies of scale,” he says. “As we’ve
acquired more centres, Sharp AP has allowed us to grow our accounts payable
function – without having to add more people to our existing AP team.”
About Sharp AP
Sharp AP is a cloud-based
invoice collection and processing engine; supported by a quality assurance(QA)
outsourcing service. Sharp AP, is designed for companies that process more than 600
AP invoices each month. It is particularly suited to organisations, like
Evolve, that have a network of offices or centres. As a cloud-based system,
Sharp AP can be easily integrated with the organisation’s existing Accounts Payable
or ERP systems.
Multiple efficiencies
Vivek Singh believes accounts
payable is a prime candidate for automation – as it reduces paperwork, achieves
workflow efficiencies, and drives out unnecessary time and cost. “We want to
automate any process which bogs down our team members doing repetitive manual
tasks that don’t add value. Automation technology like PlusOne takes the
drudgery out of AP.” He says Sharp AP’s success has been clearly proven by the
way it easily absorbs any additional workload, as new centres have come on
board.
“The past 12 months has been a
massive period of acquisition and integration for us. Yet we haven’t had to
increase our AP team at all as we acquire more centres. Cost of processing is
dramatically reduced. And the bigger you are, the better the effect on your costs.”
Vivek Singh says it also improves the level of job satisfaction for existing
team members. “Staff are more enthused because they’re not doing repetitive
tasks, and can instead focus on more value-added work.”
Intelligent workflow
As every invoice is received
by an Evolve centre, paper invoices are scanned into their office’s MFD and electronic
invoices can be emailed directly into the system. Sharp AP’s intelligent
workflow then takes over. Invoices pass through a data recognition and capture process
to turn them into electronic records in an aggregated database.
To validate each invoice, the
system automatically applies Evolve’s pre-set business rules. Only true exceptions
or queries are referred back to the accounts payable team for review. In
addition, all invoices are routed through the appropriate approval channels,
with pre-allocated authority limits for nominated individuals. Vivek Singh says
this not only saves a massive amount of time, it also improves accuracy and
internal controls.
“The system has its own checks
and balances that will alert us to any errors. It also ensures the correct authority
levels are maintained.” Another benefit is that Sharp AP also provides
efficient reporting – whether it’s on the number of invoices being processed,
awaiting approval, accruals and age reports.
Proactive service
Vivek Singh has been impressed
by the proactive approach of Sharp from day one. Given that Evolve was scaling
up its business so rapidly, they were looking for a supplier that was equally
dynamic.
“As soon as Sharp found out I
was thinking about scanning, they got on to it straight away. It showed me they
were proactive, and could be really responsive in supporting us.” The implementation
of Sharp AP had to be done quickly – and without any complications or delays.
“The implementation was quite time-challenged. We listed on December 5th, and
by March 31st we had already acquired 86 centres. We started the implementation
project with Sharp a month before we acquired our first centres, so we could
hit the ground running.”
Continued growth
Vivek Singh has also been
impressed with Sharp’s continued support, as Evolve continues to grow. “When we
acquire new centres, we often find that Sharp is already the existing service
provider. But if they are not, they can still easily integrate Sharp AP to another
provider’s machine.” “We’ve certainly been very happy with Sharp’s level of service, and their whole
approach.”
To find out more about PlusOne, and how it
can help your organisation, contact the Sharp Business Solutions team on
0800 501 201
