Customer Success Story: Drakes Supermarkets
Drakes Supermarkets (Drakes) is a family-owned business established in 1974 when Roger Drake purchased his first supermarket. Today, the company is the largest independent grocery retailer in Australia with more than 50 stores across South Australia and Queensland. Drakes has an annual turnover of more than $1 billion and employs more than 5,500 staff.
Summary
“We were in uncharted waters in terms of the volume of invoices we needed to process. We weren’t sure what solution was going to work best. We knew we needed to have the right people on board to make the solution a success and, with Konica Minolta, we definitely had that.”
– Roger Drake, CEO, Drakes
The Challenge
- Inefficient invoice management caused payment errors.
- Manual processing meant invoices got double-handled.
- Legacy process meant high paper storage costs.
Drakes processes more than 80,000 invoices per month, a staggering amount for any business let alone one that still relied on manual invoice processing. The company processed all invoices through its head office in Torrensville, South Australia. This meant each of its stores had to put invoices in overnight bags.
Furthermore, the hard copies of invoices were taking up a huge amount of space. Drakes had seven 40-foot containers filled with paperwork that the company had to keep for taxation purposes.
Roger Drake, CEO, Drakes, said, “Drakes is a centralised organisation. Keeping all data in one location makes it easier to make smarter decisions, faster, but the manual invoicing processes introduced a potential for error. It could also mean payment errors, which could cost the company.”
The Solution
- Cloud-based enterprise invoice automation.
- Custom designed and simple invoice processing.
- Business-wide access and streamlined workflow.
Konica Minolta recommended FileBound to manage the Drakes’ invoices digitally. FileBound is a cloudbased enterprise content management (ECM) application that automates the flow of enterprise work. It manages business processes from beginning to end, reliably connecting people and information regardless of location.
Konica Minolta designed a workflow process for Drakes so that now, all invoices are scanned for each store into a watched folder on the company network. Once processed, the information is uploaded into Drakes’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
Customer Benefits
- Less manual work, fewer payment errors.
- More supplier discounts captured.
- Significant cost and time savings.
The key benefit for Drakes is the increased speed and accuracy of invoice processing.
Roger Drake said, “One of the most important goals of this project, which we have achieved, was the need to get a single version of the truth. Having one set of numbers around stock and invoices makes it easier for the business to get the data and insights we need to make better decisions.
The solution has put Drakes on a level footing to compete confidently with much larger retailers, which is essential in the competitive retail industry. It has also positioned Drakes to reap even greater benefits as it grows and expands.
