Industry:
Construction, Transport & Logistics
Avain Yhtiöt unlocked increased productivity gains and cost savings by automating their invoice management with Basware.
Avain Yhtiöt is a provider of affordable, high-quality housing and related services in Finland. Partnering with Basware, they have unlocked increased productivity gains and cost savings by automating their invoice management. Avain Yhtiöt operates circa 300 sites across Finland. These sites include 7,500 right-of-occupancy dwellings, 900 rental apartments, and 1,000 homes in service building properties.
In 2020 Avain Yhtiöt will build circa 1,300 new homes and is committed to investing over EUR 120 million in growth. With this rapid growth, Avain Yhtiöt was looking to implement increased levels of automation.
Jan Harti, Group CFO, explains, “Our balance sheet value is now 1.2 billion, and our annual turnover will reach more than €140 million this year. To support our expansion, we have long encouraged our partners and subcontractors to invoice us electronically.”
Key takeaways
97%
e-Invoice rate
30%
Invoices automatically processed
25%
Increase in productivity
Avain's Challenges
Avain Yhtiöt has seen rapid growth in the last two years, with purchase invoice volumes increasing by 25% to 85,000 invoices per annum. Circa half of those invoices, 45,000, are contractually recurring based on fees such as building management, water charges, and property maintenance.
Avain Yhtiöt's financial management strategy is to invest in greater automation and improved forecasting. “Our goal is to implement financial management and associated processes by 2024 that position us as a market leader for quality.”
How Avain Yhtiöt implemented AP Automation with Basware
Avain Yhtiöt implemented Basware AP Automation and, working with their dedicated Customer Success Manager, focused on implementing Basware’s best practices across their financial operations.
Basware has been great in supporting us in our e-invoicing efforts and advising us on best practices. Jan Harti, Group CFO, Avain Yhtiöt
A key priority to be addressed was the large volume of recurring invoices with the Spend Plans functionality in Basware AP Automation. Using this solution, they set up payment plans based on schedule, budget, and self-billing criteria. This allowed a large volume of the recurring invoices to be automatically processed and removed many of the standard work stages the finance team had previously conducted.
Finally, Avain Yhiöt implemented Basware Analytics to help monitor their new process's effectiveness and help identify bottlenecks.
Our partnership with Basware is key in helping us achieve our financial management strategy of investing in greater automation and improved forecasting.
Jan Harti, Group CFO, Avain Yhtiöt
Results
In 2020 e-invoices now constitute more than 97% of Avain Yhtiöt's incoming purchase invoices. Avain Yhtiöt estimates that for every e-invoice, they save €75,000 on scanning costs alone, compared to their previous paper-based approach. In addition, the Spend Plans functionality is processing 30% of Avain Yhtiöt invoices with the target to move 40%+ by the end of 2021.
We managed to eliminate many routine work stages, freeing up the time and expertise of our financial management professionals for more productive development work.Jan Harti, Group CFO, Avain Yhtiöt
The impact on productivity has been significant. The finance team can now process 25% more invoices without increasing the dedicated resource. Jan further adds, "freeing up the time and expertise of our finance team has allowed them to focus on more productive development work".
In summary, Avain Yhtiöt's targets have been met, and they have realised real cost benefits, but the journey to drive further improvements continues. Jan finishes by saying, “We are now keen to explore how we might work with Basware to introduce artificial intelligence to automate our invoicing. Could AI be used for making payment plans and for daily routines such as pre-coding?”