Bremworth backs their carpets with ExFlow AP Automation

Premium rug and carpet company, Bremworth, employs over 400 staff across Australia and New Zealand, and has three manufacturing facilities in Auckland, Napier and Whanganui. As part of their digital transformation to D365 Finance and Operations in 2019, Bremworth implemented ExFlow to replace their manual Accounts Payable processes.

SHEDDING A MANUAL AP PROCESS

Before ExFlow, Bremworth’s vendor invoices had to be photocopied, pink slips had to be physically signed and everything was managed in spreadsheets.

“We would have to walk around the office reminding staff to fill things in properly or code them correctly. It was very manual and time consuming” explains Trevor Jones, Group IT Manager

Following a recommendation from their Microsoft Partner Fusion5, and having evaluated several other AP Automation solutions themselves, Bremworth chose to implement ExFlow into their D365 Finance and Operations environment.

“There are a lot of competitor solutions these days, but the fact that ExFlow is built in, native to D365 FO, and you don’t need to log out and go into another external system, really sealed the deal for us”

Jason Green, D365 Finance and Operations Consultant at Bremworth

THE EXFLOW ROLLOUT

Bremworth rolled out ExFlow gradually, starting with domestic supplier invoices. SignUp had a consultant onsite in Bremworth’s office for a week working collaboratively with Fusion5 to implement ExFlow. “We were a little bit worried at first, but we all worked really closely and SignUp did an amazing job. The consultant’s knowledge was excellent and the project ran pretty smoothly” explains Jason. Initially the Bremworth’s finance team were validating invoices manually in ExFlow Data Capture before they were imported into D365, however with many of their invoices coming from trusted suppliers, Bremworth was soon comfortable moving to a more touchless process. As staff grew familiar and confident with the new automated, digitised AP process, ExFlow was soon rolled out to two additional entities.

THE EXFLOW ADVANTAGE

ExFlow has brought many tangible benefits such as being able to close off month end within 3 days, a task that previously took 1-2 weeks. It’s also gone a long way to helping the finance team achieve their payment KPI, without increasing headcount. In fact, when AP staff have left the organisation, Bremworth states they aren’t “rushing to replace them”.

The benefits of ExFlow are not restricted to Bremworth’s AP team, with approvers also enjoying a more efficient process and warehouse employees not having to move boxes of archived invoices around. “The impact of ExFlow helping when we need to do a query on an invoice is pretty significant” says Trevor

“With ExFlow, the audit process has been reduced as well and that’s a significant cost saving for us.”

Trevor Jones, Group IT Manager

A RESILIENT FUTURE

As Bremworth adapts to changes in market conditions, they plan to utilise more of ExFlow’s included functionalities. When the recent floods in New Zealand disrupted Bremworth’s local yarn supply, the business had to start importing from international yarn manufacturing plants. To accommodate this unforeseen change of business processes, Bremworth has plans to roll out ExFlow’s landed cost module in the near future, which extends the natural capabilities of D365FO. “There’s no way our AP team would ever go back to doing things the long, arduous way” says Trevor.