Ochre Health doubles its organisation size without increasing accounts payable staff

Ochre Health is an Australian medical services organisation that specialises in providing healthcare services in urban, regional and remote communities throughout New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT. The goal is to improve healthcare outcomes within the communities by providing exceptional doctors (GP, VMO and Procedural) and highly trained practice support staff.

BACKGROUND

Established in 2002, Ochre Health is an Australian healthcare services company specialising in the provision of health services through medical centres to outer-city, regional, and remote locations. Ochre Health employs approximately 180 staff in over 29 areas across Australia.

Ochre Health was experiencing frustrations with their decentralised Accounts Payable procedures. The manual processing of vendor invoices and the lack of systemised filing also made their twice-yearly auditing extremely difficult, not to mention, exceptionally time-consuming.

“Staff would dread manually handling invoices and the whole process was delaying management’s ability to make important decisions” says Maria Zhang (Accountant for Ochre Health).

After Ochre Health acquired 10 new medical centres within one year, it became imperative to find a more efficient way to accommodate the increased workload.

Automation, security and centralisation of the Accounts Payable department was key.

“In one year, Ochre Healthcare acquired 10 new medical centres. Thanks to the implementation of the ExFlow Accounts Payable Automation solution, the AP department could easily manage the new workload without any new recruitment.”

Maria Zhang, Accountant at Ochre Health

THE SOLUTION

One of the key factors was that Ochre Health wanted a solution that would be able to continue to grow with their business.

The final choice was ExFlow for Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Completely built into Dynamics NAV and certified by Microsoft, it was deemed the most complete and reliable solution available on the market. In November 2015, Ochre Healthcare went live.

Today, the everyday workflow at Ochre Health AP Department couldn’t be more different. Supplier invoices are received through a centralised mailbox that authorised staff members can access at any time, reducing the need for dependency on any one employee.

Invoices are processed inside Dynamics NAV and, if needed, they are automatically routed via a workflow to a centralised web portal where users can approve the invoices anywhere – anytime.

Maria tells us that ExFlow has allowed Ochre Health to “save on human resource costs by at least half as we have doubled in size but still use the same staffing resource to process our vendor invoices”.

“Automation and efficiency, that’s ExFlow. Our jobs would be very hard if ExFlow disappeared as we’d have to check one by one which invoices haven’t been posted and approve them manually.”

Maria Zhang, Accountant at Ochre Health

THE PROCESS

While it is of course natural and normal for staff within an organisation to be initially hesitant of change, Ochre Health impressively reported no concerns or resistance from NAV users to adopt ExFlow prior to implementation. Maria believes that the staff’s open-mindedness can be put down to thorough and holistic training from SignUp Software Australia.

The fact that ExFlow is a Microsoft Certified application with over 700 successful installations worldwide also increased the feeling of security.

Using ExFlow to automate their Accounts Payable process means that Ochre Health is able to close each month on time with accurate figures, allowing management to make important decisions – proactively and without delay.

Another advantage with the ExFlow automated processes is that the company automatically follows compliance regulations, making the twice-yearly audit a much smoother process.