About Our Partner
Dakota Premium Hardwoods is a reliable hardwood and lumber company with branches in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Established in 2007, the customer-centric company takes immense pride in providing its customers with high-quality hardwood and lumber products from renowned brands.
The Challenge
Dakota Premium Hardwoods received nearly 90% of their invoices via email, but their invoice handling was manual — making the process extremely time-consuming.
- Every day, the accounts payable (AP) accountant would receive roughly 60 to 100 invoices via a dedicated AP email.
- The AP accountant would then move the invoices from the AP email to a shared drive.
- Afterward, the AP clerk would process the invoices manually and label them depending on the due date or discount date to ensure managers approved them on time.
- Finally, the AP clerk would send the invoices to the company’s branches for approval.
This entire process was tedious. The AP accountant used to spend a lot of time checking emails throughout the day, and she would take between one and a half to two hours processing invoices daily.
Not only was the process time-consuming, but it was also quite demanding because the company had only one dedicated AP accountant. Additionally, branch and operations managers would take a long time to approve invoices resulting in delays.
To tackle these challenges, Dakota Premium Hardwoods needed an AP solution to automate and accelerate their AP process. They also needed an AP solution that would integrate with Agility — their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.
The Solution
Before switching to WorldView, Dakota Premium Hardwoods had worked with another vendor to automate their AP processes. Unfortunately, the other vendor didn’t deliver. They couldn’t integrate their AP solution with Dakota Premium Hardwood’s ERP software and their team couldn’t be reached for support when needed.
After the poor experience with this vendor, they evaluated several other solutions and selected WorldView’s AP automation solution. The AP system implementation with WorldView went smoothly.
WorldView implemented an AP automation solution based on the AP department’s requirements that worked seamlessly with Agility, eliminating manual processes from the AP workflow.
Results
Dakota Premium Hardwoods has seen a positive transformation in its processes since implementing WorldView’s AP automation.
Time Saving and Automation
AP processes that once took one and a half to two hours a day — not including the time it took to enter data into Agility — are now done automatically, saving hours of time.
With WorldView’s AP automation solution, Dakota Premium Hardwoods has eliminated manual processes from its AP workflow, such as manually retrieving invoices via email, coding them, and then sending them to all the branches for approval. Plus, because WorldView’s AP software works seamlessly with Agility, it has expedited the AP workflow. The AP solution has not only resulted in significant time savings but has also enhanced the accuracy of the AP process.
Increased Collaboration
In addition to speeding up the AP workflow, WorldView’s AP automation software has also enhanced collaboration among the AP team members and managers. Before implementing AP automation, the AP team members couldn’t easily keep track of each other’s progress on tasks. They used to have to contact each other for updates. The AP team members also couldn’t easily track how long it took managers to approve invoices, often leading to delayed approvals and late payments. This resulted in missing out on important discounts from their vendors.
WorldView’s automation solution has enabled the AP team members to collaborate in real-time via an intuitive centralized dashboard. They can easily view each other’s progress and see all the invoices that managers are yet to approve via the dashboard.
This real-time collaboration has promoted transparency. It has also enabled the AP accountant to send timely reminders to the branch and operation managers to approve the invoices before the due date or discount date, eliminating late approvals and payments.
Room for Company Expansion
Like many businesses, Dakota Premium Hardwoods plans to expand its reach by opening more branches in other states. Without AP automation, the company would need to recruit more people to join the AP department. However, by leveraging WorldView’s AP automation solution, the company won’t need to hire more personnel — WorldView’s AP automation solution will scale as the business grows.
Seamless Implementation
Dakota Premium Hardwoods’ AP team was pleased with how WorldView handled the implementation process. The implementation went smoothly, and the AP team appreciated the WorldView team’s attention to detail and prompt response time when they needed assistance.
Julie Moseley, Dakota Premium Hardwoods’ Assistant Controller, said, “WorldView’s response time has been pretty quick, which is really nice. So far, everything we’ve had an issue with they’ve been able to resolve.”
