Olympique de Marseille dematerializes its buy-to-pay cycle
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To gain agility and capacity, Olympique de Marseille has digitized its entire supplier cycle, from purchase requests to invoices, using Esker solutions.
AdvertisingFounded in 1899, the Olympique de Marseille football club (OM) once won the title of champion of France, ten French cups, three League cups and one victory in the Champions League. With more than 13 million fans on its digital platforms, it is one of the French sports clubs with the most supporters. Like other professional sports clubs, its budget varies according to its results in competition, which requires great financial agility. To meet this need for agility, the club has chosen to digitize the management of the supplier cycle by relying on Esker solutions, in order to gain visibility on its purchases and expenses.
OM works on a regular basis with more than 300 suppliers, which represents an average of 1,000 to 1,500 invoices per month during normal activity. To optimize this process, the club first set up the Esker supplier invoice management interface in October 2019. In July 2020, OM then gradually deployed the financial commitment module within of the club’s seven companies. Previously, the validation of purchase requests was still done in paper format, with the risk of loss of documents that this entails, explains Marjorie Lagrange, management controller of Olympique de Marseille. From now on, the commitment validation process is respectful thanks to an optimized workflow, she emphasizes. The finance department also had difficulty building its budgets, in the absence of information on unbilled commitments. It is for this reason that we have decided to take things up a notch by digitizing the entire supplier cycle, points out Marjorie Lagrange. OM therefore called on Esker to obtain this full processing capacity, from purchases to payment of supplier invoices.
Rapid adoption by users
To bring more fluidity to the teams, the editor deployed additional functionalities, such as the addition of dynamic fields, which made data entry faster. Expenditure graphs allow real-time budget monitoring and the creation of integration forms for new suppliers to improve the performance of the systems in place. For the 120 users of the solution, these tools have saved a lot of time, by offering an interface that is both simple and flexible for budget control. The adoption of Esker’s Procure-to-Pay solution is a real plus for my position, says Marjorie Bouet, OM supplier accountant. Being in charge of accounts payable, I was able to save a lot of time on a daily basis. In practice, the rapid reconciliation with purchase orders considerably facilitates the entry of invoices.
AdvertisingAppropriation was rapid, despite handling from a distance during confinement. Esker supported us from start to finish for the design of a tailor-made interface, appreciated Philippe Cambier, OM’s chief accountant. the key, better overall visibility on the evolution of expenses as well as better traceability of commitments not yet invoiced. At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the agenda and the rules of the game in the sports world, the time savings offered by Esker’s solution allows us to focus more on the analysis of our data, adds Philippe Cambier.
Article written by
Aurélie Chandeze, Deputy Editor-in-Chief
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