Bunzl

Bunzl provides a one-stop-shop, on-time and in-full specialist distribution service across more than 30 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific and the UK & Ireland. With their global HQ in London, UK, they supply a broad range of internationally and responsibly sourced non-food products to a variety of market sectors, including grocery, food service, safety, cleaning and hygiene, retail, and healthcare.

Bunzl evaluated DataServ in 2008 but chose another provider who promised big results. Bunzl soon realized, as is often the case, that their AP provider over promised and under delivered. After 5 years of frustrating inefficiencies and costly maintenance, it was obvious that they were not going to get the value they expected from their AP solution. The actual results of AP automation, compared with the benchmarks that were promised during the vendor evaluation process and built into Bunzl’s ROI analysis, fell short of management’s expectations. What went wrong?

• Missed Expectations
• Technical Obsolescence
• No Continuous Improvement
• Downtime Disaster
• The Hidden Cost of Customization
• Expensive IT Overhead of On-premise

When Bunzl pointed out the system’s shortfalls, the provider told them that they needed to invest more money to see better results. Every tweak or adjustment to the vendor’s standard system required Bunzl to hire outside consultants, and those costs added up.

On top of the extra costs, this AP solution required lots of additional employee time and effort. Bunzl faced daunting amounts of downtime every year with their AP solution. Their vendor’s annual maintenance updates took two full weeks. That’s 14 days where they couldn’t use their AP system, which meant disruptive bottlenecks for the AP team after every maintenance period. Bunzl was also left to manage all their own updates, upgrades, and patches themselves, pouring hours of internal labor into something that was included in other AP vendor solutions (including DataServ!). All tech support requests had to be funneled through a single IT person at Bunzl, essentially burying that employee in endless tickets, and requiring a time-consuming game of telephone between Bunzl’s AP team, IT and the vendor.

After a few years, Bunzl realized their vendor had sold them software and basically walked away. Every additional request or tailoring of the system was an add-on, and they had to keep their wallets open to see a better return on their investment. And if there were hiccups in the process? The vendor’s response was “You figure it out.” No best practices, no proactive solutions, no strategic guidance. Bunzl was left to fend for themselves, and over time they realized they needed something more. They needed the full service and support of an innovative, trusted AP solution partner.

Since DataServ’s initial pitch in 2008, they had stayed in contact with Bunzl and remained committed to their success, even though they had chosen another vendor. In 2014, DataServ pitched Bunzl again, knowing they could offer them better value and industry-leading customer service. Just two months after that, Bunzl officially switched to DataServ with the goals of increasing visibility, reducing manual labor, realizing more vendor discounts, and creating an automated workflow with timed escalations.

After assessing DataServ’s solution again, Bunzl quickly determined that it was a short ROI and a much better long-term fit. Bunzl was eager to start using DataServ’s platform, including the world’s first SaaS invoice capture software utilizing an efficient, intelligent Invoice Processing Machine (IPM) and both PO and NPO workflows. Now, 10 years later, Bunzl has continued to add divisions and see increased value.