Friday, 25th October, 2013

If Twickenham stadium seemed more difficult than usual to get to, then perhaps a visit from a certain flame haired Prince of the Realm had something to do with it, as I eventually made my way past various enthralled rugby juniors, and took my seat in a room nearby. There to listen to Network Rail talk about a journey (their own), and the route they’d taken to better invoice processing - I was curious to see how an organisation with 4 million passengers a day coped.

We’ve all heard about “leaves on the line” when it comes to the vagaries of the daily commute, but with Network Rail, seasonal changes affect more than the passenger’s experience – but when they’re able to push through IT projects too. So when Network Rail's Payables Department was tasked with finding and implementing a better system for invoice management, they knew they were going to be affected by certain constraining and limiting windows of opportunity.

As Britain’s largest electricity user with – as Andrew Newman of Network Rail says – more neighbours than anyone else in the country, processing approximately 350,000 invoices a year - it was essential they had a tool good enough to support them. A difficult enough task at the best of times, but with an imminent Oracle upgrade, and the legacy invoice system becoming de-supported, it became an increasingly urgent task. One in which Network Rail had two choices – sink or swim. Obviously they chose to swim, and Andrew implemented project SWIM – Scanning, Workflow and Invoice Management, and decided on invoice automation company - and recent winners of two major DM awards – ITESOFT as their partner.

Post implementation, Network Rail’s been able to dramatically increase auto matching rates, with 45-50% no touch – resulting in a decrease in the amount of time it takes to process an invoice. And because of that, support calls, which had at times been lengthy and time consuming, decreased and subsequently had the effect of improving supplier relations. On top of that, the improved analysis and reporting has (amongst other things) highlighted some of the common causes of rejections, meaning that some of these can be flagged and the process changed for the next time. In fact, Andrew Newman says that the rejection rate has improved dramatically since the introduction of a “no PO, no pay” policy.

And so all went through swimmingly (if you’ll excuse the pun)… Well, not entirely.

People don’t like change, even when they know the change is necessary, and in hindsight Andrew says they should have paid more attention to the advice from ITESOFT, and not tried to replicate some of their old ways of doing things. And because change can be tough, he said they should have spent more time getting the testing right and admits that they didn’t plan as well as they could have done – especially around who was going to be responsible for what – and what the support structure would look like. But most of all, he says he’d have liked to have had more of the one thing he didn’t have access to – time. So would he have done some things differently? Yes. Would he call the implementation a success? Absolutely.

However, he went on to stress that the more time spent in the initial stages - planning, training and preparation – the better for everyone involved.

Sound advice in fact that had I taken myself earlier in the morning, might have helped me get more than a passing glimpse of the HRH in our midst...