Client Case

Created in 1968, Un Toit pour Tous is the first private player in social housing in Languedoc-Roussillon. Building, renovating, allocating housing, ensuring a pleasant living environment, participating in the life of neighbourhoods... The areas of intervention of Un Toit pour Tous are numerous. A major player in social housing, its action aims both to contribute to the development of the supply of social housing, to offer a better quality of services to its tenants and to encourage residential development.

To achieve these objectives, Un Toit pour Tous is in a process of continuous improvement of its processes. It is within this framework that the Management has undertaken numerous projects enabling it to gain in efficiency, particularly in the management of accounts payable with the Freedz platform.

Interview with Fabrice Pellerin, Accounting and Financial Manager at Un Toit pour Tous.

The Context

Why did you set up this project?

This project is part of our corporate project. We are in a process of efficiency where we look at all projects that could allow us to gain in efficiency.

The implementation of Freedz answered three important issues for us:

• First of all, at the time we were considering this project, we were spending a lot of time doing manual manipulations to scan the invoices with our LAD tool to integrate them into our management software. We had two people dedicated exclusively to sorting and scanning supplier invoices. We want to eliminate these time-consuming tasks and reinvest the time in more qualitative tasks.
• Then, we received a lot of invoices by e-mail addressed to people not attached to the accounting department. This system resulted in the loss of invoices between the supplier and our accounting department. So we decided to centralize the receipt of invoices in one place, Freedz.
• This allows me to address our last objective: we wanted to secure our payment terms because it is an important issue for us.

Why did you choose Freedz and Neovacom?

We listed several market players who were working on the subject. Freedz seemed to us to be the most suitable solution in terms of quality/price ratio compared to what we wanted.

The fact that Freedz is very strongly inspired by Chorus was a very important argument. We have a number of our suppliers who use Chorus very regularly.

Moreover, we are convinced that dematerialization will be the norm in the very near future (and recent events tend to prove us right). We therefore wanted a solution that would allow us to move to 100% electronic in the long term, in compliance with tax standards.

The Project

How was the project set up?

The implementation went well but took quite a long time for several reasons. We started the test phases in September-October 2019. We were operational and ready to go into production in December. Unfortunately, one of our team members left in the middle of the accounting closing period, so we had to put the project on stand-by.

We actually resumed the project in April 2020, during containment. Throughout the configuration and launch phase, contacts with Neovacom's technical teams were good and rather reactive.

And how's it been going since then?

We really started the project again at the end of April. We wanted to carry out a few tests with the first suppliers to validate the process and adapt ourselves internally before moving up a gear. We targeted the suppliers with the highest volumes, in order to achieve the fastest possible productivity gains.

Since then, several hundred invoices have passed through Freedz and it works very well. We are therefore looking to connect all our suppliers to the platform.

We are also in the process of making a few changes to our internal IS to further improve processing and take full advantage of Freedz's potential, particularly for fluid invoices.

Profits received

What benefits do you see from using Freedz?

We are happy because we are starting to see the first benefits we were expecting, even if we still hope to gradually build up.

Firstly, Freedz allows us to centralize all of our supplier invoices.

Secondly, Freedz has already enabled us to increase productivity. We have already received several hundred invoices through the platform for which we have completely eliminated manual and time-consuming tasks. We are well aware of the potential gains that still await us, which currently require an adaptation of our internal information system.

The other very positive point is that we have established traceability with our suppliers via the platform (information on the status of the invoice: made available/accounted for/paid), which also limits the demands linked to the exchange of information on the status of invoice processing. We therefore have fewer reminders to manage.

Finally, we are very satisfied with the after-sales service. The support is really professional because the teams are contactable and available to help us and our suppliers.

Exactly, for your suppliers, how did the adaptation go?

Suppliers are happy because they appreciate the traceability, on the transmission of invoices as well as on payments. It requires a bit of work at the beginning but they see the benefits.