Nhood entrusts Basware and Fluxym to automate its P2P processes and secure its budgetary control
Nhood is a real estate services and solutions company. Its team of experts innovate and implement solutions to grow real estate assets for its clients. Nhood is an urban renewal developer that creates unique, inviting and visually appealing “better places” centered around retail and mixed-use spaces that benefit everyone.
With locations in Europe and West Africa, Nhood was founded in 2021 and has spearheaded some 30 urban renewal developments while managing over 900 properties for its clients. It draws from the expertise of more than 1,000 specialists working across the real estate value chain in fields like asset management, shopping center operations, planning and development. These Nhooders are developing an approach called “site vision” to project spaces into the future and meet new regional challenges through a blend of local knowledge, foresight and creativity.
Owned by the Association Familiale Mulliez, Nhood’s strength lies in its solid retail background and local roots. In fact, that’s where the name comes from: Nhood is a contraction of “neighborhood,” a symbol of its purpose and commitment.
We’ve achieved a 30% touchless rate for invoices with purchase orders, meaning that a portion of our invoices are now processed without any human intervention, quite a change from our old fully manual process. the results are very promising!
Benoit Glin
Director of Performance
Automating P2P processes and securing budget control
When Nhood Services France grew into a multi-firm group of 91 entities and created a new purchasing department, it ran up against the functional limitations of its in-house tool that had to be modified to meet user needs and the company’s challenges.
“We had three main goals when we started the project in 2023: secure all our processes, from spending commitments to invoice approval, set up budget control for purchase requests, and improve our payment terms,”
explains Benoit Glin, Director of Performance at Nhood Services France.
Marie Bodet, Manager of Purchasing Management Control, adds, “Automating manual tasks like invoice input and reconciliation was also a key component of gaining efficiencies. We wanted to reduce accounting adjustments caused by attribution errors and improve our internal control processes as part of ISO 9001 certification.”
Sector:
- Real Estate
Key Figures:
- Turnover: €77.2 million
- Employees: 375
Context:
- Annual purchase orders: 20,000
- Annual invoices: 28,000
- Users: 375
- ERP interface: Voyager
Basware Modules:
- Smart PDF
- Invoice
- Procurement
- Basware Analytics
Basware: a powerful solution with global coverage
After speaking with a number of software publishers, Nhood chose Basware. The project team was impressed with the solution’s functional capacity, particularly the automated invoice capture, the ability to create catalogs, the order reception management feature, and budget control.
“We liked that the solution could automate processes end-to-end, which meant no more manual entries when managing our vendor invoices,” says Benoit Glin.
Marie Bodet further explains, “What clinched it for us was the option to trace interactions with the audit trail and the functionalities that streamline accounting tasks, like automated invoice data input and duplicate detection.”
Martin Laune, IT Project Manager, adds, “The capabilities to interface with other solutions and configure the software to suit our environment were perfect for us because we wanted to switch from special applications to SaaS solutions that are easier to maintain.”
Lastly, Basware was also attractive because it operates in several countries and is obtaining certification for registered private platforms (PDPs) in preparation for France’s e-invoicing reform.
Fluxym: Nhood’s trusted partner
Over a period of nine months, Fluxym experts guided Nhood’s project team every step of the way, from design and integration to testing and user training.
Fluxym’s consultants really understood what we do and the challenges we face. They were always easy to talk to, and their support after the go-live with the TMA helped us securely deploy the solution.
Marie Bodet, Manager of Purchasing Management Control
“We are extremely impressed with how professional the Fluxym teams were and their proactive advice on best practices. They were very flexible when we needed them,” says Martin Laune.
The Nhood project team’s commitment, input from business specialists, internal communication, and close attention to upstream process reviews were decisive factors of the project’s success.
Significant early wins
A few months after Basware was rolled out, the solution yielded tangible signs of progress.
“We’ve achieved a 30% touchless rate for invoices with purchase orders, meaning that a portion of our invoices are now processed without any human intervention, quite a change from our old fully manual process. We’re still aiming for at least 50%, but the results are very promising!” says Benoit Glin. “And since Basware calculates provisions much faster, our next closing cycle will go more quickly.”
“We made a big leap in terms of budget control by configuring workflows to view budget availability upstream of purchasing requests. Some of them are forwarded to the purchasing department based on limits and cost centers,” says Marie Bodet.
The operational departments are also satisfied because they now have a clear view of spending and budget tracking (provisional, committed and actual). The accounting teams have noticed they’re saving time and the data is much more reliable.
Following this successful start, the teams at Nhood will be deploying Basware in Luxembourg and plan to expand the scope to more countries.