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Connolly’s Red Mills needed a payment provider to streamline the accounts payable function in their SAP platform. They also required a flexible payment option for their sister company to receive funds and make ad hoc payments in Sweden.
About Connolly's RED MILLS
For over 100 years, Connolly’s Red Mills has been based in rural Ireland in Goresbridge County, Kilkenny, Ireland. They combine their science, passion, and experience by developing techniques and formulations to manufacture high-performance animal feed, particularly for the equine market.
They operate in over 80 countries worldwide and have more than 450 employees.
The Challenge
Connolly’s Red Mills has been a TransferMate client for seven years. They use SAP to manage their Accounts Payable (AP) process and TransferMate to facilitate payments. Before adopting the solution, Connolly’s Red Mill’s AP process was human resource intensive, requiring manual negotiation for the best foreign exchange (FX) rate.
“We have a presence in over 80 countries, suppliers across the world, and local consultants in those countries that we need to pay,” says Colleen Kavanagh, Financial Controller of Connolly’s Red Mills. “Before using SAP Concur combined with TransferMate, our accounts payable process was extremely slow. One of our AP team members would have to go into our online banking platform and create individual payments for each supplier. Depending on the currency, we had to ring up our bank in advance and get an FX rate for each. And if we didn't do that, we would lose out.”
And it didn’t stop there. Every step of the process had to be completed manually by a team member, which was frustrating and tedious.
“Each payment was set up manually, then two users would have to go in and approve each payment manually, and then we'd have to post each of those payments manually into SAP. So, it was very, very time-consuming.”
The Connolly’s Red Mills team first heard of TransferMate through our sister company, Taxback International. They were one of the first companies to utilize the TransferMate payment integration with SAP.
“We've been customers of Taxback International for around 20 years. It was through that relationship that Patrick Dalton reached out to us. At that stage, we were doing all our business online; I didn't even think there was an easier option. When Paddy came to us and said that TransferMate had an integration designed with SAP to deliver a better payment experience, we said, "Yes, please!”.
The Solution
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Seven years on, and with the TransferMate integration fully developed and online, Connolly’s Red Mills has significantly reduced the time it takes to pay suppliers and local consultants.
“Now, with TransferMate, we can go onto SAP and create our payment proposal. We can then upload that to TransferMate. It gives us back our selected currencies and the Euro equivalent. Any charges and the FX rates are clearly shown. We then just pay TransferMate that one Euro fee, which goes straight to the vendors. It's very quick. It's very seamless and has less risk of human error.”
Outside of regular payment cycles, the AP team can make payments to vendors more quickly.
“We do our payments typically every two weeks, but it's pretty easy to make out-of-cycle payments. So, if we have an urgent payment to make - maybe once a week - we go onto SAP and run the proposal. It goes for internal approval and is uploaded to the TransferMate Platform. We return a file to upload on SAP, which will then post the actual FX rate we've paid for the transactions onto all our vendor accounts.”
And when it comes to reporting, the system can clearly and easily provide smart reports for reconciliation purposes.
“The reconciliation is straightforward because we get a file download from the system. The platform gives us the download, which agrees exactly through the payment proposal and SAP. When we upload this information from the platform back into SAP, it matches it against all the vendor accounts. It creates a one-line outstanding payment in our system, ready for us to make the Euro payment and match it all.”
Within Connolly's Red Mills Group, sister company Carr & Day & Martin also turned to TransferMate for another of our product solutions, Global Accounts.
“Carr & Day & Martin has a number of customers in Sweden. So, we receive money from our customers in Swedish Kroner directly into our Global Account. We can then control that money and decide whether we're going to use some of the funds to pay suppliers in Sweden or when we're going to convert it to Euro, which will depend on the FX rate. It's convenient. And easy to open additional accounts with addressable IBANs in different currencies depending on what we need, when we need it.”
The Results
The results for Connolly’s Red Mills have been measured in terms of the time saved and costs saved thanks to a more accurate, streamlined process. As the first client during integration with SAP, they have seen firsthand the change in bank charge fees and the reduction in human errors.
“What is the cost for us to use the system? There is no cost. The price is in the FX rate, which you'll have to pay anyway, but it's a preferential rate, so there's no extra cost for us to use TransferMate. But you're also reducing the risk of human error because everything is automated on the platform. We have confirmed the bank details in SAP. So, there's less risk of somebody putting in the digits wrong.”
Using TransferMate’s integration with SAP, Connolly’s Red Mills saved hours of time every payment cycle.
“By working with TransferMate, we've improved the efficiencies in the AP and finance departments. It takes minutes to create the payment proposal. It's all seamlessly integrated into SAP. It's much quicker when you're talking about labor costs than making online individual payments. Timesaving is the big thing for us.”
For Carr & Day & Martin, Global Accounts has been critical in accepting new business in new regions.
“If we were to go to our bank and say, "Right, we want to set up a bank account in Swedish Kroner". The administrative work and cost of getting that account up and running wouldn't have been worth it. It's so much easier just to say, "Right, we're going to open a Global Account in that currency for that customer.”
The Final Word
“Before TransferMate, it could take 2 or 3 hours to pay 20 foreign suppliers. With TransferMate, we can get that down to 15 or 20 minutes.”
- Colleen Kavanagh, Financial Controller, Connolly’s RED MILLS
Contact the team today and start using TransferMate to give more time back to your finance team.
