Haviland Enterprises Saves Hundreds of AP Work Hours with Automated Payments
"We expected Datacor ePayments to save us time — but the fact that it also saved us costs was gravy on top. And as a bonus, we get a rebate back."
- Randy Byle, Controller
About Haviland Enterprises
Haviland Enterprises, Inc. serves the needs of companies worldwide, including those in the US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. What started as a small research and testing lab in 1934 has grown to become one of the largest privately held chemical distribution companies in the United States. Today, Haviland consists of two separate divisions: Haviland Products Company serves the industrial market with custom formulation, specialty blending, packaging and distribution of a wide variety of chemical products; and Haviland Consumer Products formulates, blends, packages, and distributes more than 85 different swimming pool products for more than 75 different private label customers, serving some of the largest mass marketers of private label products.
Problem
Haviland had a definite tech gap in its vendor payment process that created unnecessary inefficiency. With multiple locations across three states, the company’s AP team faced an ever-growing workload. They relied heavily on manual paper-based processes for their payment runs, with multiple runs a week. And although many of their vendors signaled their preference for electronic payments, Haviland's AP team lacked the resources to safely store sensitive data.
Solution
"Electronic payments had been on my mind for years," says Randy. “They’re faster, quicker, and cheaper all around. Our challenge was finding an appropriate solution that has a minimal amount of setup and pain on our end."
Datacor ePayments checked those boxes and more for Haviland. “Datacor’s partnership with Corpay to process payments represented a huge time-saver from an AP standpoint, and it reduced the barrier to our getting onboard with automation.”
Smooth solution deployment was also a deciding factor for Randy. “I've gone through many software implementations, and issues often come up that you wouldn't consider,” he notes. “But not much was required from our accounting staff to get Datacor ePayments set up and running, and almost nothing from our IT staff. Corpay and Datacor handled most of the work behind the scenes."
Results
Once Haviland started using Datacor ePayments, Randy’s team saw the benefits become tangible. "It used to take our AP team an hour or more to do a check run—and we would do up to four runs a week. Now it takes us five minutes at most to finish that process." That adds up to hundreds of hours saved over time. Randy continues: "The weekly time savings was our biggest bullet point, and we were able to use that time to get other stuff done. This wasn't about letting go of people—it was about trying to make more time available through technology."
But it didn’t end there. Along with reduced task time came a cut in the hefty expense associated with mailing thousands of paper checks. "We expected Datacor ePayments to save us time—but the fact that it also saved us costs was gravy on top. And as a bonus, we get a rebate back."
Plus, the solution mitigated Haviland’s payment security risk. “We were able to offer ACH payment to vendors who wanted them without having to securely store and update their data.”
Recounting a fraudulent interception of a wire payment the company made before deciding automate, Randy reflects on the importance of Datacor ePayments’ indemnification policy. "It’s nice that Datacor ePayments is responsible for making sure payments get to vendors. And it benefits us that we’re able to shift our liability to a provider with the resources to better handle that risk."
Challenge
99.9% of vendors being paid by time-consuming check process; expensive AP costs to send payments; No IT resources to secure sensitive vendor data.
Success with Datacor ePayments
52 AP hours saved every month; $44,000 rebates in the first year; 570+ vendors enabled for electronic payments.
Results
“We improved our operations significantly with Chempax. For example, Chempax allows us to automate distribution of reports to key management and sales personnel. On a near real-time basis, we provide sales personnel with up to date information on customer order and invoicing activity. Chempax also does a great job managing global price changes. Pricing in our industry is extremely volatile, so the ability to manage price changes is absolutely essential. We can make price changes quickly and efficiently in Chempax. We feel the business controls Chempax provides helped us improve our bottom line,” states Ed.
Customer Profile
Location
Grand Rapids, MI
Industry
Chemical Distributor
Software
Datacor ERP C/S
Datacor ePayments
Datacor CRM