Commercial Vehicle Group Fuels Profitable Growth with AP Automation

Summary

Business: Automotive Dealership

Invoices: 70,000/month

Employees: 2,700

Locations: 39 in the US & Canada

ERP: CDK

Premier Truck Group was founded in 1977 in Dallas, TX as a private entity and remained so until purchased by the Penske Automotive Group in 2013. They continued growing through acquisitions and today are the largest commercial truck dealer group in North America with locations including Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah, Idaho, Georgia, and Ontario. They offer a premium selection of new vehicles as well as a large selection of previously owned commercial trucks, complemented by a full suite of maintenance and repair services, parts, and accessories.

Paperless

For 3,000,000+ sheets of paper annually to 100% electronic

Streamlined

Efficient same-day processing and payment

Accountability

Completely transparent process for everyone involved

The Challenge

As Premier Truck Group continued to grow, they began to experience difficulties when it came to their finance and accounting procedures. John Pruitt, Chief Financial Officer for the Premier Truck Group and 19-year employee, explains: “With our acquisition by Penske we grew from 4 stores to 39. Processing things manually with the sheer handling of volumes of just paper alone and filing and scanning and getting approvals was just not feasible even in a shared services environment.” He states “We could never get the efficiency gains that were needed. It was an archaic process.”

The solution? An AP automation tool to digitize the process and create an electronic workflow.

“To be able to scale our business and see the same efficiency gains? Without having to drastically increase the amount of staff? I honestly don't think that we could have scaled successfully without Yooz."

– John Pruitt, Chief Financial Officer for Premier Truck Group

Flexible, High-Tech, and Accurate

Pruitt selected Yooz based on several factors including what he termed as “the flexibility of the company and the willingness to be flexible with the business with which they operate.” However, one other factor stood out and that was the level of the technology itself. “The OCR technology was just incredible,” Pruitt stated. “The ease of use of the tool and the ability to bring data into the right spots resulting in a really high accuracy rate and ease of use.”

As a result of implementing the Yooz AP automation software Premier Truck was able to eliminate stacks of paper overnight and gain significant efficiency. They now had a seamless process that involved no paper, fast routing, and approvals all the way from procure-to-pay.

“We did not significantly increase our AP staff at all yet we’ve grown tenfold.”

According to Pruitt a big change is that “The company is 100% electronic and efficient so now, if we received goods that invoice would be processed and could be ready to pay the same day without anybody doing anything manually.”

Automation also proved to be a game changer for the management team. Whereas before it was difficult to find an invoice, now Premier Truck employees would find one in literally seconds thanks to incredible ease of use. This proved to be a significant time saver for research and analysis purposes.

There was an additional benefit to switching to an electronic process; the disappearance of clerical and administrative tasks. Pruitt explained it as “Instead of spending 75% of their time on administrative tasks, our AP person now spends 25% doing the same tasks. It is a shift in priorities that allows them to become much, much more efficient at what they do.”

"With the system that we have today there is literally no paper in the process. We estimate that will save the company 3,000,000 sheets of paper annually. That's about 1,000 trees over 3 years."

John Pruitt

Chief Financial Officer

The Future Looks Bright

Looking forward Pruitt stated “What we found is that we thought we were very consistent in routing our invoices until we actually put in a consistent process. That is when you figure out how inconsistent you really are.”

More important, Pruitt emphasized that “When you understand exactly what AP automation is you realize that it is just an enhancement to what you’re doing, not a replacement of your current ERP system. It is a game changer for how you do business and can help you get to the end game much quicker.”

Words of Wisdom from Premier Truck Group

When asked what advice he would give to other organizations going through a similar process, Pruitt stated "The SEARCHABILITY and data that is just available to you and in use is incredible. It’s a game changer for where you’re at as a company and you know that in today’s world everything is data-driven but you need to have data available. Without automation it would be near impossible to do a lot of the research that our team looks for.”

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