Justine Hutchins, Purchasing Manager, Alphabet GB
Alphabet GB, one of the UK’s largest leasing and fleet management specialists, has seen a dramatic improvement in the time taken for the validation of its dealer invoices, thanks to work carried out by a new consultancy division set up by software solutions provider, Ebbon-Dacs.
The new consultancy, Ebbon Connect, has been established to provide connected solutions for customers in the fleet, logistics, dealer and automotive markets in response to growing demand from a wide variety of businesses for improved efficiencies and increased connectivity in their operations.
The first consultancy project for the new division has been with the UK’s third largest lessor, Alphabet GB, which manages over 144,000 company cars and light commercial vehicles for some of the UK’s largest, most progressive corporate, SME and public sector organisations.
On Alphabet’s behalf, Ebbon Connect has designed a bespoke software solution to fully integrate the company’s back office system with Leaselink, Ebbon-Dacs’ market-leading e-procurement platform, and to provide the automatic validation of all invoices from Alphabet’s preferred dealer network.
As a consequence, Alphabet has been able to save precious time on every new vehicle order, which has allowed the purchasing department to manage its workflow more effectively.
The new solution also allows any discrepancies, such as unauthorized accessories, to be automatically and immediately challenged with the dealer. Any corrections can then be fed back into the system in almost real time, removing the need for manual intervention, such as re-keying, and helping to improve efficiencies and speed up the vehicle ordering process.
Justine Hutchins, Purchasing Manager, at Alphabet GB, said: ”Instantaneous messaging now allows us to validate invoices within seconds, saving around five minutes per order, which across an order bank the size of ours , adds up to a considerable time saving.
“The time saved has allowed us to focus more on added value services for customers and to improve the customer journey, and it has also made our workflow easier to manage. We have been very pleased with the outcome and by the project work to date carried out by Ebbon Connect.”
Sarah Alexander, newly appointed Head of the Ebbon Connect division, said “Our first project under the Ebbon Connect banner has gone very well and allowed Alphabet GB to move from a semi-automatic process of dealer invoice validation with an element of manual checking to a fully automated system. This has brought time and process efficiencies which have made the whole dealer invoicing process far more efficient and effective.”
In the new Ebbon Connect division, Alexander, who has wide fleet and automotive experience, is backed by a number of dedicated support staff, all with access to Ebbon-Dacs’ extensive line-up of developers and programmers.
She continued: “We’ve launched Ebbon Connect in response to growing customer demand for connected services across a wide spectrum of the fleet and automotive markets. Customers, like Alphabet, are looking for connected and integrated services to improve operational efficiencies and, in certain cases, this means building bespoke solutions to deliver them.
“These include a variety of software solutions such as stand-alone mobile applications, for example, and we are able to offer considerable experience and expertise in this area to provide our customers exactly what they are looking for.
“We are currently talking to a number of different types of company that want this kind of bespoke connected solution and have already begun working on a number of projects with several of them,” she added.
