Avanto A/P Partnership Brings New Efficiencies, Bottom Line Savings to Nashville Office Interiors
When Jamie Wright, senior accountant at Haworth dealer Nashville Office Interiors, decided to outsource accounts payables to Avanto, it provided welcome relief for a stressful situation.
The dealership’s long-time A/P rep had gone out on medical leave and was unable to return. Wright and her A/R collections rep had tried to add A/P to their other duties for a month or two but they soon became overwhelmed by the added workload.
Purely from a dollars and cents perspective, taking advantage of Avanto’s Process as a Service offering (PAAS) made a lot of sense.
Instead of hiring a replacement A/P person—with all the accompanying training, benefits and other costs—outsourcing promised significant savings from Day One. But Wright had never outsourced any accounting functions before and everything about it was new and different for her.
Fortunately for Wright and the rest of the NOI team, Avanto’s extensive industry experience and their in-depth knowledge of dealer accounting best practices not only made for a smooth transition, but also brought new insights and perspectives to the dealership on how best to manage accounts payables.
“Working with Matt Danyliw and his team at Avanto has been great,” Wright reports. “They provided confirmation for much of the way we were handling A/P before they got involved, but they also exposed us to industry best practices from their work with other dealerships and helped us streamline our own A/P processes and procedures.”
Instead of hiring a replacement A/P person—with all the accompanying training, benefits and other costs—outsourcing promised significant savings from Day One. But Wright had never outsourced any accounting functions before and everything about it was new and different for her.
Fortunately for Wright and the rest of the NOI team, Avanto’s extensive industry experience and their in-depth knowledge of dealer accounting best practices not only made for a smooth transition, but also brought new insights and perspectives to the dealership on how best to manage accounts payables.
“Working with Matt Danyliw and his team at Avanto has been great,” Wright reports. “They provided confirmation for much of the way we were handling A/P before they got involved, but they also exposed us to industry best practices from their work with other dealerships and helped us streamline our own A/P processes and procedures.”
And, Wright points out, it was all done in a low-key, low-stress way. “Avanto is really easy to work with and they really care about the partnership you have with them,” she says. “We were the ones who set the pace on the transition and I never got any pushback on doing things the way we wanted,” she continues. “It’s always been on my terms.”
The company has also worked well with other parts of the NOI organization. “Avanto has done a very good job of making our CSRs aware of the need to process our invoices in a timely fashion, so that we can get all our discounts,” Wright explains. “Since we started using Avanto to manage our payables, we’ve been seeing a lot fewer past due invoices.”
NOI is a CORE Business Systems house and Avanto’s expertise on all the major office furniture dealer management systems has also been a big plus, says Wright. “One of the reasons why we chose Avanto as our outsource partner was their familiarity with CORE,” she explains. “Their being able to operate on the system from Day One, without us having to train them on it, also made for a smooth transition,” she recalls.
As they do for so many of their dealer clients, Avanto today operates as a trusted outsource partner for NOI. “Avanto is just so reliable,” says Wright. “They’ve been very responsive to our needs, you never have to worry about them calling in sick and they’ve really helped us focus in on our current processes and procedures and find new ways to make them more efficient and productive.”
And if all that wasn’t enough, there’s the hard dollar benefits that show up right on the bottom line. Wright estimates that outsourcing A/P to Avanto is saving NOI at least $10,000 a year!
“Outsourcing our payables to Avanto has turned out to be a great move for us,” says Wright. “They’re a valuable partner today and I fully expect the partnership to become even more valuable as we go forward. I would be surprised if don’t end up using more of their services in the next couple of years.”
