Elly Yates-Roberts |
Nordic Leisure Group – formerly known as Thomas Cook Northern Europe – is a travel agency in the Nordics, which sells package holidays to consumers via the Ving, Spies and Tjäreborg brands.
To deliver the relaxing and enjoyable experiences that customers want from their holidays, travel agencies must have several back-end processes in place, including in their accounts payable (AP) department. Having used multiple AP automation solutions that left much to be desired, Nordic Leisure Group decided to implement ExFlow and ExFlow Data Capture from SignUp Software in 2009.
ExFlow is an AP invoice automation solution developed specifically for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (AX) and Dynamics 365 Business Central (NAV). Nordic Leisure has joined over 1,300 businesses that use the solution to process more than 40 million invoices annually.
According to Kamilla Gustafsson, business analyst and head of Nordic financial shared services at Nordic Leisure, one of the main reasons for the switch was ExFlow’s integration with Nordic Leisure’s enterprise resource planning system, Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
“We were previously using another AP automation solution, but we decided to use ExFlow as it was important to us to always have the data from ExFlow available in NAV in real time,” she says. “We didn’t want to rely on imports and batch jobs from an external system.”
The integration with NAV provides Nordic Leisure with multiple benefits, including reduced time delays with invoice importing; less training for staff, as they can continue using familiar workflows and environments; less maintenance for the IT departments; greater levels of security; and improved ease of use.
“In comparison to the other AP automation solutions we had used, we found ExFlow to be more modern and user-friendly,” says Gustafsson.
In January 2022, Nordic Leisure’s annual invoice volume increased from 30,000 to 40,000 due to Covid-19 travel restrictions easing. As the company was already using ExFlow, it was able to easily handle the increase and continue working as usual without incurring additional costs during a tumultuous time, such as by hiring new staff.
According to Gustafsson, ExFlow Data Capture has been an integral part of the company’s AP processes. Due to the borderless nature of its business, invoices can often be in different languages, with different date formats, currencies and invoice layouts. ExFlow Data Capture can easily interpret the data on these invoices and push them through into ExFlow for approvals and posting.
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2022 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.