Retail Zoo originated from the single brand of Boost Juice in Australia before it transformed into today’s global multi-brand platform.
About two years ago, Retail Zoo, the mother company of Boost Juice Australia, Boost Juice International, Salsa’s Fresh Mex, Cibo Espresso, and Betty’s Burgers & Concrete Co., has adopted SAP Concur to automate the company’s expense management. Now, recognising the power of digitalisation, the growing company with over 640 stores worldwide is soon to deploy SAP Concur Invoice.
Concur Invoice is known to reduce over 80{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} of the average processing cost of a single receipt. The invoice management software is customisable according to workflow, simplifies and speeds up capture and payment while providing more visibility. Concur Invoice also integrates with any ERP or accounting system and connects with solutions from other vendors across the procure-to-pay lifecycle.
Lauren Miller, Retail Zoo’s Accounts Receivable/Accounts Payable Manager, shared the humble transition of the company’s expense management that used to rely on an excel spreadsheet. Speaking in an SAP Concur forum, she said:
“You had people dump receipts on your desk and expect you to pay them within the next day or so.”
“We have a large number of people who work in the field as well around the country, supporting all of the Boost Juice stores, and they would have mailed them in through Australia Post, it would take a week to get them,” Miller added.
Detailing the challenges they encountered in her department, she commented:
“We really had no oversight over our costs, we had no way of tracking our costs, and it was really really challenging.”
Having SAP in place for its accounting system made Concur’s integration possible. Compared to other expense management products that Retail Zoo considered, Concur’s ease-of-use made the platform ideal for the firm.
As for product implementation, the retail company leveraged Concur’s consultancy services. Miller said:
“Making a change that affects the whole business is really scary but once you’ve implemented it – and the implementation process was probably the easiest bit, the people were the hardest bit – it made all the difference.”
Miller shared the company’s strategy upon the initial implementation of Concur. Beginning with choosing a handful of people who would appreciate filing their expenses through Concur, the usage eventually scaled up after the few people’s inputs on the challenges and know-how of the system.
“After a month of them doing their reports, it helped us also to understand the bugs that we might want to fix and be a bit more agile,” she said
“That really made a big difference for us, getting a few people to do it and champion it to the rest of the business,” Miller exclaimed.
Through Concur, Retail Zoo was able to identify and understand where the company’s costs were, a definite win for any organisation. Explaining how beneficial it is for the company to have visibility on the spend categories of their expenses, Miller detailed:
“We recently had one of our Concur reps come in and do an overview and take us through some of the categories of spend and some of the trends in our business that we didn’t know about.”
“Just having that information there to be informed when we make decisions for our business in terms of maybe there’s cost savings in travel somewhere or there’s different behaviours that we could be doing to save our business money [was valuable]. We wouldn’t have had that oversight before,” Miller stressed.
Concur and Uber
Retail Zoo has also integrated Uber with Concur, which digitises trip receipts and automatically sends it to Concur Expense. The company acknowledges that many people are on Uber and having it integrated into Concur would make it easy for them to monitor travel expenses.
Miller said:
“It [also] allows us to go to Uber with a spend – this is what our employees are doing – and it gives us some information to use if we’re looking into cost savings or any deals or anything like that.”
According to Miller, SAP Concur, the travel, expense, and invoice management solution provider, has also helped Retail Zoo identify and create new capabilities for its products where a need existed. Commending Concur, she said:
“If it’s not in place now, and if Concur hears it’s a problem, they work towards a solution to try to give you the services that you need.”
Retail Zoo was founded in 2000 by a husband-and-wife team Jeff and Janine Allis, the company’s current Executive Chairman, and Executive Director. As one of Australia’s most respected businesswomen, Janine has the following titles under her belt: Telstra Businesswoman of the Year, Amex Franchisor of the Year, and ARA Retailer of the Year. She was also inducted into the Australian Business Women Hall of Fame and has been listed by BRW as one of the top 15 people who have changed the way we do business in the last 20 years.
