Compleat Spend Control
Executive Overview

Overview
Compleat Spend Control is a strategic approach to improving productivity through automation whilst reducing the cost of purchasing, simply by paying less for what the organisation already buys.

This document provides a high level overview of the benefits of Spend Control, reflecting the fact that the concept of both Spend Control and the benefits it delivers are new to most small to medium sized organisations.

The Compleat proposition comprises of three components and their associated services:

• Compleat Purchase to Pay automation software
• Compleat Employee Expenses automation software
• Compleat Buyers Group

Compleat Purchase to Pay and Employee Expenses are “browser” based software applications that automate the entire purchasing and employee expenses processes and are tightly integrated into any back office accounting system.

The Compleat Buyers Group enables organisations to reduce the cost of discretionary spend by leveraging the collective buying power of all of our clients to achieve better prices and then utilises Compleat’s software to ensure that the nominated suppliers, goods, services and prices are used every time by the client’s staff to deliver significant savings.

Collectively, Compleat delivers Spend Control which improves productivity whilst reducing costs.

Compleat Purchase to Pay software overview:

The first issue to recognise is that most small to medium organisations cannot justify a procurement manager. As a result, there is no single person in the organisation that has the responsibility to control and maximise the effectiveness of corporate purchasing. It is no-one’s problem and therefore ignored.

The second issue is a that a short review of most organisation’s purchasing processes will immediately identify that it is slow and paper intensive, leading to over budget spending, fragmented purchasing across multiple suppliers and management accounts and cashflow forecasts that rely on a “best guess” month end accrual to estimate the position of the business.

The objective of Purchase to Pay automation is to significantly improve the productivity and efficiencies of the purchasing process to enable significant savings to be made on what is purchased.

Compleat Purchase to Pay (P2P) automation delivers the following benefits:

• Increased productivity through a single seamless and paperless purchasing process from the creation of a request to purchase through to the final approval of the purchase invoice and posting to the accounts.
• Instant visibility and access to all information on the current status of every purchasing transaction from requisition creation, budget checking, approval, purchase order generation, receipting, purchase invoice capture, approval and automated posting to the accounts.
• Full commitment accounting for all purchasing commitments, with auto reversing accruals through the delivery and invoice posting process.
• Fully automated budget checking for every transaction with escalated approval processes for over budget requests.
• Structured and automatic paperless workflow approval processes for purchasing requisitions, delivery approvals and purchase invoice approvals.
• Extensive use of pricing catalogues delivered and maintained by the Compleat Buyers Group, increasing the ease of use whilst fully automating all general ledger coding and budget checking at requisition creation.
• The ability to control purchasing by limiting user access to only nominated suppliers, products, services and prices.
• Compleat Purchase to Pay software enables the business to take control over the purchasing, saving both time and generating real cash savings in the process.

The expectation should be that the project will pay for itself (more cash in the bank) within twelve months or less from going live.

Those savings continue to be enjoyed in the months and years that follow. 

Compleat Employee Expenses software overview

• All organisations recognise that the creation of employee expenses claims, their authorisation, general ledger coding and posting to the accounts is a slow, tedious and labour intensive process.
• The organisation usually utilises the employee’s personal credit cards and cash to make the expenditure and that makes the prompt payment of claims a high priority.
• Few organisations are able to proactively implement comprehensive expenses policies, then “police” every claim in detail, simply because it would take too long.
• The result is a great deal of work for everyone involved, with little control over what is actually being claimed.
• Compleat Employee Expenses automation delivers the following benefits:
• Simplifies and automates employee expenses capture through the use of common expenditure templates.
• Enables the implementation of a corporate expenses policy that is automatically enforced during an expenses claim creation.
• Automated capture and expense form creation for most corporate and personal credit card through standard credit card download functionality.
• Automatically creates the general ledger coding for the expenditure type, department, and company including the ability to recharge the expense when relevant.
• Delivers a single, seamless paperless electronic approval processes and final posting to the accounts.
• Increases productivity for everyone involved in raising claims, approval, general ledger coding and posting to the ledgers.
• Reduced costs through automated policing of corporate expenses policies, including mileage rates, car multiple occupancy rates, hotel costs (etc).
• Expenses capture, submission and approvals can be undertaken from any location with a local network or internet connection.
• Ability to scan and submit receipts with each claim.
• The introduction of automated employee expenses is always very well received by everyone involved. It saves time, it saves money and it ensures that the employee gets their claims paid in a timely manner every month.

Compleat Buyers Group (CBG) overview
The Compleat Buyers Group reduces the cost of what the organisation already buys, simply by paying less.
The combination of Compleat’s Purchase to Pay (P2P) & Employee Expenses solutions with the Buyers Group guarantees substantial cash savings – money that never leaves the bank account and goes straight to the bottom line.

CBG is unique in that our focus is on common discretionary spend and not specific “vertical” market specialisation (e.g. hospitality) and is therefore relevant to almost every organisation.

CBG has secured preferential pricing and discounts from hundreds of leading suppliers across tens of thousands of products and services. These products and services are presented to users of Compleat P2P software through preconfigured and automatically maintained “catalogues”.

The CBG catalogues are unique in the market. The catalogues are updated daily by Compleat and are automatically distributed to CBG members every night. This unique approach minimises the administration process for our members whilst making it extremely easy for users of Compleat P2P and Employee Expenses to use our software. It also ensures that the right products are purchased from the right supplier at the best price every single time.

In order to quantify the savings available prior to purchase, CBG undertake a very detailed survey of an organisation’s spend, capturing information at a line item level on all purchase invoices for a period of one to three months. The current prices paid by the organisation are then compared to the CBG prices and extrapolated to provide an estimate of the annual saving potential. The resulting report is a key component of the implementation project, allowing the relevant catalogues to be enabled during implementation and generating savings from the moment the system goes live.

CBG also provides a range of other services available to members, including “Active Cost Management”. The CBG buyer works on site with the client providing additional resource and expertise to enable the organisation to maximise the effectiveness of their spending and the savings achieved. The Active Cost Management offering is flexible, enabling clients to decide on the number of days per week, (or per month) that the service is required.

Compleat recommend the use of this service for organisations that do not currently have a “head of procurement / buyer” role as it delivers the resources and processes that ensure the maximum savings are achieved over a short period of time.

Whilst every organisation is different, our expectation is that the savings generated through CBG will deliver a real and quantifiable cash ROI in considerably less than 12 months.

These savings are enjoyed year on year making Compleat Spend Control a very compelling proposition.

Summary
Compleat Purchase to Pay and Employee Expenses software will enable clients to significantly improve the productivity, efficiency, speed, accuracy and transparency of their purchasing and expenses processes.

When combined with CBG, clients will benefit from maximising the effectiveness of its purchasing to generate substantial and sustainable savings into the future.

Unlike many “return on investment” propositions, the Compleat solution is based on real savings by simply buying the same goods and services for less. The savings are cash that never leaves the bank account and goes straight to the bottom line profit.

Compleat Spend Control offers a long term strategic approach to increased productivity and profitability, whilst improving the accuracy, timeliness and value of management accounts and cashflow forecasts.
Next Step
Find out whether Compleat Spend Control is relevant to your business.

The only cost is an hour or two of your time. We will arrange for an onsite meeting with one of our consultants to review your current purchasing process, capture high level spending information and then deliver a short report that quantifies:

• The cost of Compleat P2P and / or Employee Expenses fully deployed.
• The cost of the Compleat Buyers Group annual membership service.
• The Warranted Minimum Savings potential.
• An estimate of the total potential savings available.
• A detailed Return on Investment report to validate the potential benefit of the solution.
• The purpose of this process is to enable an educated decision on whether to progress with the project.

About Compleat Software
Compleat Software is a UK organisation and was formed in 1999. In April 2008 the organisation secured investment through the Stockford Group and has been expanding rapidly to meet the growing demand for Purchase to Pay and Employee Expenses automation software from the small to medium sized business community.

The Compleat Buyers Group was launched in January 2011, enabling our clients to make significant savings on their purchasing simply by paying less on what they already buy. The leveraged purchasing power of the Compleat Buyers Group is delivering clients a compelling cash based ROI in as little as six months for a fully operational Compleat Spend Control solution.

Compleat Software sells through a rapidly growing number of leading UK accounting software resellers that provide local expertise, geographical coverage and vertical market specialisation.

Potential Return on Investment
The ROI calculations are simple and based on hard cash that never leaves your bank account and drops directly to the bottom line profit.

A small reduction in the cost of your discretionary spend achieved through the Compleat Buyers Group, combined with a reduction in maverick budget overspend will usually represent a hard cash ROI of under 6 months for most organisations.

The savings then continue far into the future, increasing profit and improving cashflow.