Woolworths Group x Opypro
Woolworths revolutionised their credit management processes in Australia for their Metro, Supermarkets and Big W banners with Opypro.
Explore Woolworths Group's journey with Opypro
Like many enterprises, Woolworths encountered hurdles with manual, paper-based onboarding procedures and needed help managing growth effectively. The Woolworths team reviewed several established platforms but found adapting them to suit their unique customer base would have required significant modifications to the internal system development. They found this would be too resource-intensive.
Instead, Opypro presented a compelling solution: a fully-customisable platform capable of delivering an end-to-end customer-centric solution that seamlessly integrated with their existing systems. We proved this could eliminate 20 manual processes across their entire trade accounts receivable workflow.
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The challenge
Empowering B2B customers by supporting their business needs quickly and efficiently.
Woolworths Group are a supplier of fresh goods and everyday essentials to businesses of all sizes. In fact, the Woolworths ecosystem services over 80,000 individual Business Buyers - a number that continues to grow each month.
Before their partnership with Opypro, Woolworths' end-to-end credit management process was fraught with manual tasks and required a huge volume of human resources to keep moving. Multiple systems and third-party providers were used to make the ‘whole’ solution operate. This caused lots of friction requiring substantial real-time support, reducing Woolworths' efficiency, and worsening customer experience across the board. It also negatively impacted team morale.
Customer onboarding time before Opypro was over five days and required the customer to fill out an eight-page application form. Customers experienced even longer wait times when it came to credit check outcomes. This bottleneck created pressure on the back office and call centre teams to assist with application errors, missing information, general queries and requests. Serious time investment was required to sort and match paperwork for invoicing and reconciliation, leading to further delays and high error rates. Bad debt and arrears were high with daily sales outstanding often falling outside agreed payment terms.
Altogether, these inefficiencies impacted Woolworths Group’s ability to deliver the commercial growth they were aiming for.
Woolworths Group’s key objectives in improving their accounts receivable process included:
- Implementing a straightforward, customer-centric solution for managing new customer applications.
- Conducting near-real-time credit checks.
- Enforcing best practices in credit control throughout the entire process.
- Automating dunning and credit management functions, seamlessly integrating with the ERP.
- Addressing complex business requirements such as in-store and online operations, customer cards, and personalised purchase orders.
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The solution
After a global search to find a solution to meet their needs, Woolworths Group chose Opypro.
Opypro delivered a single, cloud-based platform to manage customer onboarding and the full accounts receivable process.
Since launching in 2020, the Opypro team has collaborated closely with key stakeholders at Woolworths to understand and respond to their changing needs, enhancing the solution, and allowing Woolworths to add new banners and businesses onto the platform.
Business Buyers now access a dedicated 24/7 portal, offering:
- Full visibility of purchases, instore and online;
- Account management tasks including accessing invoices;
- Change requests to credit limit or users; and
- Ability to raise any queries or payment disputes.
These features resulted in a significant reduction in contact volume and time with Woolworths’ support teams and call centres. Response times to queries were greatly improved, now serviced in less than 24 hours, if not same day.
As a Supplier, the Woolworths team use the Opypro Admin Portal to view their entire B2B customer portfolio, Business Buyer spend, available balances, and aged debt. A three-to-five day payment reconciliation timeframe is now real-time delivering a great financial improvement.
Opypro functionality delivered to Woolworths Group
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The results
Woolworths won the AICM 2023 Credit Team of the Year Award!
Woolworths set out to achieve a clear set of objectives to drive efficiencies across their B2B accounts receivables process. Partnering with Opypro allowed them to meet their objectives and more.
A highlight for the Woolworths team includes winning the Australian Institute of Management (AICM) award for Group Credit Team of the Year (2023) for work undertaken to implement Opypro.
Opypro achieved these outcomes for Woolworths:
- Reduced customer onboarding time from one week to less than 24 hours, often achieving near-real-time validation.
- Automated invoicing and reconciliation, streamlining operations and significantly reducing manual effort.
- Provided customers with real-time access to account information through a self-service portal, enhancing transparency and satisfaction.
- Enhanced credit controls across the entire landscape.
- Reduced bad debt to less than 0.001%.
- Optimised resource allocation while growing the customer base and sales.
And above all, substantially improved the overall customer experience and staff morale.
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Woolworths Group runs better with Opypro.
Opypro delivered business efficiency, reduced costs, and improved customer experience and team morale. Here is what Teena Ryan, Credit Management Lead from Woolworths Group, had to say:
Opypro has revolutionised the customer onboarding and accounts receivable processes for our credit management team. Like many enterprises, Woolworths encountered hurdles with its manual, paper-based onboarding procedures and needed help managing growth effectively. Opypro presented a compelling solution: a fully customisable platform capable of delivering an industry-leading, end-to-end customer-centric solution seamlessly integrated with our existing systems. Customers overwhelmingly praised the system [and] the efficiencies gained and manual tasks eliminated by Opypro significantly boosted team morale. Since the initial proof of concept, the Opypro team has collaborated closely with key stakeholders to enhance the solution further as new customers with unique requirements come onboard. Opypro's success underscores the transformative potential of digital innovation in streamlining customer onboarding and accounts receivable processes. If you're seeking a similar transformation, I’m happy to share how our successes can be replicated to help your organisation achieve comparable results.
Teena Ryan Credit Management Lead for Woolworths Group
