Today we are interviewing Sophie ZICHE, Chief Financial Officer of the SALPA Group (Société Alsacienne de Participations Agro-alimentaires). Last spring, the group implemented the Docoon Invoice solution on behalf of its subsidiaries. Docoon Invoicesolution so that they can send electronic invoices to their customers. We talk to her about the implementation of the tool and what it brings to the SALPA Group.
Hello Sophie, could you briefly introduce the SALPA Group?Sophie ZICHE: SALPA is a group of industrial SMEs in the chocolate, tea, coffee, and hazelnut industries. The SALPA Group is notably the parent company of Comptoir Français du Thé. As a holding company, SALPA is responsible for administrative support functions (accounting, legal, HR, IT).
What was your initial problem? How did you do it before?S.Z.: The initial challenge was to digitize customer invoicing for all companies in the group, which previously involved printing and mailing invoices. We made this choice for obvious productivity gains, but also to reduce paper consumption and eliminate printing and mailing costs. We are also responding to strong demand from the market and our customers. Digitization is underway, and we couldn't afford to be left behind.
There is also an important point that motivated our decision. The digitization of invoices allows us to optimize low-value-added tasks, freeing up time for employees to focus on other matters.
What was your approach to finding the right tool?S.Z.: We issued a call for tenders based on specifications defined by the company's support and business functions. We then selected two or three service providers, which allowed us to refine our specifications and our needs based on the technical and functional solutions proposed by the service providers.
Why did you choose Docoon?S.Z.: There were several reasons why we chose Docoon. First of all, we were looking for a provider capable of interfacing with our current ERP system supplied by DIVALTO. Docoon, already a DIVALTO partner, offered us a solution that could be easily interfaced. Secondly, the solution proposed by Docoon— Docoon Invoice – allows us to manage the sending of electronic invoices with a single point of access for all SALPA Group companies, saving us time and enabling us to process a large volume of invoices. Finally, Docoon Invoice offers competitive value for money, including legal and secure archiving of invoices for 10 years. To sum up, I would say it is easy to use and offers good value for money in terms of the features it offers.
How did the deployment of the solution go?S.Z.: It always takes some time to adapt at the beginning to get to grips with the tool and adjust the various settings, which is common to all software implementations. In this regard, Docoon's support service was very responsive in answering our questions. We are in building a partnership with professional teams who have been able to assist us in the various stages of the project. Docoon will enable us to process 30,000 invoices annually.
Was an external partner involved in setting up the tool?S.Z.: No. We worked closely with Docoon, particularly to harmonize the necessary parameters for all SALPA Group companies, because, as I said, the multi-company management feature enabled by the platform is important to us.
We still need to make progress on the option of making invoices available on a customer portal. This is a plus, as it allows SALPA Group's corporate customers to find their invoices themselves, giving them greater autonomy. It saves time, as previously we had to search for invoices at our customers' request, reprint them, and send them back. As a result, we have improved the efficiency of our sales and distribution department in terms of invoice resending requests. The tool is user-friendly, intuitive, and transparent for sales and distribution users, requiring only a few hours of training.
Do you have any other digitization projects?S.Z.: Not at the moment. But it's quite clear that, depending on our needs, we won't hesitate to call on Docoon. It's reassuring to know that Docoon has obtained the certifications required to be PDP-registered ¹.
Thank you for granting us this interview, Sophie.
(1) Docoon has been granted temporary registration as a Partner Dematerialization Platform by the French Public Finance Directorate under number 19.
