Introduction

Volvo Financial Services (VFS) is a captive finance company and a core part of the Volvo Group, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of trucks, buses, construction equipment, and drive systems for marine and industrial applications.

With over 1,500 employees in 50+ markets, VFS offers financial services and solutions for Volvo Group products, and parts and service managing over one (1) million Business to Business (B2B) transactions a year.  

VFS has been a leader in B2B eCommerce for quite some time and has taken a proactive approach to eProcurement integration. After establishing a strong eCommerce presence, they partnered with TradeCentric to offer their customers best-in-class B2B Connected Commerce solutions, including Invoice Automation.

Challenge

From the mid-2010s onwards, VFS saw its customer expectations around B2B eCommerce shift and grow.

With digitalization, combined with the growth of integrated eProcurement platforms such as SAP Ariba and Coupa, an opportunity opened up to reduce friction throughout the B2B purchasing process.

As a result, VFS customers increasingly expected to leverage this integration capability between eCommerce storefronts and eProcurement/ERP solutions, particularly to reduce the overheads around invoice processing.

Most recently, one of its largest customers was implementing SAP Ariba and wanted to integrate it with VFS’ eCommerce system.

The customer was eager to move to a seamless integrated solution, but there were complexities in the shape of an expansive dealer network, multiple back-end systems, and limited capacity for data enhancement. For example, the inability to automatically add line reference numbers for invoices to match purchase orders which caused major challenges.  

In response to the customer’s need, VFS developed an in-house system to meet the immediate demand but found this kind of customized integration effort to be labor intensive, too slow to build, and challenging to scale and adapt for other customers.   

This view was reinforced as more customers started to ask for similar functionality across other eProcurement solutions. When the original SAP Ariba customer announced that they were migrating to a different eProcurement platform, VFS looked for a streamlined resource that would meet the customer’s needs as well as the needs of other customers.

The ability to quickly meet the needs of its customers in a competitive market would increasingly depend on its ability to integrate its system with the various platforms used by its customers, with an emphasis on invoicing. As a result, VFS needed a partner that specialized in B2B Connected Commerce, the strategic initiative that replaces one-to-one system connections with automated solutions to facilitate the seamless flow of purchasing data throughout the buying process.

Solution

VFS chose to work with TradeCentric, a business partner with deep expertise in the eCommerce and eProcurement space. This partnership allowed its teams to have more leverage and focus on strategic, value-add initiatives by automating manual tasks associated with invoicing.

After implementing TradeCentric’s tools, VFS was able to accommodate customer integration requests, work faster, and drastically reduce customer disputes, which has saved countless hours on invoice chasing, matching, and correction.

The partnership with TradeCentric also gave VFS the ability to pivot quickly and scale its B2B Connected Commerce capabilities to efficiently and effectively meet its customers’ needs and expectations.

“TradeCentric is a nimble platform that allows us to be flexible when our systems don’t allow it.”

Joey Wells
Director of Payment Solutions, Volvo Financial Services, USA

Result

VFS is dedicated to enriching its B2B Connected Commerce across the entire purchasing journey, from PunchOut to Invoice Automation and providing an exceptional experience for customers.

The TradeCentric Platform has helped VFS achieve:

• Increased sales growth 
• Decreased number of customer disputes 
• Countless hours of time saved 
• Greater supply chain transparency  

“We integrated a customer last year who does PunchOut, hosted catalogs, and Invoice Automation, and sales for them have increased noticeably year-over-year.”

Joey Wells
Director of Payment Solutions. Volvo Financial Services, USA