Mutuaide Assistance, the subsidiary of Groupama providing general assistance services, has chosen electronic invoicing and paperless financial flow specialists Accelya to dematerialise its 400,000 supplier invoices: much more than just an electronic invoicing project, it has become a veritable corporate project, an integral part of its overall strategy, and a growth lever.
A wholly owned subsidiary of Groupama, Mutuaide Assistance performs all activities in the field of assistance, and has acquired considerable experience in assistance since its creation in 1981. With 450 employees and two assistance centres, one in Paris and one in Nantes, Mutuaide Assistance describes itself as a small company among big ones, or a big company among little ones. Over the last few years it has provided assistance for exceptional events, like the main cycling races and the biggest rallies, and it provides services for most tour operators under their own brands.
On the very competitive assistance market, Mutuaide Assistance has started out in an economic race and must monitor the market and its new developments very closely… Electronic invoicing, therefore, appeared to be an obvious step, as underlined by the Managing Director of Mutuaide Assistance Nicolas Gusdorf:
“The strategy consisted in remaining competitive to ensure the company’s future, and, therefore, using different levers to reduce costs. Electronic invoicing quite naturally appeared as one of these levers. There were two objectives: firstly, we wanted to influence our costs and margins; and secondly – Mutuaide Assistance being a socially responsible company – we wanted to reduce our carbon footprint and to generate less paper, but above all, in terms of people, we wanted to offer our account executives higher value-added tasks.”
The electronic invoicing project dates back to early 2010 and concerns 400,000 supplier invoices per year. The company was able to implement the first action quickly with a car rental firm, and the project was rolled out in only five months, from May to September 2010. Mutuaide Assistance is currently targeting its key accounts and main suppliers in this first phase of rolling out the project in structured flows of invoice data.
Short-term objectives: 50,000 tax-compliant electronic invoices in 2011, and 100,000 in 2012.
The project is focused initially on France, before being rolled out to other European countries as of 2012, while, little by little, integrating smaller service providers, like breakdown companies, human services companies, etc.
Quality, cost control and dematerialisation will then be included in the selection criteria for suppliers and service providers.
With strong growth – 13% for the assistance market and 16% for Mutuaide Assistance – the number of cases opened is growing all the time, so are the human resources requirements… and the company can already measure the benefits of the project:
“In a context of strong growth, this project has enabled us to manage our personnel better, and above all to enable them to move on to higher value-added, computer-based tasks such as managing service providers and suppliers, updating cases in real-time, negotiations, etc.” comments Mutuaide Assistance General Secretary Romain Tanguy.
“Dematerialisation absolutely has its place in the company’s overall strategy: finding time for higher value-added tasks, using computer-based tools to manage time more effectively, and working on digitization and electronic document management (EDM).”
Indeed, the group is very committed to the concept of “zero paper”; Mutuaide Assistance is carrying out major digitization projects and implementing internal IT solutions in order to further concentrate on its core business.
Cláudia Wada on