Case Study: Ātihau-Whanganui x ApprovalMax

Ātihau-Whanganui x ApprovalMax

About Ātihau-Whanganui

Ātihau-Whanganui came to Business Sense to implement ApprovalMax in light of a change with their prior purchase approvals system

The farming organisation produces a range of premium foods and goods - created by letting nature lead. They are a values led organisation with a strategic purpose of toitū te whenua, toitū te tangata, toitū te mana (productive land, prosperous people, passionate customers)

To align with their Procurement Policy, the organisation needed to ensure that ApprovalMax was setup to give purchasing integrity, supported by appropriate audit trails. It needed to be clear and simple for

both the field team (farm managers) and head office team to be able to efficiently and correctly approve bills. There needed to be appropriate guardrails, checks and audits in place to ensure best practice governance

The company engaged Heidi Seal to implement ApprovalMax, review processes, give supporting documentation and training as well as ongoing support as needed. The project has been a phased approach, allowing a smooth transition to the platform, and a staged introduction of new processes and capabilities to the team.

Working with Heidi on implementing ApprovalMax

“Heidi took a structured approach, which staged the software transition in a way that felt very safe and measured for the team and the organisation. She is very informative and it was a pleasure working with her.”

“ApprovalMax has definitely saved a lot of time when it comes to Managers approving. They are now able to do so using their phones anywhere they like, whereas with the previous system we had in place they weren’t able to do so - it’s made everything so much more streamlined. As as this, for our finance manager being able to generate scheduled reports to keep the necessary controls and audit measures in line has been great.”

“Our team enjoyed working with Heidi - she is very thorough at explaining things, follows up quickly and always met our expectations”

Ātihau-Whanganui has achieved the following in their Changeover

  • Cloud rather than server based hosting of Procurement and Approvals

  • Automated approvals pathways based on position and $ value of bills (no more manual sending for approval)

  • Introduction of Approvalmax app to all managers and staff

  • Integration and tracking of Xero budgets against spend levels and visibility on approval workflows

  • Alignment of procurement policies with hands on process and systems

  • Automated multi-step approvals where necessary

  • Sales invoice approval also in place to automate the review and sign off

  • Audit reports automated and scheduled to ensure highest standard of compliance with the least amount of manual processing burden on the team

  • System is ready to implement full Purchase Order process on the roadmap

  • Team supported in full training and ongoing support to iron out every issue and question that arose in a timely manner

Heidi Seal