A construction company customizes Center to simplify complex expense processing, delivering real-time visibility and enhanced ownership of budgets.
Center’s Customized Solution Delivers KHS&S Real-Time Visibility and Flexibility
As a leading specialty interior and exterior contractor, KHS&S West is transforming construction from a field-based industry to a sector where digital modeling, virtual project delivery, prefabrication, and lean manufacturing make innovation possible.
When JT Searles stepped into the Vice President of Finance role, he was excited to tackle the spend challenges facing KHS&S West. At nearly 1,400 transactions per month with zero visibility until reports were submitted, it’s unsurprising that finding a complete solution for expense management was a top priority.
“I remember asking, ‘What are we spending this month?’ Responses were, ‘We can’t answer because we don’t have visibility until everybody does their expense reports.’”—JT Searles, VP of Finance, KHS&S West
Before Center: A week per month lost to reconciliation
For KHS&S West, expense processing was exceedingly inefficient before Center. Between bank-issued cards, a separate app with annual fees, and a logging process that caused miscoded expenses, one finance employee was spending an entire week each month manually reconciling credit card receipts into the company’s ERP without a connected solution.
KHS&S West chooses Center for customization and flexibility
With previous experience using Sage and SAP Concur, Searles wanted more flexibility and the ability to create customized expense fields with a hierarchy of visibility rules that could map to their ERP.
He was intrigued by Center’s model, the ease at which KHS&S West could create and develop custom fields or visibility rules, and how the platform could solve expense pain points specific to the construction industry. “After diving in and seeing features and an enhancement roadmap that set Center ahead of the rest of the industry, I said, ‘How do you beat this very forward-thinking company with a no-cost solution?’”
The Results: Time Savings and Real-Time Visibility
With this implementation, the first class support at every step of the way felt more like an investment from Center into KHS&S West, to ensure they were delivering precisely what Searles and his company needed from their expense management solution—instead of the other way around.
From start to finish, it took just over a month to implement. Because the intuitively-designed Center platform was customized for KHS&S West, it was also straightforward to get up and running. “Besides getting people signed in, we didn’t get many other questions.”
“I’ve been very impressed with not only the upfront support but also the implementation, as well as the ongoing level of support and interaction I get with Center and our dedicated account manager.” —JT Searles, VP of Finance, KHS&S West
Center helps KHS&S West shorten close cycle from 30 to 5–7 days
Almost immediately after implementation, KHS&S West said “goodbye” to expense reports and shortened its cycle time from monthly to a week within the transaction window. Today, Searles has real-time visibility into transactions and accounting information, not to mention the overwhelmingly positive responses to using Center.
“Rather than guessing, users only access appropriate cost centers and designated GL codes or budgets for the jobs and can see in real-time what to do. It is good for efficiency, reduces errors and redundancy, and we’ve shortened our close cycle from 30 to 5–7 days.”
—JT Searles, VP of Finance, KHS&S West
Additionally, KHS&S West experienced the following:
- Real-time visibility is a game changer for better business results: KHS&S West leverages specific approval rules to better understand project and overhead budgets.
- Enhanced ownership of budgets: Expense management is dynamic. Center delivers stakeholders more control of their specific project budgets.
- 70% revenue growth without additional headcount: With Center, Searles’s finance team is more productive and has bandwidth to focus on strategic work instead of manual tasks.
- Post-deployment support that inspires: A first class service approach with a dedicated Center Account Manager—even after implementation and deployment—resonates deeply for Searles.
Overall, KHS&S West appreciates Center’s simple-to-use solution customized specifically for its business needs. Now, much like their streamlined expense management setup, KHS&S West is also leveraging Center Travel to help with policy enforcement to reduce transactional errors and ensure travel-related expenses are easily, accurately, and efficiently coded to the ERP.
Spend management that enables a better-built future.
Today, KHS&S West uses Center as a total spend management platform rather than just an expense management platform. Previously, these were all disjointed, manual processes for Searles and his team. “We’re always trying to figure out how to do things better—Center lets us do that with simple, easy-to-use solutions that allow us to get back to work and do what we love.”