Wondering how to grow a company in a global market? The key is to develop the company in all areas - even outside the core business. Welcome to the Eurocard Case. This time we are visiting Valmet.
During the 80s and 90s, Valmet streamlined and sold all non-paper related parts of the organization. And after stepping into the new millennium, as part of the Matso Group in 2015, they became reborn as Valmet Corporation. A company well prepared for a future in the pulp and paper industry, as well as energy and biomass technology.
The system needs to keep up
Today, Valmet supplies technology and service to industries that use biobased raw materials. It’s all about empowering their customers' business, thus helping them to evolve and improve. The company is active in five geographical areas with four different business lines. They have annual net sales of EUR 2.9 billion and more than 12,000 employees world wide. And while the company is growing - and becoming more global - the need for an expense management system that can grow with them is increasing. But investing in such a system is not the end of it. It is more a case of having a system that can handle ever changing prerequisutes, to keep up with company changes and needs.
In order to establish a solid expense management system that can be expanded and modified over time, Valmet has had a strategic collaboration with Eurocard since 2014. Both parties can agree that discussions have at times been tough – as a direct result of very straightforward and honest negotiations. But in the end, it has really paid off. What began as a Nordic solution, has in just one year become a European solution with many benefits; a common policy for corporate cards, centralized and digitized card management, and a daily transfer of the card transactions to Valmet's travel expense management system. Their employees have a uniform way of making workrelated purchases and thanks to automation and digitalisation, the number of individual invoices and manual handling is reduced - with great savings in both time and money.
Today, Valmet and Eurocard see each other as true business partners. They have defined a common goal: to create better business for their end customers, even though one of them manufactures heavy machinery – and the other offers highly specialized financial tools.
Valmet and Eurocard in short
- Valmet has more than 3,000 Eurocard corporate cards in 10 countries.
- Thanks to a Eurocard travel account, Valmet can gather all costs for business travel in a monthly invoice. This reduces the number of individual invoices - which in turn saves both time and money.
- A travel account also means an extended credit period for purchases from the travel agency.
- All purchases on cards and travel accounts are delivered digitally on a daily basis to Valmet's TEM (Travel Expense Management) system. This reduces the manual handling as the business travelers already have their expenses ready to enter into the expense report.
- The E-admin administration tool gives Valmet full control and overview of all cards.
- E-admin also ensures that Valmet can apply for and set purchase limits for cards.
- Valmet receives quarterly reports on their cards and travel account transactions.