University of Wollongong protects payments with ease

Overview

The University of Wollongong (UOW) traces its origins to 1951 and was founded on the donations of local people with a vision of a brighter future for their region. Since then, they’ve become one of the world’s top-ranked universities, working with industry, research partners, governments, and communities to address society’s critical economic, environmental, social and medical challenges.

Challenge

Before implementing Eftsure, Li says UOW still relied on manual supplier onboarding processes. Those included manual forms sent via email and endless back-and-forth calls with suppliers – activities that weren’t just tedious but also lacked end-to-end visibility. After managing to thwart a few fraudsters, the team at UOW decided they needed a safer, more efficient way to protect their organisation. It was time to digitise some of their controls and add an extra layer of security to their process.

Approach

With a supplier base of more than 6,000, change requests and new supplier onboardings are a daily occurrence at UOW. This means constant exposure to risk and a never-ending time sink for the Finance team.

The team decided to implement Eftsure to reduce the burden of being the final line of defence against fraudsters, along with increasing onboarding visibility and freeing up their time to work on more impactful tasks.

“I find the details in terms of the interaction between Eftsure and our suppliers very helpful. If campus users ask why an invoice hasn’t been paid, our AP team can go to Eftsure, check the interaction progress and know exactly where the supplier is at. All information in the Eftsure portal is updated in real-time”.

Li goes on to tell us that the software has already provided more benefits than she expected, including detailed reporting, an emergency verification hotline and comprehensive payment summaries. Eftsure’s easy-to-use knowledge base has been another key highlight for Li, making the software super easy to navigate and implement.

Results

After only three months of using Eftsure, Li and the rest of the team at UOW had already found huge time savings – not to mention a new peace of mind when onboarding and paying suppliers.

Since signing up with Eftsure, UOW have:

• Implemented the software rapidly. UOW was able to quickly integrate Eftsure’s platform into their existing payment and onboarding processes, allowing for a seamless transition and minimal disruption to their operations.
• Saved time. With Eftsure’s fraud verification analysts handling onboarding and change requests, they’ve saved at least two days of work among the team each week.
• Reduced Risk. Eftsure’s cross-checking function and verification process is helping to reduce the risk of fraud for UOW, providing an extra layer of security in their payment process.
• Increased Visibility. Management at UOW now have clear visibility of all supplier activity from end to end with Eftsure’s clear in-software history tracker.