SupplyCart and YYC team up help Malaysian SMEs digitalise through accounting and procurement

• Partnership sees Supplycart digitalising YYC’s procurement
• YYC to help its SME clients to start digitalisation journey through accounting

SMEs and organisations today need to digitally transform their businesses. If anything, it’s good business – as we’ve reported previously, 58% of C-level executives in Malaysia say that their digital transformation initiatives are seeing measurable returns.

The thing with digitalising one’s business isn’t just about setting up an e-commerce page or having a social media strategy. It means digitalising every aspect of the business, and this includes areas like procurement and accounting.

On this part, accounting firm YYC Advisors and B2B e-procurement platform Supplycart have recently announced a partnership, wherein both organisations will help businesses – in particular SMEs – to digitalise their business processes.

It’s a partnership that mutually benefits both companies not just in the way they can cooperatively help businesses, but also with each other. The collaboration will see Supplycart come in as procurement advisors to organisations that approach YYC for their advisory and accountancy services, as a means to further improve their bottom line and processes.

On top of that Supplycart will also be able to support YYC on a procurement perspective, allowing YYC to digitalise the supplies procurement aspect of their organisation.

Finding synergy

YYC Advisors is an accountancy firm operating since 1974, and – according to its group executive chairman Yap Zhi Chau – has been at the forefront of adopting the latest technology not just in digitalising their own business, but also the organisations that approach them as well.

Supplycart, on the other hand, is a cloud-based procurement solution that helps organisations more transparently spend and obtain office supplies from various vendors. In Supplycart CEO and co-founder Jonathan Oh’s words, they “combine an enterprise solution together with a consumer-centric e-commerce experience into a single platform, allowing businesses to manage their procurement needs.”

Partnership between both companies make sense. “This is where the synergy comes in: the accounting side (of a business) is always about tracking where the money is going. Our procurement solution allows visibility on what’s being spent,” Oh tells Digital News Asia.

At the same time, Supplycart has integrated its e-procurement services with the Xero accounting software, of which YYC is a platinum partner with. In that way, clients engaging with YYC will also be able to more easily manage their procurement. 

“You’ll see a seamless flow from sourcing to procurement to pay recording and financial tracking,” Oh adds.

Part of Supplycart’s service isn’t just to help organisations more easily obtain supplies, but also in helping track and understand their expenditure. Oh says that company spending data on Supplycart is downloadable, with easy charts for them to understand.

And now, with integration with Xero, companies basically get their accountancy and procurement info within one screen rather than through multiple management solutions.

The need to digitalise

YYC’s Yap says that, today, it’s even important for organisations to know the latest financial information in real time – who is owing them money, how much they have in the bank, and how much they’re owing others.

“Traditionally, book keeping for SMEs is done once a year, or half a year. Seldom is there the discipline to do it monthly. This means that the financial information is not instant – companies always have to wait,” he says.

With cloud technology, however, Yap says that businesses now have up-to-date information at their fingertips. With smartphones, they can access their financial information everywhere and can make decisions faster and more efficient.

Oh agrees, adding that business traditionally do not have a lot of transparency of what’s happening within their organisation. Before digitalisation, business conducting procurement usually have to either visit vendors or have a database of contacts they can call, which makes it rather hard to track.

“Now, tech allows for transparent and seamless flow of business processes, and now businesses have visibility of their spending. With this, they can compare and consolidate their suppliers and digitalise them into a single platform,” Oh says. “With Supplycart, we have improved the bottom line and provide savings, as well as helping companies save time.”

This convenience can be a boon to businesses. Yap says that YYC has 18 branches across Malaysia. Having Supplycart as a procurement partner allows them to order their supplies from a single platform, which provides significant time saving. “That gives us more productivity.”

As for cost savings, Yap says that Supplycart has helped them gain around 13% in savings.

Going forward, Yap says they’re going to share more of their experiences of using Supplycart in order to help their clients get on board, on top of using Xero to allow organisations more effectively use their time for important business aspects.

He hopes that the partnership going forward will also include more awareness and education events and workshops so that people can understand how digitalising their businesses can help them become more efficient.

For Supplycart, Oh is looking to expand regionally, scaling beyond Malaysia and into Southeast Asia alongside YYC. “We see the synergy in working together with this expansion.”

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