Industry: Manufacturing
Annual Invoices: 100,000
Nimbello Customer Since: 2024
Website: ellwoodgroup.com
Ellwood Group Inc., a leader in steel and aluminum manufacturing, has been shaping industries like defense, aerospace, oil, and gas for over a century. With operations spread across 17 decentralized businesses, Ellwood’s mission is to provide high-quality products while embracing innovation at every turn.
However, as Ellwood’s Corporate Controller Kyle Werner explains, managing accounts payable (AP) across such a complex organization presented significant challenges. The traditional, manual AP processes were holding Ellwood back, and increasing delays, inefficiencies, and stacks of paper were growing more and more unsustainable.
To help move into the future, Ellwood turned to Nimbello, whose solution transformed their AP process and helped bring their financial operations into a new era of efficiency and control.
“We’ve been trying to push everything into the 21st century here, get rid of paper, unnecessary expenses, and we figured at this price point, it’s worth doing.”
– Kyle Werner, Corporate Controller
The Challenge: Inefficient AP Across Decentralized Divisions
With 17 separate business units, Ellwood’s AP operations are as varied as they are complex. Each division handles invoices differently, creating a web of inconsistencies and manual bottlenecks that stretches resources and slows down payments.
Ellwood’s AP operations are as varied as they are complex. But with each of their 17 business units managing invoices differently, inconsistencies and manual bottlenecks slowed down processing, approvals, and payments. Other challenges included:
Decentralized Approvals
In a manual system, approvals often depended on key staff being available. When employees were absent or traveling, invoices would sit unresolved, causing delays and putting the team at risk of late payments.
Manual Processes
Non-PO invoices required significant manual effort, and each business unit developed its own inconsistent methods for handling them. The lack of consistency across locations significantly slowed down approvals and processing times.
Storage & Archiving Issues
Processing nearly 100,000 invoices each year across 17 locations created major challenges for archiving and retrieving data. Storing paper documents was both costly and inefficient, especially when invoices needed to be located quickly.
Errors & Delays
Manual processes often resulted in processing errors and late payments, frustrating vendors and creating additional work for AP teams.
According to Kyle, these issues negatively impacted operations. “Before Nimbello, we struggled with delays and inefficiencies.”
Ellwood needed a solution that could centralize AP processing, reduce manual work, and support both every location and department across their organization. Enter: Nimbello.
A Game-Changing Solution: Why They Chose Nimbello
After evaluating several AP automation solutions, M&M set their sights on Nimbello. Their decision boiled down to three main factors:
Seamless Invoice Automation
Nimbello eliminates manual data entry by automatically pushing invoices into Syteline. Invoices are easily accessible to staff across corporate and divisional units, saving time and reducing errors.
Standardized Submission Process
By setting up a single email for all vendor invoices, Ellwood has centralized submissions and ensured invoices go directly into Nimbello’s system. This standardization reduces inconsistencies and enhances invoice tracking.
Three-Way Matching
Ellwood saves a lot of time, thanks to Nimbello’s three-way matching capabilities. By automatically reconciling purchase orders, invoices, and receipts, processes that previously required painstaking manual review are now more streamlined and efficient.
Enhanced Efficiency
With some locations processing thousands of invoices each week and others managing fewer than 50, Ellwood needed a flexible solution. Nimbello’s platform adapts to meet the unique needs of each business unit — all at a price point that meets Ellwood’s budgetary needs.
“At this price point, we couldn’t pass it up,” Kyle shares. “The implementation was smooth, and any issues were quickly resolved.”
“Before Nimbello, we struggled with delays and inefficiencies, but now, the AP process is smoother, and the reduction in paper handling has been a game changer.”
– Kyle Werner, Corporate Controller
The Results: A New Era of AP Efficiency
Nimbello’s AP automation solutions empower Ellwood’s teams to work smarter, not harder. With Nimbello up and running, Ellwood’s teams are empowered to work smarter, not harder. Rather than waste time on repetitive manual tasks, they can now focus on more strategic work — including boosting Ellwood’s bottom line.
Faster Approvals
Manual approvals have been replaced with automated workflows, significantly reducing processing times. Employees now receive electronic notifications to approve invoices, making the process move smoothly.
Consistency Across Units
By standardizing and automating AP processes, Ellwood saves valuable time and resources across all 17 of their business units. Employees are now able to focus more on high-value tasks instead of chasing down approvals or manually entering data.
Centralized Storage
Invoices, approval histories, and supporting documents are now stored in a centralized system. This makes it easy to locate any invoice, so issues can be quickly resolved and audits are handled with ease.
Savings & Scalability
Only a few months into using Nimbello, Ellwood has already seen reductions in paper usage and storage costs. And Nimbello’s scalable solution ensures Ellwood is well-prepared for future growth.
Happier Employees
With fewer delays, manual tasks, and frustrations, employees across Ellwood’s divisions are happy with the change.
“Everybody’s surprisingly great with it. Everybody loves it,” Werner shared, emphasizing how smoothly the team adopted the new system.
A Stronger, More Efficient Ellwood
For Ellwood, choosing Nimbello was about moving the company towards meaningful change. By centralizing, standardizing, and automating AP workflows, Kyle and his team now enjoy a streamlined process that works across the entire company — saving time, reducing costs, and supporting future growth.
Discover how Nimbello can help your organization streamline AP workflows, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Get started with Nimbello today!