ASICS’ mission is a straightforward one - make the best products possible for athletic performance. As a growing, multinational company that has stood the test of time and has been a staple in performance footwear, their Canadian division continues to keep up the pace by growing and expanding across Canada. With 2 new stores opened in 2018 and 3 more projected to open by the end of 2020, ASICS is only just getting started.
Paul Ljucovic, the Vice President of Finance of the North America division, found himself in a position similar to many medium-sized Canadian businesses: “There’s tons of companies in Canada that run [some kind] of P.O. system and it’s probably because owners don’t even realize that there is a better solution.”
Paul’s been an expert and a qualified voice in his industry for years, occupying similar positions with Adidas and Reebok in years prior. His latest quest to find a better way to do POs landed him on Procurify’s website, and within minutes, he’d booked a demo and was able to walk through the full scope of Procurify’s features, integrations and had a custom plan developed to onboard and transition their processes.
Vice President of Finance of the North America Division
Paul Ljucovic is CFO of Asics North America. He is a seasoned business professional with a background in Finance and Operations in both a Wholesale and Retail environment. Paul has a proven track record as an agent of change, challenging existing processes and implementing technology where it makes sense. When it came to purchasing at ASICS, Procurify was that technology.
Vice President of Finance of the North America Division
Paul’s tribulations with PO systems wasn’t necessarily a new challenge, either.
“My previous company was a $12 Million dollar company, and they had no PO system either. They had a dedicated full-time purchaser, and they had created their own sort of internal appeal process which was OK for 10 grand or whatever it cost them to implement. Compared to that system and process, Procurify is a bargain.”
Prior to the demo, Paul’s purchasing workflow was a manual, spreadsheet based process with no POs being generated. This meant that they had no pre-approval process in place to get any kind of read on their liabilities or budgeting. Instead, they’d have to wait until the invoice came back. For Paul, the waiting days are finally behind him.
“Procurify is a fantastic solution. I don’t know of any system out there that is that fast to implement, it’s a very, very easy process and it just does exactly what you want it to do, and it does it so well.
Paul’s enthusiasm for Procurify’s product stretched far beyond the PO feature.From his work in the Canadian retail/wholesale world, he’s identified one of the main strengths of the product: the ease of use for accountants and financial controllers.
“It definitely helps companies as it improves the quality of data as you get much better accruals. So, your financials are cleaner, it helps companies be more agile with their cash as they know what they’re committing to. Companies can control their spending and their cash commitments better and they can go into cash flow planning much more prepared.”
A large priority for ASICS was to rid themselves of the strenuous paper trails they’d been used to, largely because of how it would make the assembly line of budgeting, forecasting and accruals much more efficient.
“Procurify definitely saves your accounting team. If your accounts payable team is really overworked, Procurify would definitely save their time and empower them to be more accurate and efficient.”
In a study done by Fast Company, 63% of employers have remote workers and remote work is predicted to increase by 168% in the next decade. For growing and expanding multinational franchises like ASICS, having a product or service that can facilitate remote work with an accessible cloud-based platform and a streamlined mobile app is an added bonus.
“Adding Procurify into your purchasing workflow can definitely facilitate working from home or facilitate working from different offices or locations,” says Paul. “It’s tools like this that allow for the ability to be successful in as many offices as possible.”
Paul Ljucovic
Vice President of Finance, Asics, North America
Implementing effective financial controls today is a balance of agility and due diligence. The trick is to constantly be aware of your spend and your budgets, while also keeping an electronic trail of documents for anyone who volunteers to look at any given time.
“The other huge piece of Procurify is the ability to have all of your invoices available electronically so when you get audited, you know it’s not like, “Here’s a shoe box”. I could just give a government auditor access and they can go query the transaction they want to query and instantly see the actual invoice. That is awesome.”
Paul Ljucovic
Vice President of Finance, Asics, North America
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