Questrade Financial Group is a mission-driven, Canadian, founder-owned and led company with a 25-year track record of helping Canadians become much more financially successful and secure.
Since its inception in 1999, Questrade Financial Group has expanded from Questrade – one of Canada’s most established, celebrated, and awarded online digital brokerages – into one of the most well-known private technology companies in Canada, with over $50 billion in assets under administration.
The challenges
With rapid growth, Questrade identified opportunities to streamline and optimize its procurement and AP processes.
“In the beginning, we weren’t necessarily sending purchase orders for every purchase,” admitted Parish. “Previously, when we created purchase orders or made any type of request, there were countless emails before we even reached the requisition stage.”
Parish added: “We were looking for simplicity.” It was important for Questrade to be strategic and efficient with its own budgets and financial processes. Parish and the finance team at Questrade had identified several key challenges in their procurement and accounts payable workflows.
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Lack of spend visibility:
Opportunity for enhanced spend tracking: Tracking and approving spending presented challenges due to varied financial processes.
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Disorganized communication:
Communication enhancement needed: Internal correspondence for invoices and purchase orders primarily occurred via email, which sometimes created delays in locating and verifying transaction details.
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Usability requirements:
Procurement leaders and support staff needed an intuitive and easy-to-learn interface that would allow them to create reports and procure products and services seamlessly.
As Questrade continued to scale and add business units, they needed a procurement platform that could keep up with their growth and be intuitive enough for a seamless change management process.
“Some of these acquisitions come with more cost centers. We’ve needed to set up new domains and easily add users,” said Parish.
The solution
The decision to modernize its procurement and AP strategy was easy for Questrade. They chose Procurify’s AI-powered procure-to-pay platform to simplify and elevate their spend management strategy. And, they wasted no time with the change management process.
“When we embarked on our journey with implementing Procurify, we did it very quickly,” said Parish, adding that Procurify’s customer success team helped get the platform up and running in one week. “We were up against our other contract ending, and so we had a very small window.”
Procurify provided Questrade finance leaders with immediate visibility on POs and approvals. Parish said that purchasers and approvers within the company no longer need to “sift through emails.”
Fast forward to today, here’s how Questrade is benefiting from Procurify:
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Adoption and user experience:
Procurify’s easy-to-use interface and budgeting functionality made the change management and adoption process simple for Questrade employees tasked with procuring and approving purchases.
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Enhanced accountability and spend control:
Procurify helped Questrade centralize our spend with a structured purchase approval workflow, ensuring purchase orders and invoices are tracked. Improved spend visibility helps ensure budget accountability for spenders and approvers.
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Real-time spend visibility:
Procurify’s intuitive and comprehensive dashboard provides real-time spend visibility for the Questrade team. The audit logs help key stakeholders know where approvals sit and whether further action is required.
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Streamlined workflows through AP automation:
Procurify’s bill payments feature allows Questrade to submit bills through the purchase approval workflows—a process that also helped Curtin Maritime reduce duplicate invoices and gain tighter control over project-based spending. Automated three-way matching ensures that invoices and POs match, improving cohesion between Questrade’s AP and procurement departments.
In short: Procurify has empowered Questrade with unparalleled spend visibility and control.
With rapid growth, Questrade identified opportunities to streamline and optimize its procurement and AP processes, enhancing spend visibility and control. Procurify’s platform provided a centralized solution, simplifying information access and improving the efficiency of financial processes.
Takeaways
Leveraging Procurify’s end-to-end procure-to-pay software—including its robust AP automation features—Questrade’s finance team successfully controlled costs by:
- Provided key stakeholders with real-time spend visibility
- Building a proactive and accountable spend culture
- Improving communication by centralizing their correspondence
- Controlling spend with robust digital approval processes
- Encouraging adoption with user-friendly AP and procurement tools
Implementing Procurify provided enhanced cost control. “I don’t really know how other companies can function without a procurement system.” – Elizabeth Parish, Director of the Enterprise Vendor Management Office, Questrade Financial Group.
