About EPI Industries Family of Companies
EPI Industries Family of Companies is a family holding founded in 1953, specialized in the distribution and sale of products and services for the industrial sector. With more than 70 years of history, the company has grown to manage a group of companies, delegations and workplaces in Spain, Europe and America.
Currently, EPI Industries Generate an annual turnover of 51 million euros and employs more than 300 people. By managing a diverse group of companies with operations in different markets and contexts, each company within the holding company has its own working practices and peculiarities.
La complexity of managing supplies in a holding company with multiple branches was the starting point for Irene Noguera and Alba Porta, from the administration and accounting team at EPI Industries, to share their experience with us. In this video, they explain how the service of Polaroo has helped them to improve their daily work: centralizing data, optimizing processes and moving towards sustainability.
Click play and discover their first-hand testimony. If you prefer to read the details, below we'll tell you how our collaboration has allowed them to overcome these challenges and significantly improve their supply management.
The challenge
With the growth of the holding, EPI Industries Family of Companies began to face difficulties to manage and monitor the consumption and cost of supplies of its multiple delegations and workplaces. Each centre operated with different providers of basic services (electricity, water, gas), which it involved endless bills and payments which should be properly organized and allocated.
“As you have a lot of delegations and workplaces, the problem is created for you. At first you don't see the problem. You have a workplace with a company, the light with this company, then in Portugal with another company, in southern Spain with another marketer. At first, you control it, but once you grow and grow, you start to put all the work together: Oh, I haven't received this bill, I haven't received my bill for electricity, or water, or gas, or whatever... So to centralize it and especially to get information about your consumption, which is the most important thing, it was a big problem and super difficult”, Irene Noguera, Executive Assistant, from the administration department
As the number of workplaces increased, the situation became unsustainable: identifying specific bills and relating them to bank charges became a task that could consume hours, or even days. In addition, each consultation or administrative change involved contacting multiple vendors, slowing down the process.
“In the end you receive charges at the bank and the difficulty is to know what bill it corresponds to. Something as simple and basic as this, such as finding the invoice, often turns into a morning”, Alba Porta, Facilities Manager, from the accounting department
Not only did this lack of centralization create confusion and waste of time, but complicated access to detailed consumption data, a crucial need for their efforts on sustainability and efficiency issues as well. The EPI administration team needed a solution capable of simplifying supply management and optimizing the obtaining of strategic consumer information.
“In my case, I work a lot on the subject of sustainability and carbon footprint. It is It is essential to know the exact consumption of cubic meters of water and kW of electricity. To have this information, compared now in 2024 to how we did it in 2021, it's like from the cave age to artificial intelligence. Because three years ago we had to bill the cubic meters and for each center. It could have been days, and now it's good, it's enough to ask a couple of questions and in less than five minutes we have the answer that I can use for the carbon footprint,” Irene, from the administration department, continues to tell us
The solution
After starting to work with the service we provide in Polaroo for basic supply management, EPI Industries Family of Companies has been able to centralize and simplify the management of its multiple service accounts and consumer centres.
With Polaroo, the EPI team has achieved access all consumption and cost information in one place, regardless of the supplier or the location of the centre.
Alba, from the accounting department, also talks about the difficulty of knowing the real consumption of each centre and adds: “And not just consumption, but knowing almost what we are paying for this consumption. Having it centralized is the key to accessing data.”
In addition, Irene emphasizes the working time involved in communicating with the different suppliers of basic supplies in a building: “Contact with them, with each supply company, can waste a morning or three days. Now, when you do it, we only get the information we want. How much we have paid for electricity or water, in that country or province or community, what marketer we are with and how much we have consumed, what can we do to improve...”
The platform offers EPI the detailed visibility of your consumption by centre, region or country, as well as a direct communication structure which reduces the time needed to resolve doubts or make administrative adjustments, such as the incorporation of new centres or changes of ownership.
“It gives me a lot of peace of mind to think that there is someone behind it, and if there is a peak of consumption, they will adapt. That if I have a charge at the bank, I can immediately ask and clarify the same morning to know what it is due to,” says Alba, from the accounting department
In addition, the team of experts at Polaroo is responsible for the procedures with the marketing companies, which has allowed EPI to free your administrative team from monitoring and troubleshooting tasks which, previously, required management days.
With the Polaroo platform, we also provide them with detailed reports on water, electricity and gas consumption, providing EPI's sustainability team with analysis and comparison of historical data to calculate the carbon footprint and optimize the use of resources.
The results
By offering a comprehensive service, which combines the support of the team of experts together with the technology we developed in the basic supply management platform for multiple properties, this collaboration has allowed EPI Industries Family of Companies to see a significant change in its administrative and operational management. Since we started working together, they have been digitized. More than 1,000 invoices for automated management, What has led them to save more than 200 hours of manual work and managements.
This significant change is summarized in the following four points:
- Reduction of management time: Identifying and assigning invoices to bank charges is now a simple and quick task. What used to take a full morning can now be solved in a matter of minutes, optimizing the time of the administrative team.
- Centralization and immediate management of data: Thanks to the centralization of data, EPI now has immediate access to detailed information on its consumption and costs, allowing a complete view of each centre and the holding company as a whole. Not only does this improve financial transparency, but it also allows managers to make informed decisions regarding sustainability and efficiency.
- Ease in managing sustainability: On the subject of sustainability and the carbon footprint, the ability to obtain accurate consumption data in terms of cubic meters of water and kW of electricity has transformed his work. Automating these reports allows them to calculate their carbon footprint accurately and quickly, with reliable data that previously took days to collect manually.
- Personalized and agile attention: The EPI team highlights the accessibility and speed of the support service of the Account Managers assigned by Polaroo for their specific case, providing solutions and resolving the issues that arise. With direct and proactive contact, any change or adjustment is managed immediately, without the need to coordinate with several partners.
By implementing the Polaroo platform, EPI Industries Family of Companies has gained in efficiency, control and sustainability, being able to focus on their core business while relying on a comprehensive solution for managing their basic supplies. As Alba, from the EPI team, comments: “What is sometimes a problem for us, not for Polaroo”.