BrightView Health Supports Rapid Business Growth With MineralTree AP Automation

Addresses growing pains in finance and accounts payable processes to support patient treatment goals

MineralTree, an Accounts Payable (AP) and payment automation solution provider, today announced the successful deployment of its solution at BrightView Health. By automating its end-to-end AP process, the outpatient addiction treatment program has been able to support a more than 3X increase in the number of invoices resulting from its rapid business growth without adding AP headcount.

“BrightView understood the impact its growth and success would have on its back-office and took action to solve it before it hurt the business,” said Vijay Ramnathan, President of MineralTree. “AP automation has helped save time, increase efficiency, and even generate new revenues. But most importantly, it supported BrightView’s growth.

“We grew from four programs to more than 30 and from 3,000 invoices a year to more than 10,000—all in just two short years and without expanding our team,” said Matt Santell, Controller at BrightView. “There is no chance that we could do all of this without AP automation.”

Manual AP Process Threatened Business Growth
BrightView’s rapid growth aligned with its corporate goal—to help as many patients as possible—but it also surfaced a few growing pains along the way, including with its finance and accounts payable processes.

When Santell joined BrightView in 2018, he redesigned the accounting structure from the ground up to support the company’s rapid growth. His first priority was to move the company’s ERP system to the cloud by implementing Sage Intacct. With that financial backbone in place, Santell set his sights on improving BrightView’s Accounts Payable (AP) process.

“When I joined BrightView, our AP process was completely manual,” Santell explained. “We relied on a batch process where one employee manually entered invoice data, compiled 10-30 invoices into a single PDF, and then updated a spreadsheet to help find a specific invoice in those huge files.”

At that time, approximately 65-80% of BrightView’s invoices were still being delivered by mail. This meant someone had to scan them and manually enter line-level detail into the accounting system, an effort that Santell estimated took between five and seven minutes per invoice. The approval process was challenging, too. Invoices were emailed to managers at various programs, which was timing consuming and could lead to delays or missed payments. Santell knew it was not sustainable. “In order to scale the business, I knew we needed an automated AP solution.”Selecting an AP Automation Solution

Santell had two top priorities for the AP automation solution: The first was ease of use. He wanted it to be easy for field-based doctors, nurses, operations directors, and other employees to app

rove invoices in the system. The second was easy integration with his new Sage Intacct ERP system. Santell had previous experience with AP automation solutions and selected MineralTree based on its ability to meet these criteria while automating the entire end-to-end AP process from invoice receipt through payment.

With the solution in place, the Brightview team has embraced a more automated approach to invoice management and approvals. MineralTree’s invoice capture capability uses optical character recognition (OCR) in conjunction with human review to accurately capture important data from each invoice, even those with many different line items.

The invoice capture and AP automation functionality have helped Erik Arwood, BrightView’s AP Accountant significantly reduce the time he used to spend on quality assurance—and more time on the invoices themselves. “Thanks to the efficiency gained, I can process approximately 150 invoices per day,” he said. “The system is also very good at catching duplicate information, which saves me time and eliminates headaches from dealing with issues.”

A Payables Process Measured in Minutes
Today, BrightView’s entire AP process is much faster— “mere minutes,” according to Santell.
“All of the invoice data is in one place, so we don’t have to look for it anymore,” he said. “We have a standing meeting with the CFO to review each week’s payables. It’s so easy to review and this new approach has improved our ability to do long-term planning.”

Not only does this help the speed of each week’s AP run and improve employees’ productivity, but it has also streamlined the effort related to BrightView’s audits. “We used the solution to prepare for our most recent audit and it probably only took 20-30 minutes,” said Santell. “This would have taken us several hours in the past.”

Virtual Cards Deliver Valuable Rebates
A key component of BrightView’s payment mix is SilverPay, MineralTree’s virtual card payment option. Using SilverPay, BrightView earns cash-back rebates for making virtual card payments. “We were making these payments anyway, so the fact that SilverPay helps us generate a new revenue stream from them is a huge win. It’s been great for the accounting team to show that we’re not just a cost center—now we’re able to contribute to the company’s financial success, too.”

Another benefit of SilverPay is much better control over outgoing cash. Santell is able precisely time payments to hold onto cash as long as possible while still paying suppliers within their terms. In fact, Santell notes that many suppliers have been willing to accept the virtual card option in order to get paid faster.

About BrightView Health
With programs in Ohio and Kentucky, BrightView helps patients access effective treatment and support without uprooting their entire life or livelihood. The organization is committed to delivering effective addiction treatment that gives patients a chance to recover in a place where they are welcomed, encouraged, and respected. It personalizes its treatment programs to each individual patient and treats both the disease of addiction and the person suffering from it. For more information, visit https://www.brightviewhealth.com/.

About MineralTree
MineralTree provides modern, secure, easy-to-use Accounts Payable (AP) and payment automation solutions to organizations that have a painful number of invoices and payments. By uniting technology and passionate people, we make the process of business payments easy, impactful, and profitable. Our solutions combine ease of use with robust capabilities that drive meaningful insights, transforming the back office into a strategic partner of the corner office. Making you proud of your back office is our purpose. For more information, visit https://www.mineraltree.com/.