Face to Face

There’s a satisfying sense of continuity in a visit to Documation’s Eastleigh offices. Occupying part of a former Victorian railway building and overlooking a bustling industrial landscape, the distance between The Industrial Revolution and the 4.0 version doesn’t seem so big. And with its recent headline hitting advances in the world of automation and robotics, it’s a journey that the Documation has embraced. So, I caught up with their CEO, John Wallace to find out more about the company and his thoughts on the future of purchase to pay. 

Q: So Invu was established back in 1997, tell me a bit about how the company has developed in that time

A: Well, it’s been quite a journey! Going back 20 years, the company was thought of as something of a rising star. Invu was at the vanguard of the “paperless office” as scanners arrived and turned paper into digital documents. But organisations soon discovered that didn’t mean that some of the issues associated with paper processing instantly went away. So there was need for electronic document management (EDM) to stop the paper chaos becoming digital chaos. Filing and storing documents is only a benefit if they can be quickly and reliably retrieved. Most people find it hard to be passionate about documents, but they can become extremely passionate about a particular document if they can’t find it!

Q: Forging a career out of Accounts Payable is not necessarily an obvious career path – what’s your journey been like?

A: Well, I’m lucky in that it’s been a journey that’s taken me down several different paths, each one connected to the last, but providing me with a pretty unique insight into lots of related functions such as supply chain, procurement, sales, credit control and fraud. It actually all started aged 17 on a YTS scheme where a position as an Accounts Office Junior exposed me to just about everything, but most of it was AP. Luckily for me, when the FD left – he took me with him. But it wasn’t until my job with Orange that I realised to be effective, you need to think of AP as a customer service and networking role within the business.

Q: So FISCAL has been in business for around 13 years. What’s the journey been like?

A: Well, it’s been incredibly fast-paced and over the last eight years in particular, we’ve grown tremendously – no mean feat when you consider how tumultuous those years have been for the global economy. But what’s seen us through is the strength of the product, passionate and superb staff and our commitment to our customers. And you know what - that’s a winning combination. Watching our brand presence grow from strength to strength is something which I’m very proud of.