Vendor & Disbursement Report Provides Key Areas Of Focus

CEO Tony Conant is at the helm of the American Rental Association (ARA), and its subsidiary entities. In his role as CEO, Tony works with the Board of Directors and his staff team to implement ARA’s strategic plan while building robust operational processes to support the growth of the rental industry and the association.

The ARA is the largest international trade association for owners of equipment and event rental operations and manufacturers and suppliers of rental equipment. The association began in 1955 and has 11,000 locations in the United States and Canada.

“We have a strong organization that is supporting a thriving industry as consumers, contractors and event planners continue to choose renting instead of buying equipment. Our vision for the future includes supporting our members by utilizing technology to increase operational performance and helping them transform business data into actionable insights. And that is where our journey with BerganKDV began.

We recognized that we had some process gaps when we paid two fraudulent invoices. Our financial auditor recommended we contact BerganKDV to help us take a deeper dive into where we had vulnerabilities. Specifically, we wanted a fresh look from a third party on how we were handling our invoice payment process.

I saw it as an educational opportunity and viewed the fees that we paid as a type of tuition to learn about improvement opportunities. And BerganKDV delivered. It was some of the best money we have spent.

Certified Fraud Examiner Michael Bösl and his team came in and performed an in-depth audit of our vendor database management and disbursement processes. They provided us with a straight-forward report that gave us actionable items in easily understood terminology. We knew at the completion of the audit what steps we needed to take action on right away and also things that we could improve over time.

The report showed us where we had discrepancies in our different systems and gave us the tools to identify and isolate any invoices that looked suspicious. Our employees are now trained using BerganKDV’s KnowBe4 software for email security best practices and we have a much more responsible approach to processing payments. We have all gained confidence in our information security practices.

Michael and his team told us what we could expect and kept us informed throughout the audit. I would highly recommend you go through the process on your own terms rather than trying to scramble after something goes wrong.”