WHSmith: Before Graphite, Vendor Validations Were the 'Wild West'
WH Smith is a global travel retailer with a growing North American footprint across airports and transportation hubs. Its North American Shared Services team — based in Las Vegas — owns vendor master data, accounts payable, travel and expense compliance, and the broader Procure-to-Pay (P2P) process for three operating entities.
Because WH Smith's airport locations are contractually required to stock products from local and regional vendors, the company onboards an unusually high volume of net-new suppliers — and keeps onboarding them as it opens new stores.
Before Graphite, vendor onboarding at WH Smith was 100% manual and lived in email. Business owners chased W9s, banking information, restricted-sourcing documents, and vendor compliance packages from suppliers, usually getting back incomplete or incorrect forms the first time. Shared Services then had to manually run TIN checks, verify banking details, and key each new vendor into two systems — Great Plains (ERP) and Aptos (merchandising) — by hand.
The result:
• At least 50% of the Shared Services manager's workweek was consumed by vendor setup.
• No consistency: formatting, documentation, and data hygiene varied person-to-person.
• Legacy vendor master data became a "hot mess" — the same supplier could appear up to 15 times across three company entities because procurement used vendor records as location stand-ins.
• And the big one: vendor fraud. WH Smith had been hit hard by a large fraud event — "5XL" in t-shirt-size terms — which helped spur the search for a real supplier management platform.
WH Smith Cuts Vendor Onboarding Time in Half with Graphite
WH Smith is a global travel retailer best known for its stores in airports and transportation hubs around the world. In North America, its Las Vegas–based Shared Services team manages vendor master data, accounts payable, and the full Procure-to-Pay (P2P) process across three operating entities — and they never stop onboarding suppliers. Because airport concession contracts require WH Smith to stock products from local and regional vendors wherever it operates, every new store means a fresh wave of new supplier setups.
For years, that wave crashed directly into one person's inbox.
The Challenge: A fully manual, email-driven vendor process
Before Graphite, everything ran through email. Business owners collected W9s, banking information, restricted-sourcing documents, and vendor compliance packages from suppliers — usually in multiple back-and-forth rounds because forms were incomplete or filled out incorrectly. The Shared Services team then manually verified TINs and banking details and keyed each vendor into two systems by hand: Great Plains for the ERP and Aptos for merchandising.
"Before Graphite, vendor onboarding at WH Smith was the wild west — no consistency, no documentation. We were still hunting for W9s on legacy suppliers."
— Terrie Phillips, Director of Shared Services, WH Smith
The cost was staggering: more than half of Kim Graham's workweek as Manager of Shared Services was consumed by vendor setup alone. Legacy vendor records had become a “hot mess”, with the same strategic suppliers — Core-Mark, Cisco and others — duplicated as many as 15 times across the company's three entities because procurement used vendor records as location stand-ins.
And then there was fraud. WH Smith had been hit hard by a large-scale vendor fraud event — the kind of event that forces an organization to rethink its controls from the ground up.
"It's just good business — knowing who your suppliers are, vetting them, reducing fraud. Graphite gives us that."
— Terrie Phillips, Director of Shared Services, WH Smith
The Solution: One workflow, three systems, automatic
WH Smith replaced its manual process with Graphite Connect's Supplier Onboarding and Supplier Information Management, connecting Graphite directly to Great Plains and Aptos so data flows automatically across all three systems. Every new vendor submits a single electronic onboarding package, Graphite validates the data, and the record moves downstream without Shared Services touching it twice.
Banking verification — historically one of the biggest fraud exposure points at WH Smith — is still reviewed by finance before any record hits the ERP, but now it sits inside a documented, auditable workflow instead of a pile of email attachments.
"Vendor management used to eat half my week. Now it's 25% or less — Graphite, Great Plains, and Aptos just flow automatically."
— Kim Graham, Manager of Shared Services, WH Smith
The Results
- Manager's vendor-management time cut in half — from >50% of the week to ≤25%.
- Three core systems now flowing automatically (Graphite → Great Plains → Aptos), eliminating duplicate manual entry.
- Tech-savvy suppliers complete onboarding in as little as 30 minutes through the Graphite portal.
- A documented, auditable trail for every vendor — a critical control against the kind of fraud WH Smith had experienced in the past.
- CEO-level mandate: every WH Smith supplier now goes through Graphite.
"You can't run vendor management on paper and manila envelopes anymore. Graphite puts every check, every approval, every signature in one auditable place."
— Terrie Phillips, Director of Shared Services, WH Smith
From skeptic to believer
Kim Graham was the Shared Services team member most resistant to the change. She knew the old process cold, even if it was brutal, and the implementation had its bumps. But the turnaround came fast.
"I was the biggest skeptic on the team. Within two or three weeks of going live, I trusted the system completely — it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do."
— Kim Graham, Manager of Shared Services, WH Smith
What's next
With onboarding under control, WH Smith is turning Graphite on the rest of its P2P transformation. Top of the list: cleaning up the legacy vendor master to kill duplicate records, layering in deeper compliance and risk questionnaires, and exploring Graphite for fresh-food certifications, licensing, and contract management. The team is also gearing up to roll out Graphite's new bank beneficiary verification to tighten fraud controls even further.
"Graphite has so much more functionality we haven't tapped yet — it can take us to the next level."
— Terrie Phillips, Director of Shared Services, WH Smith