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From Groundbreaking to Go-Live: How Clayco Built an AP Operation That Scales Like They Do

Key Results:

  • Average invoice processing turnaround of 19 hours and 15 minutes
  • Capture error rates consistently below 0.1% across every month
  • 75 concurrent users across the organization
  • 10+ years of continuous partnership, absorbing Clayco's growth without AP disruption
  • Ongoing automation expansion underway with new capabilities queued across multiple functional areas

Key Stats:

  • Industry: Full-service design-build and construction
  • Client since: 2014
  • ERP environment: JDE EnterpriseOne
  • Accounting model: Job Costing
  • Solution scope: ERP Integration, Invoice Processing Machine™, Automated Workflow

Executive Summary

Clayco is a full-service, turnkey real estate, architecture, engineering, design-build, and construction firm delivering complex projects across North America. Headquartered in St. Louis with offices from Chicago to Phoenix to Culver City, Clayco works across advanced manufacturing, data centers and mission-critical facilities, aviation, life sciences, food and beverage, distribution, and sports and entertainment. Its integrated delivery model brings real estate development, design, engineering, and construction under one roof, enabling it to take projects from concept to completion with a level of coordination few competitors can match.

That scale and operational complexity creates significant demands on the back office. Managing AP across a project-based construction environment means high invoice volume, intricate approval structures, subcontractor and vendor relationships at scale, and financial controls that have to keep pace with project execution. When Clayco partnered with DataServ in 2014, the goal was to build an AP operation capable of growing with the firm. More than a decade later, that is exactly what they have done.

Outcomes

A Partnership Built for Continuous Improvement
DataServ’s engagement with Clayco extends well beyond implementation. Annual Executive Value Reviews, proactive performance analysis, and ongoing strategic dialogue define how the two organizations work together. With a robust roadmap of capability expansions planned, the partnership shows no signs of slowing down. 

Capture Error Rates Held Near Zero
Across every month in the review period, capture error rates stayed consistently below 0.1%, giving Clayco’s AP team a clean, reliable data foundation for downstream matching, workflow routing, and payment scheduling.

A Workflow Built Around Construction’s Complexity
The Automated Workflow and Approval Matrix were configured to match Clayco’s project-based organizational structure, routing invoices to the right approvers based on defined business rules across a 75-user concurrent license environment. That configuration reflects the depth of adoption across the organization.

A Decade of Absorbed Growth
Over ten years on the platform, Clayco has processed substantial total document volume through DataServ, with the partnership absorbing the firm’s growth without disruption to AP operations. The solution has scaled alongside Clayco through significant expansion in project volume, headcount, and geographic reach. 

Business Impact

The story of Clayco’s AP automation success is ultimately a story about what a long-term partnership makes possible.

For a firm operating at Clayco’s pace and scale, reliable AP infrastructure is a competitive input. Subcontractor and vendor relationships depend on payment cycle performance. Project financial controls depend on data accuracy and visibility. Getting those things right at implementation is the starting point. Sustaining them through years of organizational growth, evolving project complexity, and expanding headcount is where the real value of a committed partnership shows up.

Clayco and DataServ have built that kind of relationship. More than ten years in, the conversation has moved well past system performance and into strategic automation planning, with a clear roadmap of capability expansion.

That’s what DataServ is built for: staying in it for the long term, growing alongside the client, and continuing to find where the next gains live.

Thoughts from Clayco

“We’ve been with DataServ for over a decade, and the relationship has kept pace with everything we’ve thrown at it. As Clayco has grown, the platform has grown with us. The partnership actively improves our operation year over year, and that sustained commitment is what keeps us coming back.”

Justin Lienemann, Chief Financial Officer, Clayco, Inc.