Vivaco Groupe Coopératif case study: automated document management and approvals with Viridem

When a cooperative grows through mergers, documents multiply faster than the teams that process them. That is what Vivaco Groupe Coopératif experienced: more than 50 business locations, thousands of suppliers and a very high volume of invoices to approve, file and retrieve. By centralizing its documents and digitizing its approvals with Viridem, the cooperative sped up payment validation and made its entire network work as a single team.

The context: one cooperative, several trades, one network

Vivaco Groupe Coopératif serves farm producers through a cooperative model. Its network spans several trades at once: retail, on-farm service, gas stations and hardware stores. "It's very, very varied," sums up Philippe Martel, the organization's controller. Through its latest mergers, Vivaco passed 50 business locations and now works with thousands of suppliers.

That growth has a concrete downside: a very high volume of documents, mostly supplier invoices. Each invoice must be received, checked, approved by the right people, recorded, then archived so it can be found months later. Multiply that journey across dozens of sites and thousands of suppliers, and document management becomes a strategic issue, not a simple administrative task.

The starting point: archiving, then much more

At first, Vivaco was mainly looking for an archiving solution: digitize documents at the end of the process and retrieve them easily afterward. The goal, in Philippe Martel's words, was "to be more efficient in document management and in the approval process."

The surprise came from what Viridem offered beyond archiving.

"What surprised us and caught our attention was the whole approval and document flow, integrated digitally. Now that we're rolling it out, we're seeing gains we hadn't anticipated."

What the cooperative first saw as an archiving project became a true digital workflow, from invoice receipt all the way to payment.

The initial concern: robust enough?

With thousands of suppliers, a huge amount of documents and many people involved in approvals, Vivaco had a legitimate concern when assessing the project: finding a solution robust enough to handle a large number of documents, with no anomalies, no problems and no need for constant support.

The answer came through daily use, and even the cooperative's own internal tests:

"Viridem proved we could handle a large volume of documents, in workflows with many steps and real complexity. That's what made us choose Viridem to continue the project."

The Viridem solution

Viridem replaced paper circulation and manual filing with an end-to-end digital process, built for volume and multiple locations:

• Digital archiving and easy lookup: every document is captured, indexed and retrievable in seconds.
• Digital approvals: documents move without paper, following clear rules, to the right person.
• Work basket and email reminders: everyone sees what they have to handle, and nothing slips through.
• Full centralization: all documents live in a single solution, accessible remotely.
• Hosted in Canada, in the spirit of Quebec's Law 25.

What teams value day to day

On the ground, adoption comes down to very concrete details. Users value above all the ease of access and the email reminders that bring them back to their work basket to approve or process a document. Nothing lingers, nothing is forgotten.

Every day, Viridem lets Vivaco:

• Approve and process documents in the work basket, with email reminders.
• Group the process steps and validate payments in one place.
• Search and consult internal documentation in seconds.
• Give every location access to archived documents.

The approver's point of view

Philippe Martel sits at the end of the chain: he approves payments and signs cheques. For his role, Viridem is a game changer, grouping a long series of steps in one place and speeding up his validation.

When a document reaches the end of Viridem, I know it went through the steps it was supposed to, and that the people who had to approve it actually did.

The result: a series of questions he no longer has to ask. The document followed a flow set in advance, a required path, which cuts both the thinking and the processing time.

Less paper, faster searches

In a company this size, paper piles up fast. Viridem helps Vivaco cut it at scale and makes internal documentation easier to search. From the start, the cooperative noticed a difference in how easily and quickly it could find a document.

A network that works like one building

Above 50 locations, the real challenge isn't only volume: it's consistency. Every site has to follow the same steps and leave the same trail. By centralizing documents in a single solution and giving remote access to them, Viridem reproduces a situation that's easy to grasp.

"It lets people from different locations work as if they were in the same building, with access to the vault and archived documents, all at the same time."

A team that listens, responsive support

Beyond the software, Vivaco highlights its relationship with the Viridem team. Improvements follow user requests: when something is flagged, the request is analyzed and often delivers concrete results in very close releases. The cooperative feels heard and involved, and sees its ideas reflected in updates.

On support, accessibility stands out: responses that are often quick, near-instant follow-ups and clear timelines when a fix is needed.

"If they don't have the answer, they tell us right away."

What Vivaco first sought as an archiving tool became the digital backbone of its document management and approvals, across its entire network. And it is precisely Viridem's robustness, proven on high volume and complex flows, that convinced the cooperative to continue and expand the project.

Vivaco's story on video