Hosted Offering Connects Locations And Saves Capital

When a dated imaging system could no longer meet the needs of a holding company's Accounts Payable (AP) Department, the company searched for a new system that would be able to support existing workflows as well as support a number of projects waiting to be implemented. A hosted offering was selected because it met those needs and offered the additional benefit of enabling the project to go forward without regard to the scheduled move of the company's data center.

This hosted offering is a completely outsourced SAS 70-certified data center that is redundant and secure. It is also SysTrust-certified and employs a multi-layered, state-of-the-art approach to security that incorporates high security firewalls, intrusion detection systems, encrypted passwords and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption during transmissions.

As a holding company providing capital, management and administrative resources, this company has two subsidiaries. These subsidiaries are leading providers of building products, manufactured building components and turnkey construction services to national, regional and local homebuilders and contractors. This holding company is dedicated to meeting the needs and exceeding the expectations of professional builders. In order to meet these goals, the company needed a way to connect its many disparate locations across the U.S.

The new hosted offering system needed to be able to meet present and future needs for geographically and technically diverse locations. The holding company also wanted to avoid as much custom coding as possible and still meet a large variety of local requirements. After determining a total of 188 requirements, the company began the Request for Information (RFI) process. After narrowing the field to two candidates, the holding company decided on an enterprise content management (ECM) suite from a document management company.

With core capabilities in document imaging, electronic document management, workflow, COLD/ERM and records management, the hosted offering solution was primarily chosen for the AP department. The Legal and Human Resources (HR) departments' needs were also considered during the RFI process as they were anxious to reap the benefits the AP department's legacy system had demonstrated.

The document management company was able to adapt the existing AP customizations to the hosted offering's environment quickly and even incorporate some new functionality. This hosted offering serves as a link among the company's multiple systems in use at various locations and administrative offices.

AP Solutions Matches Business Unite With Processes
In the AP department, reconciliation is challenging because invoices are received centrally at the holding company Administrative Service Center, while purchase orders (POs) are generated and stored at each individual location. Whether received as paper, through electronic data interchange (EDI), FTP data feed, fax or e-mail, invoices are imported into the hosted offering software.

Required keyword fields are then verified or entered into the custom workflow form. Many fields are pre-populated and all are validated. Saving the data not only saves the keywords in the software, but also prompts an import of all the invoice data into Oracle(R) Financials. This process enables the AP department to key once or not at all for both systems and ensures that the data being fed to Oracle is clean and issue-free.

A report listing all invoices keyed is published to the company's intranet daily. Images of the invoices are available through a simple click. Users across the holding company's locations use this online report to reconcile their POs with what was entered into Oracle. Should there be a discrepancy, the decentralized users can simply click a link and enter a request to change.

Training the users has been a relative non-issue for the holding company. Because they had been using an older imaging system and due to the intuitive the hosting offering software's interface, acclimating users to the system has taken only a few minutes. In fact, setting up Internet Explorer(R) (which requires only a few setting changes) has taken more time than user training. Because of the decision to use this offering, it is a simple matter for executives and managers who travel between locations to view documents.

In total, the AP department processes an average of 2,000 invoices per day, over 600,000 per year. This volume is handled by only 10 AP specialists who also perform many other tasks each day.

The hosting company also uses a purchasing card (pcard) workflow, which enables the locations to manage their own pcard transactions. All but two locations are using e-forms and the Web to handle these transactions. This information is also imported into Oracle and has eliminated the need for re-coding these charges. Pcard statements are scanned centrally in Boise and linked to the transactions to create an easy-to-follow audit trail.

Contact your local document management company for more information about their hosted offering and how your business can benefit from these services.