Saved Time and Higher Quality in Processing of Received Invoices

When the company opened its second manufacturing site in 2009, Pipelife management faced new challenges in the increased amount of paper documents that needed processing, especially those that required approval from employees at different sites. Because of the need to optimize the three-level approval process for the several thousand invoices received monthly, a decision was made to implement an electronic document management
system with automated workflows.

Allium implemented a document management system that enables a unified receipt of all shipment types. When company emails are received automatically by the system, the mail is scanned and digitalized documents are saved in the system together with their metadata, which is extracted using zone OCR functions. The processing of main document types is controlled by workflows, which ensure the process flows in a structured and standardized manner. The system can also send users email notifications or escalate a potential problem in case of inactivity. The workflow which controls the processing of received invoices creates a new invoice header in the ERP system and exchanges other related information with the ERP during certain workflow states. The resulting system contains a central register of all company documents, provides fast
search functions, and handles the receiving and dispatching of all shipment types as well as input document digitalization.

The implemented solution resolved the issue of multiple sites. The centralized DMS allowed users to access the documents quickly and easily, with appropriate user rights management, as well as streamline all approval processes. However, the main benefit comes from the seamless integration between DMS workflows and the ERP systems, which dramatically reduces workload and eliminates the need to store the same data in multiple systems. As the workflow history is stored in a database, Pipelife gained a valuable source for detecting processes' bottlenecks and subsequent process optimization.

The solution is based on Allium Document Management for SharePoint, and has been implemented as an integral part of the company‘s intranet. The product contains a central register of documents, along with a document processing platform and archive. It contains modules for receiving and registering mail from various channels‘ email, post and scanners, as well as modules for sending outgoing mail. The product also includes a workflow engine and an easy-to-use visual workflow designer which allows users to manage document processing in a controlled manner.