A SharePoint solution offered everything needed at the lowest price
The company evaluated several solutions on the market. Two made it to the final round — a tailored Managed Documentation solution from Allium on Microsoft SharePoint (a platform already used for the company intranet) and a solution from a supplier of multifunction printing devices. After weighing all the circumstances, Pipelife Czech chose Allium's solution. The main reasons were a lower price combined with positive experience from an earlier intranet project. Allium is also a certified Microsoft partner for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, which guaranteed seamless integration with the corporate ERP.
The system covered all document management, including digitization and intake from email or ISDS
Allium Managed Documentation was fully integrated into the SharePoint intranet. It centrally manages all digitized and electronic documents, drives their processing (including hand-over, take-over, reassignment and disposal) and controls user access to individual documents based on job role. For selected document types (e.g. invoices), processing is driven by a predefined workflow configured to match internal directives; for other types, ad-hoc workflows can be used. Processing can be measured and the evaluation used to detect bottlenecks or specific approvers and to propose process improvements. Document digitization (mainly invoices) is handled by Konica Minolta multifunction devices and software that recognizes and extracts text from scanned documents and automatically stores the resulting PDF together with extracted metadata in Allium Managed Documentation. Documents received by email or as ISDS data messages are ingested by the central system's dedicated modules, which also automatically dispatch outgoing documents.
Beyond invoices, the system drives the flow of other documents, including key credit-limit requests
The new solution was gradually extended to cover three groups of documents. The first are the invoices mentioned above. Pipelife Czech processes several thousand invoices every month. Many suppliers offer discounts for early payment, which lets the company achieve savings when cashflow is balanced.
The second group is internal documentation — internal orders, directives, regulations and documents needed for ISO certification. These documents are created in electronic form inside the company. Allium's system delivers the required workflow, including, for example, linking holiday requests to shared calendars in Microsoft Exchange Server.
The third group is documents tied to internal controlling. This includes receivables and credit-limit management, which has a fairly complex workflow. For example, when a sales representative requests an increase in a customer's credit limit, they fill in a request in the system. The request is routed, among others, to the finance department, which analyzes the customer's rating and decides whether to approve the increase. Once approved, the change is propagated to the ERP immediately. The customer can then immediately place an order up to the new credit limit and goods are delivered right away (if in stock). At the same time the system provides real-time visibility into the request's status and allows escalations in case of delays.
The new system delivered smoother document flow and savings — and pays for itself within a few years
The delivered solution simplified and especially shortened document turnaround time, enabling fast access to documents and to up-to-date information about their processing status at any moment. As a result, employee productivity went up and error rates in document handling went down — saving time and money and allowing the company to respond better, more accurately and faster to customer requests. Faster invoice processing also lets the company take advantage of early-payment discounts when desired.
Direct integration with Microsoft Dynamics NAV makes employees' work easier, removes the need for manual rekeying of data between systems and, thanks to automatic data extraction, eliminates data-entry errors. Working with incoming and outgoing items from various sources (post, email, ISDS data box) has been unified and simplified. Pipelife Czech can now use electronic communication channels much more extensively. The company is also overall ready to handle much larger document volumes than before; thanks to time and other savings, the investment in the whole system pays for itself within five years at the latest.
Preparation for regular audits is more efficient too — any digitized document can be retrieved in the system in a few seconds, and any document can be worked with at any time and from anywhere. Previously this was only possible at the Otrokovice headquarters in the corresponding archive, where, for example, before each audit all relevant documents had to be located in paper form. On top of that, the electronic document flow guarantees that all relevant documents (especially invoices) are approved in line with the central directive requiring multi-level approval for certain document types.
