DocuWare > Case Studies > Archiving Without Tears

Archiving Without Tears

Company Size

1,000+

Region

Europe

Country

Germany

Product

DocuWare
Virtual ReScan software
KV-S 6040 W Panasonic scanner

Tech Stack

AS/400 system
Barcode technology

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Apparel

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing
Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Supply Chain Visibility

Services

Data Science Services
System Integration

About The Customer

FALKE is a clothing company that has been in operation since 1981. The company has been storing its documents digitally since 1997. The company generates a thousand outgoing invoices each day, in paper form alone enough to fill an entire file. They are printed from COLD data. In addition to this there are 50 customer documents a day, 2,000 ledgers a month, 70,000 accounts lists a year, as well as 50,000 incoming invoices, 20,000 internal documents, and 15,000 payment documents for credit transfers or checks each year. This comes to an annual total of half a million documents, with retention periods of up to 10 years. A total of 50 employees in financial accounting, controlling, sales and distribution, purchasing, and returns need access to the archived documents. This figure includes employees at subsidiary plants. Outgoing invoices are created on an AS/400 system, but each department works with its own special applications.

The Challenge

FALKE, a clothing company, had been storing its documents digitally since 1997 with the help of a service provider. However, this process was not efficient as documents were unavailable for a week and customer enquiries had to be stalled. Access to data was not user-friendly and was not possible from workstations. Copies were therefore often stored locally in departmental and workstation archives. FALKE was also looking for a system that could be expanded over time, allowing foreign sales companies to be connected in stages, enabling direct access to documents from the individual departments’ applications, and the introduction of a workflow to optimize document processing times. The company generates a thousand outgoing invoices each day, in paper form alone enough to fill an entire file. They are printed from COLD data. In addition to this there are 50 customer documents a day, 2,000 ledgers a month, 70,000 accounts lists a year, as well as 50,000 incoming invoices, 20,000 internal documents, and 15,000 payment documents for credit transfers or checks each year. This comes to an annual total of half a million documents, with retention periods of up to 10 years.

The Solution

FALKE implemented DocuWare to store its documents in-house. All documents are archived in the central DocuWare document pool, where they are available for immediate access directly from the workstations of authorized employees. The next step will involve providing access via the Internet to employees at subsidiary plants or field sales employees. Outgoing invoices from the main plant are archived automatically as soon as they are printed from the AS/400 system. The indexing information is read directly from the data stream. They can be archived as COLD files, saving a great deal of space. Outgoing invoices from subsidiary plants are converted to TIFFs using a special print driver and then archived automatically. Incoming invoices and other paper documents are given a barcode containing the document or customer number in encoded format. After scanning, the barcode can be used to transfer indexing data from other programs; for example posting the indexing data and all other main data from the accounting software to the incoming invoice. The DocuWare-certified Virtual ReScan software from Kofax guarantees the perfect legibility of the documents.

Operational Impact

All documents belonging to a process can be called up simultaneously at the touch of a button; for example complaints documents for a customer and the associated credit notes.
The search process is significantly faster, in particular with regard to waiting times for documents which in the past were often still with the scanning company when customer queries arose.
FALKE employees can now provide an immediate response to customer enquiries, answering queries directly over the phone, rather than having to tell the customer that they’ll get back to them.
DocuWare is therefore helping them to fulfill the company’s philosophy of customer-oriented service.

Quantitative Benefit

The cost of the DocuWare implementation was amortized in just one year.
FALKE had to make a one-off investment of 35,000 euros in hardware and software.
In the past, the costs incurred by the previous procedure involving the service provider came to approximately the same amount.