The client’s individual departments were working in silos using vastly different systems for conducting business tasks, and collaboration was primarily conducted via email. Ensuring the most current version of each document was identifiable and accessible to all departments was an ongoing struggle, as most revisions were stored in local systems. The company’s original document management platform was designed as a monolithic solution that had become too brittle and complex to meet current business expectations. Moreover, their usage of SharePoint 2010 was alarmingly low, as there was no single point of entry for all business applications.

The solution involved Ephesoft Transact Smart Capture for the automated classification, separation and data extraction of incoming documents, both in paper and electronic format. ‘Search Classification’ is used to identify invoices and ‘KeyValues’. These automated database lookup queries assist in extracting metadata from the invoices and associated documents.

Most computer-generated invoices are automatically captured and extracted using OCR. Almost all the required elements, 23 data fields, are extracted from invoices. In rare cases of illegible documents, the software finds the location of key fields and presents them to an operator for fast and efficient manual assisted data entry.

The client initially processed approximately 15,000 invoices in the first year. Since implementing Ephesoft, the solution has increased to 21,000 invoices with no issues. Documents processed include invoices, purchase orders and other forms from suppliers: sales, design, planning, manufacturing and QA departments are all involved.

The new SharePoint/Ephesoft solution facilitates centralized document control through project-based collaboration. Ephesoft is a strategic component of the solution to quickly onboard these documents through automated classification, extraction and delivery of the documents and associated data directly into the SharePoint workflow and approval process. The documents are either scanned or imported TIFF/PDF files. This capture process is initiated from numerous locations throughout the global organization. The advantages of remote capture include cheaper distribution, faster access to the documents, reduced shipping costs and shorter processing times with fewer records lost, duplicated or misplaced.

A workflow-based, online approval process with separate streams helps handle PO and non-PO invoices, robust monitoring, reporting and auditing capabilities support optimization of the systems. The company facilitated centralized project document control and project-based collaboration by integrating the workflow of sales, design, planning, manufacturing and QA departments. A robust document approval process ensures organizational documents are dealt with via a transparent approval chain before being published/updated/deleted. This ensures availability of correct document versions during the entire project lifecycle with the support of an audit trail for all key documents. About 250 employees are currently utilizing the solution.

The invoice processing solution helped enable timely payments from customers and ensured attractive economics. Key benefits include:

• Reduced invoice processing time
• Improved invoice processing accuracy by 33%
• Faster document onboarding enabled timely payments and associative early payment discounts
• Improved control and visibility over accounts payable cash forecasting
• Faster identification of process bottlenecks
• Massive reductions in photocopying and document storage requirements

Using IONIT as a subject matter expert helped lower the cost of implementation. They provided a vast range of skills and profound knowledge of SharePoint, workflow automation, application development and integration, and project management. IONIT’s knowledge of business intelligence tools also enabled the successful delivery of complementary projects.

The client expects significant growth with business expected to be doubled over the next two years; they now have the right software in place to handle that growth for years to come.

“It’s very intuitive and easy to configure, and since less training is required, our customers love it. When needed, Ephesoft offers a very proactive and helpful support team.”

— Anshuman Nayak, Lead Systems Consultant at IONIT