Hi folks, it has been too long!

Well enough with the chitchat, so as some readers might know we have implemented an ECM solution for our accounts payable process. I like to call this our personal ECM cloud. Most recently this has rolled out to our remote locations. So, what has this system gained us?

At first blush, many will often assume that the savings to be gained with imaging\ECM are in storage costs…. WRONG! If you ever implement a system to save on storage, you are doing it wrong!

One of the coolest things we are able to do is see what invoices are piling up on someones ‘virtual desk’  (This of course does rely on timely scanning into the system)

Using some Qlikview *’Magic*, we are to display the total invoices in the system by plant and analyze which are late ( in the queue longer than 7 days, adjustable by a slider) shown as red. Then we can click into a location, let’s pick on Chehalis.

Looking at this tab we can see there is one invoice that is late in the Plant Mgr. Review 1 queue, so lets click on that one and go to the Image Tab

So there is the image of our tardy invoice, hmm entered into the system on the 9th hmm why hasn’t this been approved yet? Let’s go talk to that manager.

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In conjunction with the queue management Qlikview, we have also created some *minion’s* i.e. little automated tasks that look at the queues and if they get too large, or too tardy, email the offending person(s).

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Another benefit that we have gained is the ability to spread out the load of data entry among many users. Typically, the AP person would have to memorize (or look up) thousands of different vendor numbers. Now, each individual can learn their 10-25 vendor numbers and enter them in, saving the AP person from having to do it. In addition, we added a quick look-up of the vendor name and address so the manager can double check they have the right vendor number.

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Since the process is digital, a manager is able to approve invoices from wherever they are able to get a VPN connection. That also goes for pulling up paid invoices too, of course.

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Did I mention that it scales well, instead of just one person processing invoices it could be 10, or 100.

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At the low end of the spectrum, yes we do save on storage costs, postage, and no longer having to file the invoices away.