DocuWare’s first annual Customer Appreciation Week is here! While we know July 19 is the next official Get to Know Your Customer Day, we couldn’t wait to show our appreciation – and why leave it to just one day? Each day this week, we will be honoring one customer. Visit our Modern Digital Business blog daily to read each DocuWare success story and see photos of the festivities. Follow all the celebrations on social media at #DocuWareCustomerWeek.
Jamestown needed a solution to store thousands of documents throughout their accounting departments as the space for physical documents was becoming too difficult to manage. For instance, one facility’s accounting department had 20-30 full file cabinets of packing slips and invoices, with even more paper piles stacked on top. After each customer shipment, the customer would take one paper copy of the proof of delivery and Jamestown would file away their own paper copy and then invoice the customer. When a customer called in to ask questions about their shipment details or invoice, the billing staff would then have to spend time manually pulling the relevant documents from the cabinets. As a first step towards alleviating this paper heavy process, Jamestown gave their truck drivers iPads to electronically capture customers’ signatures. This new software solution would then send an email to the customer with a digital proof of delivery. However, Jamestown still needed a copy of this email to file for their records as well.
Authorized DocuWare Partner Toshiba Business Solutions of Rochester, NY, the current supplier of Jamestown’s MFPs, introduced DocuWare to the IT team. After seeing the customization and flexibility of the solution, Jamestown agreed it made sense for their needs.
To be able to store a digital copy of the proof of delivery, Jamestown added themselves as a recipient of the email and Toshiba helped them implement DocuWare’s Connect to Mail solution. This allowed them to automatically index and store the digital proof of delivery right into DocuWare. They also integrated DocuWare with their accounting software to quickly retrieve related invoices. The full digitization of the delivery process streamlined the process within billing departments in multiple facilities and has saved time for these users while having a high confidence level of document retrieval. Document retrieval time has vastly been reduced – instead of manually searching filing cabinets, now it’s just clicks on the computer. This also led to improved customer service to due faster follow up times. Additionally, more than half of the physical file cabinets were removed and the freed up space has been remodeled into new office space.
“Reduced retrieval time is definitely the biggest benefit. We get customers that call up with questions about their invoice. That used to be a lengthy process with users having to dig through a file cabinet. Now while they are on the phone with them, they open up DocuWare in their web browser and boom – they find the relevant document. That’s the biggest bang for our buck for sure,” noted Jim Proefrock, Database Administrator and DocuWare Project Lead.
The use of Docuware began with a single need to remove the storage of signed proof of delivery documents and has expanded to many other processes involving invoices, production documents, manufacturing specifications, vendor purchase orders, vendor invoices, checks, and so forth. While it started in the accounting department, it’s now being used in customer service and in some sales and production processes. Jamestown also expanded its DocuWare use to many of the available features like workflows, Autoindex jobs, deletion workflows, back end SQL data captures, full Active Directory integration, internal file cabinet linking of documents, and more. Jamestown looks forward to keep expanding their DocuWare use.
DocuWare and Toshiba Business Solutions of Rochester, NY visited the Jamestown office and presented the team with their Customer Appreciation Week certificate and a tasty BBQ lunch.
To enjoy more DocuWare Customer Success stories this week, check out our extensive case study library: