Headquartered in Texas, Culinaire operates in 17 states and employs 1,800-2,000 people.

Culinaire’s central accounting office had to manage large volumes of paper documents. Each remote location sent weekly FedEx package with copies of accounts receivable and accounts payable documents. The company recognized their workflow was inefficient and began looking for ways to reduce their paper flow. After evaluating outsourcing accounting options and basic digital document repositories, Culinaire realized that they needed a more robust solution that had search functionality, optical character recognition (OCR), digital workflow, and the ability to automate indexing and eliminate paper files.

Culinaire chose DocuWare Cloud because of its functionality, flexibility, ease-of-use and affordability.

O’Brien traveled to each location to set up a pre-programmed Scanmate i1150 Kodak scanner and train employees. Remote employees log into Culinaire’s accounting portal daily, input all the sales from each day, and then print a report. The report is used as a cover page for a batch of “back-up” documents that are then scanned using a pre-programmed scan option that corresponds to an import job for each document type. The scan job is saved to a local folder and the remote employee can move on to other tasks. A desktop app works in the background to monitor the folder and upload and import the documents into the AR cabinet with all the fields already indexed. The corporate office reviews the information and posts it to the accounting system.

Limited data entry, automated indexing and uploading have improved the flow of information

Today, FedEx packages and fees are a thing of the past! The visibility of information changed dramatically for the accounting office - instead of waiting one week, sales documents can now be viewed that same day. Digital transparency helps the accounting staff get documents through the approval and closing processes, avoiding information bottlenecks. DocuWare helped Culinaire reduce its costs, achieving a faster Return on Investment.

Seeing the benefits in their accounting department motivated the HR deprtment to use DocuWare

The company is finetuning this application and rolled out an on-boarding process using DocuWare Forms with the goal of simplifying the process for new hires and current staff. The company file room now has only empty cabinets and can be repurposed into offices or another flexible space!