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Case Study: Manufacturing

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Elit, a Romanian meat processor, handles over 4,000 delivery and invoice documents with a fully automatic DMS. Receivables are collected more quickly and outstanding amounts significantly reduced.

With over 1,800 employees and more than 15 years of experience, Elit is a heavyweight in the Romanian meat business and has recently become part of the global Smithfield Group. Every month the company produces several thousand tons of fresh meat and meat products. Elit supplies customers worldwide via various distribution centers.

The company‘s significant growth in recent years as a result of a broader product portfolio also led to an increase in daily deliveries on the logistics side. More than 4,000 delivery slips and outgoing invoices are created daily and sent together with the goods. The customer confirms receipt of the goods on these documents and then the signed papers are returned to the company. 

For the company's invoicing department, this process meant a lot of work. Before using a document management system (DMS), employees had to check each signed document individually and manually. Especially in disagreements, the manual approach was especially negative: sometimes several weeks passed before the money was received. In addition, a productivity test revealed that hundreds of invoices remained unpaid every month - resulting in a correspondingly large number of follow-ups and time wasted. Employees often had no choice but to hunt around for all the relevant paper invoices and delivery slips. In addition, documents were repeatedly lost or simply no longer traceable. For these reasons, Elit started looking for a solution to make receivables management more productive.

Country:
Romania
Industry:
Manufacturing
Department:
Accounting
Deployment:
Cloud

Overall, we were able to reduce the number of missing invoice returns by an incredible 97 percent and cut our accounts receivables accordingly. In the same period, our cash flow grew by the same amount.

Dan Buda
Sales Manager, Elit SRL, Alba Iulia (Romania)

Reducing errors to zero

Today, DocuWare Cloud digitally maps the entire workflow. As a first step, all delivery and invoice documents are captured with powerful scanners. DocuWare automatically recognizes which customer a document belongs to and stores the documents in the electronic file cabinet. This reduces human error and document loss to virtually zero. Employees can then access the documents via a simple user interface and enter various index terms – a full-text search is also available.

Thanks to the consistent use of the DMS, Elit was able to significantly reduce the processing time required for an invoice – outstanding accounts have also fallen significantly. In disputes, for example, the company immediately has the necessary proof ready in the form of documents. It is also very easy to determine which delivery notes or invoices never came back from a customer after delivery. The investigation of these outstanding invoices used to waste a ton of time.

Virtually eliminating missing returns

Overall, the number of missing invoice returns could be reduced by 97 percent - outstanding receivables decreased accordingly. Both of these factors have improved the company's cash flow. At the same time, sales staff are more motivated to speak with customers, thanks to improved communication between sales and accounting. Even today, invoices are sometimes not confirmed or returned during their process. But as opposed to the past, the company flags them within a few days and a customer is immediately approached about the matter. This helps both sides to avoid conflicts - and Elit gets its money earlier.

My salespeople are more motivated. We see improved communication between sales and accounting staff and they all talk to customers more often than they used to. This has also indirectly helped our receivables management.
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