Easy transition

All workstations in the company’s Administration department were equipped with a second monitor. The Production department also received document scanners. DocuWare was integrated into the ERP system on their AS/400 via interface. This means that documents created in the ERP, such as invoices, delivery bills or order papers, are automatically archived in the central document pool using the print function.
In Sales, a cross-departmental workflow was set up for generating proposals. As soon as a customer inquiry arrives at the company's headquarters by phone or email, it is either recorded there in writing by an employee and stored in DocuWare or automatically indexed and filed via Connect to Outlook. The workflow is launched when a document is filed. At any time, Authorized Signatory, Odenwald has an overview of which offers are still open and at what value.

As a second step, a very complex workflow for order processing was installed, which starts with a customer's order. After being stored in the document pool, the order first goes to the Managing Director, who schedules the period for manufacturing the engine and determines the delivery time. Then the order is entered into the ERP system and all order documents are created. Then the order appears in the order placement task list. If the engine has already been manufactured once, this order is duplicated. Otherwise, the order has to go through the Design and Electrical Engineering departments again until an order card with all the specific information for the manufacturing department can be created and printed. A price check follows, after which the order confirmation is created and finally approved by Management. Only then is the order confirmation automatically sent by mail. At the same time, the Production department receives the information that it can start making the engine. As soon as the Production department reports that the engine is ready, the Shipping Office is given the task of preparing all documents for shipping. The invoice is printed in the ERP system and automatically sent by mail after a check. This marks the end of the workflow.

Completely paperless

For employees, their familiar way of working changed only marginally. To tackle tasks, all documents for a transaction are immediately available thanks to full text searches. This makes it easy to check where an order is currently located, who is working on it and in which department. This is also an advantage when a substitute has to fill in when a colleague is absent. Without having to search for a long time, substitutes can access all the necessary documents right from their own workstations.