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Case Study: Retail / Wholesale

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Fast order processing has always been key to the success of family-owned G. Frey Plumbing Services. Today, a cloud-based DMS paves the way into the future with optimized workflows and legally compliant archiving.

G. Frey Plumbing Services has built a strong reputation over many years: its customers appreciate the company’s reliability and quick response as well as the quality of its installations. Specialized in bathroom renovations, the company employs a total of twelve people. A document management system (DMS) helps to significantly reduce the time spent on organization and administration.

Before their DMS was introduced, the company wasted a lot of time with their classic paper system for filing documents. Retrieving information for their daily work was very complex, especially because of the wide variety of products in the plumbing sector, with thousands of products from different manufacturers. For example, when spare parts were needed for a particular assembly, the original invoices and delivery items often had to be tracked down in cumbersome hanging files or paper folders.

Guidelines from the GDPR also created a further problem, since they had little legal security set up for handling digital documents, which they were increasingly receiving as A/P invoices from most of their suppliers. Ensuring legally compliant archiving ultimately prompted them to introduce a DMS. They decided to look more closely at DocuWare after a presentation by a local DocuWare Partner at an information event. The solution’s price-performance ratio and quick availability all spoke in favor of the cloud solution. Plus, the company didn’t have to purchase any additional hardware.

Country:
Germany
Industry:
Retail / Wholesale
Department:
Management |Accounting
Deployment:
Cloud
Integration:
Sfirm |Winprojekt

Digital document management has taken archiving and searching to a whole new level – searching is now fun! And as an authorized signatory, I have a much better overview of all our individual processes. DocuWare has far exceeded our original expectations for a DMS.

Paul Altenburger
Authorized Signatory, G. Frey Plumbing Services, Esslingen (Germany)

Document pool and workflow go hand in hand

Today, DocuWare is integrated into Winprojekt, a special industry software for the trades. Cost estimates, order confirmations, outgoing A/R invoices, delivery bills and reminders created with it are automatically indexed using the print function and all stored in the central document pool. Through integration into the e-banking software Sfirm, the entire payment transaction is also centrally archived, as are all digitally incoming A/P invoices and delivery bills. The few documents that are still received by mail are scanned, indexed with Intelligent Indexing and also stored. At the same time, several digital workflows control order processing, invoicing and subsequent payment monitoring. When a customer order is received, the assembly department first receives the order slip, which records the work to be done and is signed by the customer at the end. Back in the office, this slip is scanned and stored in DocuWare, whereupon the processes for invoicing and payment monitoring are automatically initiated. For example, the system reports any reminders that are due in the event of non-payment. In the case of customer inquiries, employees can access all documents at any time and with just a few mouse clicks. The electronic verification of incoming invoices also makes work easier and increases transparency. As soon as an invoice has been archived digitally and in an audit-proof manner, it can be quickly and conveniently checked and approved by management on screen.

Work simplified for all involved

Many administrative workflows have improved and become significantly faster thanks to digitization. In addition to the legal certainty gained in handling documents, their quick and easy availability for employees is a huge plus. They can even access the necessary documents while on the road or while working at a customer. For example, instead of laboriously searching through paper folders, it is now sufficient to enter an item number. It is immediately clear when and from which wholesaler a fitting was delivered. Necessary spare parts are ordered immediately and warranty claims are clarified in no time at all – all in all, an incredible workload reduction for everyone involved.

In everyday work life, simple document searches with quick and accurate results are a great time saver for our company.
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