Project manager Gereon Steinkuhl recognized the efficiency potential that could be reached with a DMS. They began looking for a solution. The DMS procurement was based on four main criteria. First, the system had to be robust enough to cover all areas of their imagined digitization. Equally important was ease of use, since 3,600 people are employed at various locations and everyone – including the nursing staff in the facilities – should be able to easily navigate it. Integrations with existing systems were also key to help avoid as much manual intervention as possible. Finally, the expertise of the implementation Partner was thoroughly evaluated and weighed into the decision.
Making work easier through AI
DocuWare Cloud met these criteria best. HVVG’s implementation Partner was particularly impressed by the fact that a lot of manual activities can be avoided by integrating AI-controlled Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). DocuWare’s IDP functions play an important role in their core digitization initiative, invoice processing, but are also of great importance in other areas such as human resources and quality management.
At the end of May 2024, DocuWare was implemented to handle incoming invoices. Two facilities per week were digitized until the entire conversion of the network was completed in October 2024. Invoices and accompanying documents, such as delivery notes, are now received at a local company, but then immediately scanned or forwarded directly by email to central mailboxes set up for invoices and accompanying documents. When the documents are subsequently read, indexing is handled by IDP. The AI does not require a traditional learning process, but automatically recognizes the relevant content, such as the invoice number and date or the supplier’s name and vendor number. Subsequent adjustments are rarely necessary due to the high recognition rate of over 94%.
The invoice process is optimized from the very start with IDP. After doing a match check of the company address and any redundant records, the indexed invoice goes through a second approval on site by each facility’s management as part of the workflow. Certain types of invoices are flagged for management review with an automatic comparison with accounts payable – the workflow even contains an additional approval loop for this step. The posting record created in the DMS is transferred directly into their Simba accounting system for payment.
This highly automated process and use of AI, significantly reduces manual intervention resulting in an enormous time savings of almost 70 percent for invoice processing. Early payment discounts are now also consistent. The high level of employee adoption of DocuWare IDP for this first digitization project has paved the way for their next phase of DMS projects, such as creating digital personnel files and digital QM manuals .
