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Case Study: Retail / Wholesale

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Over 15 million documents are stored annually in the digital archive of leverdy, a newspaper and magazine distributor. They are retained in a tamper-proof and compliant manner, which is accessible company-wide. A workflow simultaneously controls invoice approvals.

Germany's largest publication distribution center is located in Leverkusen, Germany and is part of the leverdy network. The company is one of the five largest newspaper and magazine wholesalers in Germany, the result of several mergers of companies which were active in this market for decades. Today, leverdy supplies around 4,700 sales outlets such as kiosks, supermarkets, gas stations or bakeries with newspapers and magazines every day - in an area with around 3.9 million inhabitants and almost two million households.

The daily delivery of up to 300,000 copies of a total of 5,600 magazine titles results in a huge number of delivery slips for leverdy – basically ten million pages of paper per year. In addition, around 4,600 retail invoices are sent weekly to the magazine dealers by post, email or fax, about 1,000 pages of subsequent delivery slips and 4,000 to 5,000 pages of collective invoices for chain stores that have several branches. The distribution managed on Sundays (which is handled separately in the company) as well as transport invoices and returns of unsold magazines, produce even more documents that have to be stored. In total, around 15 million documents circulate at leverdy, with much of it produced by their Phoenix merchandise management system every year. The wholesaler has to retain all documents for tax purposes for ten years and their customer service department also needs access to various documents, again and again.

Country:
Germany
Industry:
Retail / Wholesale
Department:
Customer Support |Administration |Order Processing |Company-wide
Deployment:
On-Premises
Integration:
Phoenix

Thanks to the DMS, we have implemented a completely digital workflow for our receipts, which creates transparency and guarantees our customers and employees comprehensive search options for availability from anywhere. The simple and flexible integration of DocuWare into our business applications was important to us.

Dr. Frank A. Trotz
Managing Director, leverdy, Leverkusen (Germany)

Enormous volume of documents digitally managed

They opted for a modern document management system to cope with their huge document volume. Their local DocuWare Partner simply set up the interface between Phoenix and the DMS using DocuWare‘s standard technologies. Digital file cabinets were then created step by step for all document types. Each file cabinet is password-protected, so that only authorized users are granted access.

Today, all documents created in Phoenix are automatically indexed and stored in the central document pool. This also greatly simplifies the work of the 18 employees in the Customer Service department. With the help of various search functions, they see the documents they need on the screen in seconds and can immediately provide customers with information by telephone. Similarly, a copy of a receipt can be forwarded from the archive to a customer by email with just a few clicks.

In addition, DocuWare optimizes their storage locations. With its integrated migration workflows, document inventories are transferred from operative and expensive storage to more cost-effective, long-term storage locations. This means that documents with high access rates are quickly available, while legacy documents with low access rates are moved to inexpensive, long-term storage.

DMS ideal for process automation

The verification and release of incoming invoices is organized with a digital workflow. All paper invoices are scanned centrally and classified in an easy-to-navigate input mask before they are transferred to the workflow. For email invoices (some in the ZUGFeRD-compliant standard format), the process is even faster. Suppliers send the invoices directly to a dedicated mailbox, from where DocuWare automatically stores the documents in the file cabinet via Outlook integration and also transfers them to the workflow. After invoice verification, they are posted in the Sage Office Line accounting software. This has greatly simplified the approval process, avoiding cash discount losses and increasing cash flow.

Since the incoming invoices on paper are destroyed shortly after they are digitized, leverdy was also able to significantly reduce the space required for documents that need to be retained. A warehouse rented in the neighborhood was gradually dismantled, which also reduces the company's rental costs in the long term.

Our internal IT department praises the solution‘s extremely low operating costs, since installation, updates and troubleshooting take place exclusively on the DocuWare server. This administrative work is completely eliminated on the employees' workstations."
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