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Steve Silver Co. was built around manual processes, and it became evident that they needed to modernize in order to keep up with their company’s rapid growth. Between work orders and invoices, Steve Silver Co. was producing between 500 and 1,000 paper invoices on any given day. Their 20-person team of sales assistants needed to be able to access invoices, which were stored on site in 25 filing cabinets, on a daily basis. Finding these files was time-consuming, and oftentimes it was impossible to find an invoice. The documents also needed to be scanned into an accounting system, a task that often fell behind and caused delays.
After researching their options, Steve Silver Co. decided to work with The Strickland Group, an experienced Texas-based IT consulting company and a PSIGEN partner, to find a solution. They chose M-Files as their Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system that would be used for housing their scanned documents. However, they soon realized they needed an efficient way to get their information from their current accounting software into their new ECM.
“When you’re creating 500 new documents a day, it doesn’t take long for them to pile up. We could easily be behind 5,000 documents that needed to be scanned. In order to get caught up on scanning, the company would bring in 2-3 temporary workers for a week’s worth of scanning. It simply wasn’t a cost-effective method.”
Steve Silver Co. needed a solution that would quickly and efficiently capture documents and route them to their ECM, M-Files. This solution had to be easy to learn and implement. The goal was to create a system anyone could use and that did not require specially trained personnel to operate it. Ultimately, such a solution would help cut costs in several areas, especially labor, and increase sales staff productivity by reducing the amount of manual searching they had to do.
PSIGEN PSIcapture with Classification
M-Files
Kyocera Scanners
The Strickland Group helped Steve Silver Co. set up a PSIcapture workflow with Classification to integrate seamlessly with their M-Files solution. Now documents can be quickly scanned in and PSIcapture is able to recognize the form type, extract the pertinent data and route the documents to M-Files. There is almost no need for manual interference. Hoot receives the exceptions via email, and he can correct the errors in a matter of seconds.
“Once we implemented PSIGEN, that scanning backlog disappeared in the course of a day,” said Hoot. “We used to have a team full of people who would sit around and key in data. Now our receptionist scans for about an hour a day and we’re done.”
Accuracy has greatly improved, as there is no longer a need to manually enter data. When sales assistants need to access invoices, they can easily find them in their searchable repository. Hoot estimates the success rate for finding invoices went from about 75% with physical file cabinets to about 98% with the automated solution. The company usually goes through three audits a year, and that process has become extremely simple as the documents can all be accessed via M-Files.
“In just the first year of implementing this solution, we’ve seen savings well in excess of six figures, and that’s just in raw wage savings. You can’t argue with the money we have saved. We’ve also seen a huge increase in productivity with sales staff—something that’s hard to quantify but is major for the company.”
Steve Silver Co. is truly seeing the benefits of document management technology through their PSIGEN and M-Files solution. The implementation of the solution was easier and more cost-effective than they had anticipated, and they were thrilled to come out under budget and ahead of schedule. The cost savings and increase in productivity the company has experienced has made the investment well worth it, and they are looking forward to expanding the solution to their bill of lading and accounts receivables processing over the next year.
“One of the reasons we are so excited about this solution is that it’s all scalable. Nothing’s more frustrating than having to purchase a deluxe package of something just to use the basic features. With PSIGEN, you purchase what you need and you can scale up down the road.”
