Customer Relations Department

The Paper Problem

Charmer Industries, one of the largest liquor distributors in the country, sells and delivers wine and spirits to virtually every restaurant, hotel and liquor store in the Tri-State New York City area.  In doing so, they generate 2500 - 3000 invoices and credits per day.  Prior to installing the PaperSolve document imaging system, these invoices and credit memos would be collected from the drivers at the end of the day, sorted and sent to the microfilm department where they were photographed.  The film was then shipped off-site for developing and conversion to microfilm reels.  After the reels were returned to Charmer, the tedious process of indexing the frames on the reels to link the accounting data on the mainframe began. This entire process would take approximately two weeks and during that time, if an invoice needed to be referenced, the hard copy would have to be located by searching through thousands of documents by hand.

If the invoice was available on microfilm, the retrieval Work-Flow or 'Work-Slow' was as follows:

1.      Customer Service Representative, (CSR) receives request from customer for copy of disputed invoice via phone.

2.      CSR would then leave their desk and proceed to one of two microfilm viewer/printers.

3.      After locating the proper reel, he or she would then wait for a viewer to become available, mount the reel, locate the frame and then print out a hard copy.

4.      They would then make their way over to the fax machine and manually fax the document to the customer. (That’s if the fax was available and the microfilm copy was legible)

5.      The CSR would then return to their desk, call the customer and discuss the discrepancy.

This entire process took anywhere from 5 to 50 minutes, depending on how many things went wrong, and resulted in poor customer service and many complainants.

The PaperSolve Solution

With the installation of our PaperSolve â document imaging solution, invoices are now collected from the drivers, captured in-house on high-speed document scanners, saved on standard network file servers, 90% of indexing is accomplished automatically via mainframe data and  then permanently stored and backed up on an optical jukebox.  Images are now made available to customer service within hours of being scanned. 

The new Customer Service Work-Flow for the same scenario as above is:

1.      Customer Service Representative, (CSR) receives request from customer for copy of disputed invoice via phone.

2.      The CSR retrieves the invoice in question from the PaperSolve Imaging system and faxes it to the customer during the same phone conversation, all without leaving his or her desk.

The PaperSolve â system vastly improved customer satisfaction and employee productivity at the same time.  (Not to mention the cost savings of labor and printing!

Charmer Industries (Accounts Payable Department). 

The Paper Problem:

The Accounts Payable department of Charmer Industries was faced with handling thousands of documents for hundreds of vendors and suppliers they purchased goods and services from on a daily basis.  These documents varied greatly in size, quality, color and format.  Accounts Payable agents would build order folders starting with the creation of the PO.  As the order process continued, all supporting documents were added to the folder until the product or service was delivered.  At that time, the vendors invoice was ready for the payment stage, that’s when the 'paper chase' began. 

When all went well, it was a simple task of locating the purchase order folder, and keying in the order information into the legacy mainframe voucher system so a check could be cut to the vendor.  The file would then be placed in the proper vendors folder (hopefully), in a row of file cabinets, which occupied 30% of the accounting department's floor space.  After the checks were printed, a copy was made of the signed check and it too was added the paper file.

Where the 'paper based' system failed:

Ä       When AP agents were out sick or on vacation, re-routing of payments were manual and time consuming.

Ä       If a discrepancy needed to be discussed with a department head or vendor, the original document had to be located, removed from the file cabinet, copies made, or the entire file left out until the issue was resolved.

Ä       Unable to locate original documents due to miss-filling.

Ä       Unable to locate original documents because file was removed and is located on someone else's desk.

Ä       Files older than six months had to be located out of the department for space considerations.

Ä       When supporting documents were required for audits or proof of purchase, the process of retrieving the files was time consuming and sometimes futile.

How the 'PaperSolve' based system excelled!

ü      When AP agents are out sick or on vacation, re-routing of payments is a simple task for the AP manager to perform with the use of PaperSolve 'Work-Queues'.

ü      If a discrepancy needs to be discussed with a department head or vendor, the document is retrieved within seconds through linking of mainframe indexes.  Copies can then be Emailed or faxed for faster, more efficient problem resolution.

ü      No more miss-filings!  Documents are automatically indexed from mainframe data.

ü      Files can now be shared among several users simultaneously!

ü      Documents remain online virtually forever!  No more file cabinet space problems in AP.

ü      Audit data retrieval is no longer a futile process! Documents can be searched & retrieved by Voucher Number, Vendor, Date Range or Keyword category.