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Ferring Pharmaceuticals saves with electronic document management
Speeding up invoice approval times, reducing data entry
By Antony Savvas | Computerworld UK | Published 03:34, 30 January 11
UK-based Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a global specialist in the field of peptide and protein chemistry, has gone to EDM supplier Version One to improve purchase-to-pay efficiency, reduce manual data entry and cut off-site storage costs.
Version One’s technology will be tightly integrated with Ferring’s Microsoft Dynamics NAV accounting system, and is expected to deliver cost savings in excess of £40,000 a year.
Ferring’s current purchase-to-pay processes involve invoices and purchase orders being photocopied, stamped and circulated internally, which is time-consuming and inefficient. There is a risk that invoices get mislaid, which can result in a lengthy paper-chase around the organisation and delay invoice approval.
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Sue Britnell, financial controller at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, said, “We required a document management solution to streamline the time and costs associated with manually filing, retrieving and processing financial documents. We chose Version One because of their software’s functionality and proven ability to integrate into Microsoft Dynamics NAV.”
Ferring will use Version One’s software to electronically store and retrieve incoming and outgoing business documents directly from Microsoft Dynamics NAV or via Version One’s web browser.
Purchase invoices arriving into the organisation will be scanned in prior to processing. Once imaged, the invoices are automatically tagged to the appropriate records in the accounting system.
Version One’s optical character recognition technology DbCapture will enable the data on all invoices to be automatically captured and verified before being uploaded into Microsoft Dynamics NAV, significantly reducing manual data entry.
Using Version One’s authorisation module, once the invoices have been scanned, approvers are automatically emailed a link to the imaged invoices allowing them to approve, reject or query them with a mouse click.
Britnell said, “Version One’s technology will make a huge difference to our invoice approval times and will reduce manual data entry by around 80 percent. By eliminating paper we anticipate annual savings of over £40,000 in reduced administration and expensive off-site storage facility costs."
Last week Bank of China in London reported it was working with IBM to reduce its paper consumption by 95 percent, while aiming to improve the efficiency of conducting financial transactions through new electronic document management systems.
Bank of China used IBM business partner Centric iSolutions to help its London branch automate the processing of interbank transaction messages it receives on a daily basis and is set to save £12,000 a year on paper costs alone.
