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SITUATION
• Hundreds of records created weekly
• Storage requires complex compliance requirements
• Manual processes led to bottlenecks, errors and delays
RESULTS
• Standardized transparent records management enabled faster document retrieval and enhanced regulatory compliance
• Laserfiche automated workflows accelerate processes and increase productivity enterprise-wide
Orano is a recognized international operator in the field of nuclear materials. The company’s offerings include products and services throughout the entire fuel cycle, including the design, certification and production of casks, as well as the associated transport, with the highest level of risk control.
The company records every aspect of operations, resulting in the creation of hundreds of records weekly, including technical files, purchase orders and contract-related documents. Meanwhile, all documentation goes through constant review and approval, and everything must be stored in accordance with regulatory compliance requirements.
“Because we’re in the nuclear industry, document oversight is extremely important — so we undergo lots of audits and have to be able to find data,” said Gloria St. Denis, records management consultant for Orano. Fortunately, the complex information infrastructure and processing involved with Orano’s daily operations is made simpler with Laserfiche, the company’s records management and forms processing solution. “My background is in records management, however, Engineering is my biggest client at the company. They want to do things that make their life easier. And for a lot of that, there is Laserfiche.”
Since implementing Laserfiche, St. Denis estimates that information management and automated business processes have been made between 10-50% more efficient. In some cases, the impact has been even greater.
“Laserfiche has saved us from a lot of issues and errors,” she added.
Laserfiche serves as the content repository for some of Orano’s most important information. The standardization that Laserfiche has provided solves a number of information management headaches for St. Denis and the organization, such as:
Due to the sensitivity and importance of the company’s products and services, the organization requires all information that is defined as a record to be held in dual storage. This includes the Orano Policies and Procedures System (PoPS), which Laserfiche keeps up to date with the latest versions of documents.
“We use transparent records management to manage PoPS, so that those who manage the procedures and policies can see the history of the information, but the rest of the organization only sees the latest and greatest version,” St. Denis explained.
Beyond PoPS, Orano uses Laserfiche to manage information and streamline processes in other areas of the business, including:
Simple online forms now enable employees to submit a new record, to which a standard template and metadata are applied. Additionally, Laserfiche’s OCR capabilities support the system’s abilities to provide the information that people need with a simple text search.
“Laserfiche does a great job of OCR,” St. Denis added. “It captures all the information we need from the documentation, making it easier for people to find what they’re looking for.”
As a result, staff can now find any engineering record, design record, purchasing record or any other customer or vendor documentation in just a few keystrokes, regardless of the information’s origin. To make information searches even easier, St. Denis has set up customized webpages and search forms using Laserfiche.
“With a transparent records management strategy, we’re going beyond thinking of Laserfiche as just a place to put electronic documents,” St. Denis said. “We organized and standardized everything. That made it simpler.”
St. Denis has also introduced process automation to streamline the flow of information and accelerate reviews and approvals.
One of the most impactful Laserfiche solutions has been the Approved Suppliers List (ASL), which was previously managed through a Word document. “We built a Laserfiche Forms process in front, and within 15 minutes, that approved supplier is on the Approved Suppliers List,” St. Denis said. The previously manual, cumbersome process typically took between two to three weeks. “These automated processes enable us to communicate certified suppliers to our organization quicker. Ultimately, we can get back to the client sooner.”
Process automation also extends to the Approved Supplier Maintenance process, better enabling the organization to maintain traceability of documents and any changes, while still supporting the integrity of the ASL.
Other processes have simplified and accelerated collaboration across the enterprise, even across global regions. The Shipping Release process requires multiple sign-offs on multiple documents — with an average of three signatures per document. Previous to automating, employees would physically walk forms around or send them through email; when signatories were in different countries, delays were not uncommon. “We were able to get the average time it takes to do a shipping release from three business days down to one to two hours,” St. Denis explained.
Similar efficiency gains have been seen in the processes for:
Using Laserfiche’s intelligent capture, transparent records management, and complementary process automation capabilities, Orano has seen the benefits of faster information retrieval, enhanced regulatory compliance, and increased productivity across the organization.
For St. Denis, Laserfiche has augmented her ability to support the organization’s business goals. “I love that I — as a records professional — can create solutions and there is a lot less involvement required from IS/IT,” she added.
Lookup table limits have automatically increased for all Laserfiche Cloud customers. Customers who use Laserfiche Cloud to manage thousands of product SKUs and parts lists, medical billing codes, historical customer data points and more are now able to store and leverage even larger enterprise-level data sets with increased lookup table limits.
In addition, these enhancements allow customers to take advantage of real-time data lookups across millions of data points for use in forms and workflows, further enabling your organization to support hundreds of thousands of customers.
Furthermore, these changes increase limits for both numbers of rows within lookup tables, and the number of lookup tables overall.
Limits will be increased automatically according to your license tier. Professional tier customers will now start with a limit of 20,000 rows. Business tier customers will start with a limit of 50,000 rows. Additional add-ons, offering up to 100,000 rows are available for purchase.
An API to manage your lookup table data is also now available. For more details and documentation surround this API, please visit our developer page.
With enhanced lookup tables in Laserfiche, you can sync your customer data with Laserfiche to engage them on a personal level. If you’re in education, healthcare, government, or e-commerce, having immediate access to a customer, student, or patient past activity, historical decisions, and preferences can allow you to tailor how you handle their needs individually, making each interaction more relevant. There’s a direct correlation between increased satisfaction of your audience when you pull this information in real-time. For example:
In finance, healthcare and manufacturing, understanding trends, predicting behaviors and optimizing resources can be critical to operating effectively. As an example, healthcare providers can make more informed decisions about patient care when they have instant access to medical records and treatment history from an internal operations workflow built on Laserfiche.
Industries dependent on supply chain management, such as logistics, manufacturing and retail, can benefit greatly from real-time lookups. Access things like parts lists, order history and volumes, vendor performance tracking, RMAs and more for better inventory management and more opportunities to improve vendor relationships.
In customer service, nothing is a substitute for real-time data lookups for providing the best experience possible. Whether it’s customer order status, resolving a customer service issue, call history, and more, instant access to this historical data allows your service representatives to have the best tools available to provide top-notch support.
Industries with specialized equipment and machinery, such as aviation and manufacturing, can avoid breakdowns, outages, and downtime with real-time historical analysis, while using workflows to determine maintenance schedules. This proactive approach saves resources and time while creating opportunities to further operational efficiency.
Regardless of your industry, lookup table improvements can help your organization unlock the power of real-time customer data. Leveraging this data to analyze past performance and identify opportunities to enhance operations can enable your organization to be more responsive, and in turn be more resilient and effective in how it conducts business. In a world where data and measurable metrics are as important as ever, businesses that harness real-time data access in their operations are poised for sustainable success, even in a dynamic business landscape. For more on lookup tables, visit our What’s New page or contact your sales representative for more information.
As manufacturers adopt AI, they can expect enhanced efficiency and output and the ability to make more informed decisions and adapt swiftly to market changes.
With the business ecosystem operating in a distributed manner, hyperautomation eases the burden that repetitive processes and legacy infrastructure put on an organisation and its resources.
SITUATION
· Accounts payable relied on manual tasks and data entry
· Looming e-invoicing mandate required the digitization of purchase orders, payment terms and credit notes
RESULTS
· Integrated Laserfiche with SAP ERP to digitize both internal and external invoices and automate invoice processing
· Reduced average cycle time from 72 hours down to 10 minutes
· Improved traceability and compliance, inventory management and sustainability
In 2019, Colombia joined a host of other countries in mandating e-invoicing — an electronic billing approach that requires the digitization of purchase orders, payment terms and credit notes. E-invoicing requirements are becoming more and more common across the globe, with the goal of providing governments a more efficient means of auditing and tax and customs enforcement.
In order to accommodate the coming requirement, the agroindustrial company Monómeros sought a new document management system (DMS) with business process management (BPM) capabilities. “We saw that the versatility and capacity that Laserfiche had as a BPM tool would allow us to keep control of our documents, plus there was traceability that would comply with Colombia’s laws and archival standards,” said Esteban Echeverria, IT superintendent at Monómeros. “Laserfiche is not only a tool that will allow us to keep control of documents, maintain traceability and comply with the rules and archival standards of Colombia, but it also provides a platform that will allow us to automate business processes across the company.”
With Laserfiche process automation and records management, along with an integration between Laserfiche and SAP, Monómeros fulfilled the country’s e-invoicing requirements while also accelerating the accounts payable (AP) process.
Today, the company’s AP cycle has been cut down from an average of 72 hours to just 10 minutes — a 99.77% improvement in efficiency.
Monómeros is a large agroindustrial company with an important role in supplying the necessary fertilizers for some of Colombia’s most important crops, including potato, coffee and palm. With a history dating back to 1967, the company has undergone a number of modernization initiatives for a more efficient, agile enterprise.
Accounts Payable (AP) is one area where the organization has seen tremendous impact. With thousands of invoices needing to be processed per month, manual tasks — such as data entry, inventory management, and data verification — can delay critical operations at any organization, causing missed deadlines and challenges in vendor and customer relations.
At Monómeros, the invoicing process relied on manual tasks and mailing invoices between staff and geographic locations.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, invoices had to be manually assigned to each analyst and physically sent to them to be managed in our ERP,” said Carlos Daniel Machado, head of accounts payable at Monómeros. “Cycle times from when invoices were received reached up to 72 hours. We needed to optimize the process and reduce cycle time.”
On top of this, the Monómeros team needed to consider the e-invoicing requirements that would become compulsory for businesses in 2020. This perfect storm led them to Laserfiche, which was implemented with support from Colombia-based Laserfiche solution provider Gestech.
“Laserfiche offered a balance between all of our considerations, including cost, functionality, business process management (BPM) capabilities, a good user experience and local support with Gestech,” said Echeverria.
The goal was to digitize and optimize the process to increase efficiency and reduce costs; improve visibility and control; and strengthen business relationships.
To tackle the challenge, the Monómeros and Gestech teams created a Laserfiche workflow designed with four stages and integrations with the company’s SAP ERP software.
The process not only applies to external invoices, but also to internal ones having to do with reimbursing employees.
“In the case of employee reimbursement, they file their request through a Laserfiche form and attach all necessary documents, and that generates a digital filing through Laserfiche in a matter of seconds,” said Machado.
With this solution, Monómeros has been able to reduce the average cycle time from 72 hours down to 10 minutes. With an average of 1,500 invoices per month, Monómeros has seen a huge impact on overall time and cost savings. As added benefits, Monómeros has improved traceability and compliance, inventory management and sustainability.
“Not only have we been able to improve compliance practices and optimize processes with Laserfiche process automation, but we have also enhanced customer service and their overall experience.”
Carlos Daniel Machado, Head of Accounts Payable, Monómeros
“We are now working on an integration between Laserfiche and our vendor bill reception process. Every business process that needs to be automated or integrated with our content we see as in the scope of Laserfiche’s capabilities. This makes us excited for all of the future possibilities.”
According to recent Laserfiche/SME research, one-third of respondents are experiencing work delays a few times a week across various processes in operations. This leads to countless hours wasted by employees fulfilling administrative tasks manually across engineering, operations, sales, quality, shipping release and more.
Amidst these challenges, the manufacturing industry is on the cusp of a significant transformation driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). AI is poised to become a critical factor for manufacturers, streamlining processes, reducing delays and addressing concerns around costly compliance documentation.
While some may fear job displacement due to AI, the reality is that AI will empower the human workforce. Here’s how:
Embracing AI is no longer optional for manufacturers seeking to stay competitive. By leveraging AI’s capabilities, manufacturers can streamline operations, empower their workforce and navigate the ever-evolving landscape of digital transformation.
Watch our webinar, “Accelerating Manufacturing Excellence: Unleashing AI for Seamless Operations and Safety” to explore the latest advancements in technologies that minimize work delays, streamline reporting processes, and establish a robust repository for seamless operations: AI, machine learning, process automation, and process integrations.
At Laserfiche we’re always looking forward. We also know that industries like manufacturing and healthcare are continuously searching for new ways to address their industry’s unique challenges.
That’s why in the new year, we asked one of our resident industry experts — Grace Nam, Strategic Solutions Manager: Manufacturing and Healthcare — to make predictions about what innovations and ideas healthcare organizations and manufacturing firms are going to prioritize in 2024.
Healthcare organizations will leverage new technologies to innovate and reduce costs:
Manufacturing will utilize AI and other technologies to achieve improved interoperability:
Want to make an innovative start to 2024? Check out the following resources to learn how ECM can be your organization’s key to newfound efficiencies this year.
Schedule a personalized Laserfiche demo
A complete ECM solution like Laserfiche can help organizations across industries dramatically improve the efficiency of its business processes. See first hand how Laserfiche can be your solution and schedule a demo.
Discover powerful solutions on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace
Some of the more robust ECM systems, including Laserfiche, offer marketplaces for process templates that organizations in a variety of industries, including manufacturing and healthcare, can use to jumpstart digital transformation initiatives. To learn more about the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, watch the video below:
Gain new insights with our latest industry white papers
Check out this healthcare industry whitepaper to learn more about the role intelligent automation is playing in the industry.
In addition, our manufacturing whitepaper can be a useful resource for firms looking to further protect their production pipelines from disruptions.
Check out the G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
Comparing ECM systems? Compare the top vendors in the space with the G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM):
Increasing overall process effectiveness and enabling data-driven decisions are top priorities for organizations’ digitization journeys.
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, Dec. 12, 2023 — New research by SME and Laserfiche — the leading SaaS provider of intelligent content management and business process automation — finds that the manufacturing industry continues to rely heavily on manual processes while experiencing work delays in a number of key areas.
The study surveyed over 300 manufacturing professionals employed with organizations with 101 or more employees. Only a third of respondents reported that their facilities had completely automated operations related to equipment capacity utilization (30%), sales sheets/documents (27%), quality management (24%), and inspection sheets (24%). Meanwhile, the majority of respondents experience work delays related to inventory data (62%), manufacturing throughput times (62%), equipment effectiveness (62%), and equipment capacity utilization (60%).
“Overall equipment effectiveness and throughput determine a manufacturing facility’s ability to compete in today’s market,” said Grace Nam, strategic solutions manager, manufacturing, at Laserfiche. “As the report shows, manual processes and unstandardized external and internal communication methods that require various documents and records are still driving most manufacturing operations. This approach can have a negative impact on equipment availability and performance, as well as lead time to customer.”
Results also revealed that increasing overall process effectiveness and enabling data-driven decision making are top priorities for organizations as they consider the next steps in their digitization journeys. In many respondents’ technology plans were AI (56%), cloud computing (52%), and document and records management (47%) initiatives.
“There is incredible opportunity for manufacturers who focus on digitizing paperwork and automating operations,” Nam added. “By embracing digital compliance document and records management, developing a standardized system to improve processing time, and fostering interoperability with metadata management, companies can unlock new efficiencies, reduce costs, and get ahead of the competition. Additionally, advancements in AI and cloud computing will accelerate digital transformation in the industry, meaning investments in digitization and automation are more important than ever before.”
Additional findings in the report include:
“It’s clear from these results that there is significant room for the industry to increase their competitiveness and efficiency by modernizing their processes and transitioning to smart manufacturing technologies,” said Dave O’Neil, vice president, media, at SME. “By sharing these results, SME can continue to help support companies through this transition to ensure a robust future for North American manufacturing.”
To download a copy of the Laserfiche and SME research report, click here.
To learn more about Laserfiche solutions for the manufacturing industry, visit https://www.laserfiche.com/solutions/manufacturing/.
About Laserfiche
Laserfiche is the leading SaaS provider of intelligent content management and business process automation. Through workflows, e-forms, document management and analytics, the Laserfiche® platform centralizes data and many types of documents from across the organization and streamlines critical business processes that impact organizational growth and productivity in core functions such as sales, engineering, operations, accounting and more.
For over 30 years, Laserfiche has served organizations in highly-regulated manufacturing industries — including aerospace and defense, gas and oil, industrial, food and beverage and more — to simplify data- and content-driven business processes, supporting quality management and document control, compliance, organization-wide information governance and digital resilience. Today, Laserfiche’s cloud-first approach incorporates machine learning and AI innovations, and supports integrations with technologies like enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM) and more to drive enterprise-wide digital transformation.
Learn more at https://www.laserfiche.com/solutions/manufacturing/
About SME
Established in 1932 as a nonprofit organization, SME represents the entire North American manufacturing industry, including manufacturers, academia, professionals, students, and the communities in which they operate. Together we share one common belief: Manufacturing holds the key to economic growth and prosperity. SME accelerates new technology adoption and inspires and builds North America’s talent and capabilities in order to advance manufacturing as a diverse, thriving and valued ecosystem that drives competitiveness, resiliency and national security. We believe in technology’s power and humanity’s innovation to advance our society and meet many national challenges. We design new ways to understand and solve problems, and our solutions advance the next wave of innovation and growth. Learn more at SME.org, or follow SME on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
