Merichem Increases Efficiency and Control in the Fast Changing Oil and Gas Industry

Merichem is a global company that serves the oil and gas industries with focused technology, and chemical and service solutions. Its proprietary impurity removal processes increase the quality of refinery products and oil and gas streams, and the company beneficially reuses spent caustics and other byproducts from oil and petrochemical plants around the world.

Merichem used Laserfiche to automate a number of approval processes, centralize information and improve information governance. The result has been a decrease in the burden on employees for meeting all of the requirements of ISO 9001, ASME and other documentation requirements, an increase in information accuracy and productivity, and faster turnaround times for customers—all critical improvements for an organization focused on operating safely and efficiently in a fast-changing, highly regulated industry.

“There has been a lot of change in the oil and gas industries,” said Amy Magee, project controls manager at Merichem. “It used to be that hiring a bunch of people wasn’t a big deal because the industry was making a lot of money. It’s never going to be the way it used to be—cost savings have become more important. Everyone in the industry is working to better understand how they are using money and how they are operating, so we can do things differently and more efficiently.”

Putting Quality and Safety First

With three U.S. offices and over 1000 treating units in refineries in 53 countries, Merichem must comply with a multitude of safety standards including those of the ISO, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and other organizations related to pressure vessels and refinery equipment.

“Quality and safety are extremely important to us,” said Amy Magee, project controls manager at Merichem. “We need to ensure our systems are built to the right standards. Data sheets are needed for equipment; drawings for construction; plus a lot of testing has to be done. And anyone who operates any of our equipment or the equipment we purchase needs to know what they are doing.”

The company initially needed a new centralized repository for documents, but Magee also realized that the company’s needs went beyond digital storage. “We need the ability to manage licenses with customers and give them access rights to individual folders,” she said, adding that employees previously had to manually track access to specific folders via spreadsheets or on Word documents. “We also have to track versions of documents, and when we disseminate information or updates, we need to know if and when documents are received and reviewed.”

Another essential component of Merichem’s operations, data books, were time intensive to compile, and were often still printed on paper and sent to customers. When a project was completed, employees had to compile anywhere from 10 to 20 books—with about 750,000 pages in each book—in a short time frame. PDFs were manually uploaded, and any time a change is made, it must be carefully tracked and sent to the customer as well. This resulted in increased overtime hours at the end of every project. “Data books were being printed, and employees had to manually mark up the individual copies,” Magee said. “They then had to scan the page back in, and there was no way to know if a customer had opened or looked at it. It was just a monotonous process. You had to check that you didn’t duplicate efforts. A lot had to be done to ensure the information was correct.

“Our cycles are very fast, and a lot of projects are fast-tracked,” Magee added. “Manual work was delaying our processes, and employees had to work overtime to get things done within our time frames.”

The company ultimately turned to Accelerated Information Systems, a Laserfiche Solution Provider, to implement a Laserfiche system that would enable access control, provide tracking capabilities and automate manual processes, including data book compilation.

“Safety is serious business at Merichem,” said Zaheer Master, president of Accelerated Information Systems. “With Laserfiche we’ve automated a critical but monotonous task, freeing employees to work on more important projects.”

Control, Automate, Transform

Today, Merichem uses Laserfiche for document management; Laserfiche provides granular security control so that individual employees are no longer tasked with tracking access to information. Project assistants previously spent on average 750 hours—about half of the hours charged to a typical project—uploading and transmitting documents to multiple outside parties. Today, they have reduced that by about one-third, or 250 hours.

The centralized system also allows employees enhanced search capabilities, saving additional time finding information. “One of the biggest complaints we had about the previous software we were using was that you had to know the exact name of what you were searching for,” Magee said. “Being able to use Laserfiche and do partial or fuzzy searches, and search through OCR and metadata has been huge for us.”

Beyond improving the management of information, Merichem used Laserfiche to automate the process of data book compilation. Today, employees simply need to follow a naming convention for files and an automated workflow compiles the data book in 30 minutes to two hours—a process that used to take a full week.

“I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that Laserfiche makes our employees’ lives easier. It’s had a positive impact inside and outside of my department, across the rest of the organization. It helps all of our employees and alleviates stress related to deadlines, and we are able to expedite the turnaround time for preparing and submitting data books to customers. The end of a project is always a stressful time period, but it’s much easier now since very little manual work has to be done. We don’t have that rush at the end, where everyone’s putting in overtime hours.”

—Amy Magee, Project Controls Manager at Merichem

Continued Improvements, New Efficiencies

Merichem continues to explore new uses for Laserfiche and increase efficiency across the organization. Next, the company has plans to implement Laserfiche for specifications review, another time-intensive and paper-driven process. Magee explained that employees will also use Laserfiche in shipping and receiving, allowing employees to use tablets to take pictures of materials before they are shipped, so that they can upload them to the Laserfiche mobile app. This will assist employees in ensuring the company has records of the exact condition of items before they leave the premises, helping to fulfill requirements of ISO 9001.

Magee encourages her team members to obtain Laserfiche Certification and get involved with process improvement. “Laserfiche has helped in a lot of aspects,” Magee added. “It’s helped to keep everyone on track, and now as we are overseeing and facilitating work, we are able to make sure that people have the tools they need to get important information to customers in a timely manner.”

Tecnoglass Powers Collaboration to Deliver Industry Leading Products and Services

Tecnoglass is a leading glass and window manufacturer, and the first Colombian company to be listed on the NASDAQ. Since its beginnings in 1984, the company has gained recognition for delivering high-quality products, competitive prices and timely delivery. In more recent years, Tecnoglass experienced tremendous growth, doubling revenue since 2014 thanks to the company’s vertically integrated business and strong, innovative product offerings.

To remain on the forefront of the industry and continue to meet customer expectations, Tecnoglass introduced automation to its operations. This transfomation has affected not only the fabrication of products, but also core business processes across the enterprise.

At the heart of Tecnoglass’s digitization and business process automation initiatives is Laserfiche, which the company uses to store critical documents, manage records and enable collaboration between employees and with external suppliers. This Laserfiche-enabled digital transformation has benefited the entire organization, increasing accountability, improving compliance and accelerating business across all units. Today, Tecnoglass continues on its growth trajectory using Laserfiche to eliminate repetitive, time-intensive manual tasks, and enable employees to maintain focus on fulfilling customers’ quality and service expectations and remaining competitive in the marketplace.

Positioned for Growth

In December 2013, Tecnoglass debuted on NASDAQ. Shortly after, the organization sought a better way to manage documents, since the company’s legacy system was no longer robust enough to meet the demands of a rapidly growing business and could not be integrated with other core technologies.

“Records were disorganized, and stored in warehouses making them difficult to find,” said Plinio Florez, document management coordinator at Tecnoglass. “This led to high storage costs and labor costs associated with searching for documents. It was almost impossible to consult files for decision-making, which delayed critical processes.”

Tecnoglass also faced challenges collaborating with suppliers. The legacy supplier registration process was manually driven and paper-based, which led to lost documents, and difficulties with authorizing suppliers and making payments.

The Tecnoglass team found that Laserfiche could meet the company’s document management needs as well as enable the automation of key business processes such as supplier registration and accounts payable. The Laserfiche platform was also easily integrated with Tecnoglass’s ERP system, helping to centralize data and operations.

Tecnoglass also enlisted the help of Colombia-based Laserfiche Solution Provider, Gestech, for the implementation. “Having local support was another important part of our decision making process,” said Florez.

“Laserfiche was the perfect choice to take Tecnoglass into the next phase of growth and expansion,” said Jaime Barrios Perez, CEO of Gestech. “By using Laserfiche to centralize information, and digitize and automate processes, Tecnoglass created a more seamless experience for employees and suppliers that is closely aligned with the company’s modern, global vision.”

Getting Ahead by Going Digital-First

The most immediate change Tecnoglass made was to digitize documents and store the electronic files in a Laserfiche repository, making information easier to process and share with outside parties when needed.

“We had to change the mentality of employees, which was that documents are only safe if they’re ‘physically available,’” said Florez. “To the contrary, by digitizing paperwork, we have enhanced controls and mitigated risk of information loss.”

Digitization made an impact across the company, especially in the foreign trade department, which manages significant amounts of Tecnoglass’s transactions and activities. The company was able to save nearly $73,000,000 Colombian pesos in costs related to shipping and processing paperwork alone. Today, the company’s Laserfiche repository houses more than 10 million files, all easily searchable by authorized employees.

Moving toward a digital-first environment also made collaboration with outside parties easier. The paper-driven legacy supplier registration process was replaced with a Laserfiche electronic form and automated workflow. By digitizing and automating the process, the company eliminated lost paperwork and accelerated registration, improving the experience for both Tecnoglass employees and the company’s suppliers.

Using Laserfiche, Tecnoglass employees can now easily search and retrieve documents without having to step foot in a warehouse. This has resulted in faster decision making, as well as a faster response times to internal and external audits — such as those related to Sarbanes-Oxley Act, ISO standards and the company’s Authorized Economic Operator certification, for which Tecnoglass has committed to both physical and IT security and safety standards throughout its supply chain by meeting requirements set forth by the Colombian Tax and Customs National Authority (DIAN).

“Laserfiche has helped tremendously with the company’s compliance with legal and industry requirements. Having the search functions at our fingertips has eliminated headaches for many of our employees, and automating processes has eliminated repetitive, error-prone manual tasks like data entry, allowing employees to focus on more productive work.”

—Tecnoglass General Counsel Andrea Zambrano

Accelerating Across the Enterprise

The company’s success with Laserfiche continues to spread throughout the organization since initial implementation. Additional departments have automated key processes including accounts payable, supplier updates, correspondence management, user profile confirmation and document loan control.

“Departments that have benefited from the implementation of Laserfiche include: purchases, treasury, accounting, document management, foreign trade, warehouse and internal control, all of which mainly needed a solution that allowed them to optimize time, space and the fulfillment of obligations to third-parties,” said Zambrano. “We have created and opened up new channels of communication with third parties, such as our suppliers. We’re now able to notify suppliers when we have an issue with a document or bill — prevent billing errors and delays — and we give our suppliers more convenient methods for updating data online.”

Tecnoglass’s Laserfiche implementation has created a more integrated work environment, where processes are standardized and transparent, enabling the company’s management team to more easily optimize resources and personnel. Employees and departments are accountable, which has led to better collaboration and better communication, even with third parties.

“Adopting Laserfiche technology opened up new possibilities for our organization that were previously dismissed,” said Zambrano. “It turns out we just did not have the foundation and practices in place that would enable more innovation. Once we started implementing automated workflows, we eliminated silos and our operations became more connected. We continue to work on integrating workflows and centralizing data and processes. Laserfiche is an extremely powerful tool for our organization.”

Ready to scale up and drive digital transformation enterprise-wide? Download our white paper, “Leading for Innovation and Growth: Five Strategies for Driving Digital Transformation.”

Focusing on People and Quality

G&J Pepsi, the largest family-owned and operated Pepsi franchise bottler, built its business on an unwavering commitment to customer service. In order to maintain that focus, the company has aimed to operate as efficiently as possible, digitally transforming much of its business in order to free up employee time for providing the products, solutions and services that exceed customer needs.

As part of this transformation, G&J Pepsi recently centralized its accounts payable operation. By using Laserfiche to streamline and automate invoice processing, G&J Pepsi has reduced managers’ repetitive manual work, enabling them to dedicate more time to strategic decision-making, oversight and interacting with customers. The new system gives the company tighter control over disbursements, supports regulatory compliance, reduces costs per invoice processed, and has increased efficiency across the organization.

An Accounts Payable Refresh

G&J Pepsi is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, with 13 locations across Ohio and Kentucky, and more than 1,600 employees. With thousands of invoices being processed weekly, the company recognized the need to centralize and automate accounts payable.

“Accounts payable used to be in four different buildings,” says Jeremy Harper, director of accounting operations at G&J Pepsi. “As we continue to grow, we knew it was going to be more difficult to process invoices if they were done in different locations, and they were done manually. We needed a way to make the process digital, collect what we needed, push invoices to managers for review and approval, and pull information later if we needed it.”

The legacy manual process involved invoices coming in through the mail, and being physically sorted and placed in managers’ mailboxes. Managers would sign off on the invoices, then the invoices were manually collected and matched up with relevant documents, such as packing slips. An AP clerk would then enter the information into the company’s AP system, Microsoft Dynamics GP; the documents would also have to be scanned into a repository.

“The volume of invoices was growing, and the company was looking at hiring another AP clerk in order to manage them,” Harper says. “The cost of manual processing would continue to grow.”

G&J Pepsi had been using another document management solution to electronically manage records for nearly a decade, so the company turned to Laserfiche Solution Provider Gordon Flesch for support on implementing a new workflow for invoices.

“In order to maintain its commitment to service and support compliance, G&J Pepsi needed a solution that would integrate with other core technology systems and improve efficiency,” says Bill Dermody, managed content manager at Gordon Flesch. “Laserfiche supports the company’s goals and has innovative process automation and reporting capabilities that G&J Pepsi can leverage as the business evolves.”

Today, invoice processing requires very little human intervention once invoices are pushed into Laserfiche. “Once invoices are pulled into Laserfiche we have a lot of workflow automation that kicks in and helps streamline the process,” Harper explains. “Metadata is added automatically, and then invoices are routed to different managers across the company.”

In the new Laserfiche solution, invoices are automatically sent to the appropriate managers. Once approved, invoices are routed back to the AP department for final review. As a result of G&J Pepsi’s integration between Laserfiche and Microsoft Dynamics GP, the solution automatically creates the invoice vouchers and, once invoices are paid, check numbers, dates and payment information are pushed back down to each Laserfiche document so all the critical information along with the image is stored in one place.

“It’s fully automated from beginning to end,” Harper says. “And we can pull any of these documents at any time to check them if we have questions.”

Invoice processing is now scalable, and the company has created a clearer separation of duties: Employees who post AP vouchers cannot process disbursements, and vice versa.

Transforming Operations: A Winning Recipe

As a result of the AP automation, G&J Pepsi has been able to centralize its entire accounting function by streamlining processes and giving the company more visibility into operations and control over invoice and payment information. The centralization has enabled the company to consolidate vendor payments, introducing new efficiencies and cost savings. G&J can also identify errors prior to posting payments through the automated workflow which performs a reasonableness check on dates, and verifies that the sum of distributions are equal to invoice amounts.

“Having to manually pass paper documents around introduces a lot of risk,” Harper said. “You’re not completely certain of who signed for it or when; you have to check whether a manager is authorized to sign for certain amounts; documents get delayed and sometimes lost. Once those documents leave your desk, you lose control over what happens to them.”

Now, automated workflows enable the AP department to standardize processing to eliminate issues like lost, duplicate or late payments. Audits—which G&J Pepsi undergoes each year to support compliance with industry regulations—are now much easier since all information related to invoices and payments can be found with a few clicks.

“We’ve gotten great feedback,” Harper says. “Managers that are tasked with approving invoices are very happy with it.”

The company is able to process over 1,000 invoices weekly with just two AP clerks. “As we continue to use the solution and process invoices, the process cost per invoices is dropping, and increasing the bottom line,” Harper explains.

One of the greatest benefits of the solution, however, has been reclaiming managers’ time for more value-added work that requires human interaction, such as oversight, monitoring and, most importantly, customer service. With a history that dates back to 1925, G&J Pepsi has grown from a small operation to the largest family-owned Pepsi bottler on its dedication to customers and ability to respond to their needs.

G&J Pepsi is now looking to automate more key processes, such as contract management, in order to support companywide digital transformation initiatives.

“Laserfiche has a ton of flexibility, and the integration with Dynamics was a big selling point,” Harper adds. “Laserfiche best fit our needs from the beginning to the end of the process.”

Want to learn how AP automation can give you a strategic advantage? Download this infographic and start tackling the challenge of invoice processing.

Ghana National Petroleum Corporation

Leveraging process automation and an organized repository, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation reduced the time it takes to access content from one month to less than a minute.

WECO (PTY) Ltd

A Johannesburg-based engineering company digitally transformed occupational health and safety incident reports, helping with compliance, communication and changing how the mining industry does business.

PERI Group

A leading manufacturer and supplier of formwork and scaffolding systems, PERI streamlined operations and enhanced the customer experience through an online portal.

PERI Scaffolding Speeds Invoice Processing With Laserfiche

PERI Formwork Scaffolding Engineering Ltd, based in South Africa, is a global manufacturer of formwork and scaffolding and provides consultant, project and engineering services for the construction industry. With wide-reaching operations across 60 global subsidiaries, the firm manages complex payment streams that require efficient processes and quick response times.

“As technology changes, there’s a need to communicate and distribute to customers more efficiently,” says Jacques Lotriet, Business Analyst for PERI’s Financial Efficiency Projects.

The organization previously relied on paper mail to sort, distribute and pay invoices. Collecting payments from customers often took up to two weeks with no guarantees that documents and payments would be returned on time.

With Laserfiche, the company built a web portal that provides customers and staff with web-based access to monthly statements and invoices. The accounting portal significantly decreased the time it takes staff to process invoices, improved the customer experience and helped the company provide more transparent operations for regulatory compliance.

“Feedback from our customers and our staff internally has been extremely positive, especially with the way to quickly and easily access and distribute documents,” says Lotriet.

Benefits:
  • Reduced accounts receivable and payable processing times from weeks to one day
  • Enabled customers to view invoices, see reminders and complete online payments entirely online
  • Saved $75,000 a year in printing and paper costs, creating a return on investment in the first year of Laserfiche use

The ability to quickly model and execute digital business processes helps PERI Scaffolding continually improve its customer experience and remain competitive in its industry.

“It is very versatile,” says Lotriet. “I like to describe it also as a blank canvas. If you can think it up, you can build it. The electronic flow and distribution is also very efficient, and saves a lot of time and money.”

Click here to learn more about using Laserfiche to streamline the accounts payable process.

How Halquist Stone’s Automated Processes Created a Culture of Efficiency

Halquist Stone is one of the largest stone quarries in the Midwest, manufacturing and selling natural stone products nationwide. The company’s expertise spans materials used across all types of residential, commercial and landscaping projects—from the walls of castle-inspired homes to rocks that populate zoo habitats.

Generating sales orders for the organization’s diverse range of products requires the cooperation of several departments, which are often spread across seven geographically separated manufacturing facilities.

Out of the Stone Age

“Our old sales order process really came out of the ’50s,” says Wade Balson, CFO at Halquist Stone Co. Employees used carbon paper to make copies that then had to be sent to manufacturing, distribution, sales and accounting to be processed. “The supervisors at all the different locations were spending two to three hours a day manually inputting data—that left them 15 hours a week off of the manufacturing floor, where they need to oversee the product actually being made, making sure it’s getting done correctly, making sure people are doing their jobs.”

In order to continue serving a growing customer base across the country, the company needed to reclaim supervisor time.

Into the Future

Halquist Stone used Laserfiche to automate the sales order process, eliminating manual data entry and the many spreadsheets that previously burdened supervisors. Supervisors now enter orders on iPads, and information is automatically routed to the relevant departments to be processed. Additionally, customers can easily change or cancel orders via an online Laserfiche form, and supervisors can see the change or cancellation immediately after it is submitted.

Balson estimates that the company saw a return on its Laserfiche investment in under a year of using the software. “ROI numbers just skyrocketed from there,” Balson adds. “Now we’re automating more processes with Laserfiche, and finding more ways to use it. That just increases my return exponentially.” Benefits include:
  • Supervisors save between two and three hours a day, adding up to about $115,000 of savings
  • The company’s processes are more transparent, improving accountability
  • Employees can immediately find information when needed

“The more that we’re embracing it, the faster and better everybody’s going to be,” Balson says. “It’s completely changed the entire culture of our company.”

CIRCOR Pibiviesse

CIRCOR Pibiviesse Creates Enterprise-wide Efficiency
Headquartered in Milan, Italy, CIRCOR Pibiviesse designs and manufactures state-of-the-art valves for cryogenic, high temperature and subsea applications.

With three manufacturing facilities, year-long production cycles and more than 400 compliance standards to adhere to, CIRCOR Pibiviesse put a focus on reengineering its operations.

“We needed to give management better visibility into the status of the production cycle,” says Continuous Improvement Manager Ivan Fantin. “Customer requirements are also increasing in our industry, which makes compliance more and more challenging each year.”

Many of Pibiviesse’s transparency and compliance challenges resulted from creating databooks—documentation containing hundreds of pages of materials certifications, product drawings, internal procedures and more. Without a completed databook, Pibiviesse’s valves cannot pass industry inspections and be activated at a plant.

“These documents are compiled throughout the lifespan of a project, which may last from six to more than 18 months,” says Fantin. “You can imagine how many logistical challenges this creates for a company with so many employees and departments.”

Pibiviesse turned to Laserfiche to gain visibility into its operations and comply with stringent manufacturing standards. One of the benchmarks for the software was whether or not it could improve the firm’s on-time delivery rate of databooks.

Enterprise-wide Transparency

The first order of business for Pibiviesse was making sure its employees, departments and facilities were on the same page regarding the status of pending projects and the availability of valve documentation.
With Laserfiche, the firm achieves this goal by:
  • Storing all documents related to valves in a centralized, digital repository
  • Creating order status reports to identify production delays
  • Providing mobile devices to staff in the field, so they can instantly respond to time-sensitive production tasks

For example, Pibiviesse uses Laserfiche to make sure the tools used to measure valves are regularly calibrated. As a tool approaches its expiration date, the system automatically emails a reminder for the specialist to calibrate the tool, which helps avoid manufacturing delays and liability from faulty valves.

“With Laserfiche, we’ve implemented an efficient process that ensures follow up at different levels of the enterprise and stages of the production process,” says Fantin. “The flexibility of the software allows us to monitor and control our business processes while better serving our customers.”

One System Satisfies 400 Standards

Pibiviesse hoped to leverage its newfound transparency to comply with more than 400 industry standards that were notorious for halting the production cycle.

“We decided to analyze how many different types of documents the customer normally requires, and we came up with about 200,” says Fantin. “Those different document types became our basis for building new compliance processes.”

Pibiviesse used its list of required documents to build checklist templates in Laserfiche, so the system can easily identify documents that are required to fulfill a customer order.

For instance, Laserfiche ensures that suppliers provide required certificates every time materials are delivered by:
  • Monitoring the receipt of materials as they enter a facility
  • Cross-referencing incoming materials with a list of existing materials certificates
  • Generating a daily to-do list to gather missing certificates

The improved compliance process ensures that materials certificates are accessible across the enterprise and electronically delivered to the customer before a valve is delivered to a plant.

“We had documentation on-time delivery rates in the range of 30-40% before changing our processes with Laserfiche. Now we are proud to say that we have reached 100%,” says Fantin.

As a result of this improvement, Pibiviesse has dramatically increased customer satisfaction and minimized regulatory penalties incurred from databook delays.

Creating a Culture of Efficiency

Pibiviesse plans to continue using Laserfiche as the foundation for operational efficiency and compliance, which Fantin believes must happen through effective change management.

“Business process reengineering is a top-down process,” Fantin says. “Nothing will change if management simply decides on some new strategies for the future. They have to go to where things happen, show leadership and involvement to the staff and drive people toward the new processes.”

As Pibiviesse continues to help its employees become more efficient with Laserfiche, it has advice for other organizations seeking to do the same.

“Start by focusing on your processes—not the functionality you need to improve them,” Fantin says. “We took a close look at our processes and that’s why we were able to gain the maximum benefit from our Laserfiche implementation.”

The DCD Group

An international engineering company headquartered in South Africa, the DCD Group is comprised of 12 business units in four different divisions: rail, mining and energy, marine and defense, with some companies in the group having been in operation for over 100 years. As a highly respected industry leader, DCD is always looking for innovative ways to provide top engineering services.

Dawie Marais, General Manager Support Services, had a vision to find an enterprise content management (ECM) solution that would eliminate administrative lags, improve the efficiency of business functions and add true value to the company. “It just made sense from a cost, support and maintenance standpoint to choose one ECM system that has flexible business process management tools that could be deployed in all our departments,” explains Marais.

Having one comprehensive solution like Laserfiche meant that we only have one system to oversee. We could cut down on the need for support, eliminate the extra time spent on overlapping systems, increase staff’s productivity and allow information accessibility throughout the enterprise—it was the most cost-effective choice.

Streamlining HR, saving $150,000 per year

The same contract employee may be re-hired up to four times a year at DCD’s Marine Division, depending on the amount of projects and the different skills needed at specific stages of each project. Over a short period of time, DCD’s contract staff can fluctuate between 300 and 2,500 employees, with most contracts lasting 90 days or fewer. Each year, 2,000 to 5,000 contracts are processed.

The huge amount of records associated with hiring and managing this temporary staff created a time-consuming and difficult administrative workload for HR staff. “Before implementing Laserfiche in our HR department, onboarding a new employee took 45 minutes,” Marais says. “Now, it only takes 15! Having Laserfiche has empowered our staff and made their work so much more efficient. They no longer have to search through stacks of employment records just to find something—all the files are now digitized.”

By using Laserfiche Forms and Laserfiche Workflow, the HR department was able to reduce the steps in the onboarding process for both staff and applicants.
  • The need for printing multiple paper documents was eliminated as applicants can use Laserfiche Forms to enter their information on a computer at the HR office.
  • Populated forms are directly routed into the Laserfiche repository by Laserfiche Workflow.
  • For new contracts, new folders are automatically created. For re-hired employees, existing folders are located and automatically updated, reducing the risk of errors and centralising the data.
  • To simplify change management and improve staff adoption, HR staff continued work from their existing human capital management system. Laserfiche is integrated into the back-end to help minimise time-consuming and manual administrative work.
  • Employee records are digitised and scanned into Laserfiche, freeing up physical storage space.
  • Authorised personnel are granted appropriate access to employee records, improving the flow of information.

With Laserfiche, we speed up our employment process, saving at least $150,000 a year and reducing administrative work by 50%,” Marais explains. “HR staff at DCD Group feel empowered by Laserfiche—it lifts a lot of pressure off our staff. There were minimal disruptions during the implementation since we could retain the familiar user interface; there were no additional username and passwords to remember; employee records are all scanned, making searches simple; and all employee details are now secure and in one, easy-to-find location.

Making purchase requisition paperless from start to finish

Before implementing Laserfiche, purchase requisition at DCD Group was a paper-based process, where employees manually searched for expense codes and descriptions before filling out each request by hand. This process was prone to mistakes; hand-written requests were difficult to read, and there were a lot of easily damaged paper documents. The approval process was also time-consuming, as the employees had to physically track down the appropriate manger to get approval.

Using Laserfiche Workflow and Laserfiche Forms, DCD Group succeeded in making the entire purchase requisition process paperless, increasing efficiency and productivity. Thomas Matthee, Manager Systems Development and Implementation, adds, “Laserfiche simplified the purchase requisition process. Staff used to have to run around trying to find the right person for authorisation. Sometimes the managers just weren’t available and there were times where the requests didn’t even get looked at or they got lost. Now, everything is transparent.”

The new, streamlined purchase requisition process works as follows:
  • Requests are now made through Laserfiche Forms, where departments and expense codes can be easily selected through drop-down lists, reducing administrative work and minimising errors.
  • Laserfiche Workflow sends the appropriate manager a notification of the request and directly routes the populated forms for approval.
  • Once approved, the workflow will automatically route the request to completion.

Matthee notes, “I would estimate a minimum of 15 minutes per requisition is saved by using Laserfiche, boosting staff productivity. Employees now spend less time on administrative tasks, and they don’t have to file extra paper work or worry about lost documents. With Laserfiche, automating business processes is so easy.”

Producing efficient and compliant project documentation

For the manufacturing process in the mining and rail sectors, mandatory certifications are done through the submission of data packs, which contain testing information, documents, welding certificates, drawings, and quality assurance information. It was a constant challenge to manage the data packs, which could involve anywhere from five to 50 boxes—all ordered by date and free of duplication.

Before we implemented Laserfiche,” says Marais, “the administrative work involved was a nightmare to handle. It was difficult to keep track of the versions of the documents and also the duplications. And once we’d organised the paper documents, we’d have to send all of the boxes over to our clients. There was too much room for error and damage during the whole process.

He explains that DCD Group needed to find an ECM solution that would meet the company’s stringent quality assurance standard while decreasing the administrative burden placed on employees. “Today, all data packs are submitted electronically, which increases document security while decreasing costs. We also have a check in/check out process where only one copy of the most up-to-date document is stored in the Laserfiche repository and only one person can update it at a time,” says Marais. “By digitising and automating this process, we’ve improved productivity and boosted staff morale.”

Driving efficiency across the organisation

Marais particularly appreciates that Laserfiche is not limited to one department. “Laserfiche’s deployment flexibility made it easy for us to implement it in multiple departments, including Human Resources, Sales and Marketing, Quality Assurance, Scheduling, Project Management, Planning, Buying, Finance and Maintenance,” he says. “At DCD Group, we believe it is important not to chase technology but to find a technology that truly adds value to our company. With Laserfiche, we continue to increase our overall operational efficiency and gain more value from the system.”