4Front Engineered Solutions Eliminates Errors and Improves Efficiency in Customer-Facing and Back-Office Processes

SITUATION

• Needed a way to centralize information
• Reliance on manual processes such as order management and accounts payable
• Lack of standardization and automation in processes

RESULTS

• Automated manual processes and created a digital-first, streamlined employee experience
• Increased productivity, transparency, and accountability

4Front Engineered Solutions has nine facilities in North America, and designs, manufactures and installs loading dock equipment solutions that are aimed at supplying the critical needs of customers across warehousing, manufacturing, retail, and distribution centers. As a result, productivity is a high priority. Commanding that accounts payable processes conform to the demands of today’s digital world is imperative. Like the modern and efficient approach taken with its products/solutions, 4Front wants to ensure it complies with industry regulations and more importantly, that customer needs are met with speed and accuracy.

“We initially wanted a quick way to process and access files ranging from order records, invoices and credit memos across different offices,” said Amy Skoug, director of IT — Applications at 4Front. “By developing a system that employees can use to manage core business documents from across the country, we have been able to use Laserfiche to improve efficiency and transparency for our customer service teams and other departments.” 

4Front has been able to centralize information across departments in multiple locations, including accounting, customer service, engineering, and distribution, using Laserfiche repositories that enable standardized records management practices and simultaneous collaboration on documents. Employees use Laserfiche to digitally capture, manage and process order documents from purchase orders through invoicing, boosting accuracy and accountability. These initiatives have also enabled employees to work remotely during the pandemic, contributing to the company’s long-term business continuity and resiliency. Additionally, 4Front has leveraged Laserfiche to gain greater insight on how to continually improve efficiency, using to the process data from Laserfiche to rapidly identify and address process bottlenecks and opportunities for optimization.

Digital Transformation Covering Thousands of Miles

4Front initially implemented Laserfiche in 2016, driven by a need for a digital document management system that could provide long-term access and easy retrieval for manufacturing order information. With a previously paper- and manual task-driven order process, the organization scanned existing files and input new orders into a centralized Laserfiche repository for office locations in the U.S. and Canada. 4Front used the Laserfiche platform to build a digital customer and order information system, enabling staff to search for files with metadata and monitor real-time status for orders. This digital system has improved responsiveness to customers in need of service, as well as enabled departments such as accounting and customer service to digitally update and approve amendments to orders. Through an automated Laserfiche workflow, documents in need of review are routed to the relevant team, who can then cross-reference submissions across multiple locations and approve of changes within the system. Staff can work off one master copy of the document, which minimizes errors associated with managing multiple document versions. 

“We gained a lot of interest from many departments after implementing Laserfiche Forms, including customer service to distribution, accounts payable and accounting,” said Skoug. “It provided us with a new way to do approvals for many of our existing processes.” 

Implementing Laserfiche has also supported global expansion at 4Front. The company used the solution to digitize the check filing process within its Canada office. Using this system, staff can now process large batches of checks, which are digitally paired with corresponding invoices and filed within the repository by vendor name. 

The company also integrated Laserfiche with 4Front’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to process invoices and work orders more easily. Files are automatically sorted and populated with the relevant sales order metadata, allowing interdepartmental collaboration, digital search and retrieval by leveraging metadata for order information. Using Laserfiche, 4Front also automated the three-way match between invoices, receipts and order forms. Laserfiche generates reports and checklists throughout the approval processes to help staff stay on track, identify areas of improvement, and minimize manual errors. Starting as a manual, paper-intensive process, the new invoice and work order processes have enabled more transparent customer and order information and opened up new opportunities for digital transformation.

The Road Ahead

After implementing its automated invoice and order management system, 4Front has achieved substantial savings in time originally dedicated to manual, paper-based tasks. This has been especially crucial during periods of expansion, as well as during pandemic-related operational disruptions.

Digital, centralized information has supported business continuity at 4Front as well, providing employees with a means to access and share files during the pandemic when staff needed to work remotely.  

Solution-driven metrics are another component contributing to 4Front’s digital transformation initiatives, utilizing monthly reports that provide insights on overall productivity, staff performance and trends on reason codes. Additionally, the company is actively identifying other departments and processes where Laserfiche could be deployed, including the HR department to centralize employee files, facilitate the onboarding process and track trainings and safety reporting. 4Front is also looking to digitize common manufacturing industry processes such as generating and managing bills of lading (BoL), as well as new product information documentation. To continue driving change, plans are in place to deploy Laserfiche in departments handling input and feedback from external stakeholders, such as the warranty team and in-records retention processes, as well as engineering change processes.

“The manufacturing sector is becoming increasingly data driven. Our digital transformation initiatives have enabled us to provide a better experience for our customers and staff members. We can respond to customers more quickly, retrieving relevant documents in seconds while speaking to them.”

Amy Skoug, director of IT — Applications, 4Front

Hyperautomation Is The Future, But It Starts With This First Step

By Grace Nam, Laserfiche strategic solutions manager for manufacturing and healthcare.

Hyperautomation started as a tech buzz word but is now influencing leaders as a top strategic technology trend, with many seeing the potential value in leveraging RPA (robotic process automation) and AI (artificial intelligence)/ML (machine learning) to transform legacy processes. According to Gartner®, “ hyperautomation is a business driven, disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many businesses and IT processes as possible”1 It is increasingly becoming a vital part of organizations’ digital transformation roadmaps as a means to achieving digital resilience and agility.

As you dive headlong into hyperautomation at your manufacturing organizations, it is critical for leaders to plan strategies to accelerate processes and deliver value without getting lost in the current technology weeds. After several years of planning and implementing digital transformation and smart manufacturing initiatives, how far do the benefits currently extend at your organizations? Even with recent events and disruptions like COVID-19, supply chain issues, and staffing shortages, 60% of executives say digital transformation is their most critical growth driver.2 Though digital transformation can be difficult as it requires organizations to change culture and traditional structures, digitalization is crucial to the industry’s ability to increase efficiency in production and drive further growth of the enterprise.
Image showing current bottlenecks to digitizing business processes: inadequate budget - 27%; competing priorities - 46%; legacy system limitations to digitizing across the enterprise - 28%.
Note: Percentages are rounded and may not add to 100%.

While disruptions and challenges have stalled out, major challenges with the supply chain and increased operational costs can persist through digital transformation initiatives. Of course, it’s not realistic to expect to eliminate longstanding challenges in such a short span of time. Currently, many leaders share common challenges in justifying ROI for smart manufacturing investment using end results.3 While having access to data is now certainly realistic for most organizations, building visibility into real-time data across multiple databases at the organization remains as a huge roadblock. Siloed data and unstructured data sets, multiple versions of pieces of digital content without the ability to track them — such as sales contracts and datasheets — and the inability to streamline business processes across different applications and departments are just some of the unimproved roadblocks that are still managed manually. When envisioning the end-results of our digital transformation efforts, it may not be what leaders were expecting: It is a common reality that employees are still spending hours on repetitive manual tasks.

Want to learn more?

Download the whitepaper, “Making Automation Accessible, Connectability Universal & Workforces Eager To Contribute“.

1Gartner IT Glossary, “Hyperautomation,” as of 16 January 2023. https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/hyperautomation. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

2PWC Pulse Survey: Executive views on business in 2022.

3SME, 2022 Smart Manufacturing Market Survey.

FCA Packaging Strengthens Employee and Vendor Experience through Business Processes Automation

FCA Packaging designs and manufactures highly customized packaging products and solutions for major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Following two recent acquisitions, the organization sought a solution to rebuild key business processes throughout departments. The company sought to address needs in engineering and human resources, as well as industry-specific requirements such as inventory management. Additionally, the FCA Packaging team wanted to process invoice and customer documentation with more efficiency and transparency to support company growth.

“Not only has Laserfiche helped to improve customer and vendor satisfaction, but our staff have also been able to focus more on higher-value processes,” said Sandra Lund, payroll manager at FCA Packaging. “It’s changed the way we function here and just made us so much more efficient working together as a team.”

Using Laserfiche, FCA Packaging transformed the accounts payable process — from a manual, paper driven activity to a streamlined, digital process that has accelerated response and payment times. FCA has since expanded its use of Laserfiche to manage a wide range of both internal and external processes, increasing productivity and accuracy across departments. In addition to automating business-critical processes, employees have been able to reclaim time and increase capacity, enabling the company to optimize costs while providing a high standard of service and products to an expanding client base of manufacturers around the world. “Implementing Laserfiche aligned with our core values of growth and empowerment,” said Steve Everett Jr., a president with FCA Packaging. “Our team members have been able to develop and deploy a solution that scales with us as we continue to grow organically and through acquisition.”

“Implementing Laserfiche aligned with our core values of growth and empowerment. Our team members have been able to develop and deploy a solution that scales with us as we continue to grow organically and through acquisition.”

— Steve Everett Jr, president at FCA Packaging

Buying Into Accounts Payable Transformation

Working with a long list of vendors and with over 1,000 employees across 35 locations, the FCA Packaging accounts payable team saw an opportunity to improve invoice management, which was previously a manual process using a legacy ECM system that was approaching end-of-life. Looking to improve compliance for audits, the team needed a solution that would support granular control access for accounting and financial documents, balancing both accuracy and ease of use. With the support of Laserfiche solution provider Momentum ECM, FCA found a solution in Laserfiche.

Before implementing Laserfiche, two staff members were assigned to reviewing financial statements and payment documentation manually and submitting completed invoices to stakeholders for approval. The manual process could take up to four days to complete. The updated invoice approval process now takes just five hours:
  • Vendors upload credit card receipts to Laserfiche for the AP team to review.
  • Laserfiche automatically extracts key information.
  • Laserfiche uploads the information, organizing it in specific file locations with granular access rights.

The streamlined process also provides an enhanced employee experience with increased accountability, while at the same time accelerating the payment cycle, improving FCA’s reputation among vendors.

“By enabling us to leverage automation and access rights for individuals, we have been able to finalize invoices more efficiently,” said Lund. “Now that we have greater visibility on our AP processes, we can respond to vendor needs more quickly with more accountability.

“In the beginning, some team members were concerned that automation would make certain roles redundant,” added Lund. “But after experiencing how the solution would free up their schedules, many employees were able to accelerate their own personal growth by taking on new projects in other departments. Laserfiche has done more than transform our operations, it has transformed the way we work as a team.”

Additionally, as a result of the Laserfiche initiative, the AP team can now quickly find invoices and other financial documents for review, simplifying the auditing process. The system has been used in a similar capacity for internal audits, as well as streamlining the overall audit process to support industry-specific OSHA documentation and ISO standards. This has further improved industry-specific safety and manufacturing management processes, allowing users to identify additional processes to manage through the digital platform. Laserfiche has provided FCA with more control over financial documents, giving specific members of the company access to the documents needed for internal and external audits to optimize the collection of this high-value data and improve turnaround and compliance.

A Full-Package Solution

After the initial success in the accounts payable department, other departments sought to automate and improve core company processes. Across 35 branches nationwide, Laserfiche has been implemented in almost every department. Laserfiche Forms help to manage processes in HR, accounts receivable, IT, staff safety and beyond. Serving more than 1,000 employees company-wide, the payroll department utilized Laserfiche to manage processes such as vacation requests and salary increases for full-time employees, helping FCA achieve substantial savings in time and resources. For example, compiling and processing sales and tax information for tax returns could take up to three days. Now, the process can be completed in four hours.

In addition to increased efficiency, Laserfiche has helped to increase accountability and for users, enabling staff to take ownership of their respective roles. Employees across all branches can manage invoices and other business-critical content, having access at any time of the day with insights on the progress of each open task. Users can use this information to identify obstacles and bottlenecks at any point of the workflow in order to streamline approval or turnaround a task overall. In an increasingly digital business environment, FCA Packaging has been able to boost efficiency and transparency company wide.

“Laserfiche has helped us to grow within our roles, take on additional projects and have a greater sense of ownership over the work we do,” Lund said. “For departments such as accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll, our long-term goal will be to use Laserfiche as close to 100% as possible.”

To learn more about how Laserfiche can empower your organization with solutions to help you scale growth and improve the employee and vendor experience, schedule a demo today.

eBook: The Business Continuity Playbook for Manufacturing

Coopesa’s Digital Transformation Takes Flight

The digital transformation of the aviation industry continues to create new ways for airline carriers, leasing companies and aircraft service organizations to compete.

While aviation has traditionally lagged behind other industries in digital innovation, Coopesa RL — a provider of service and skilled personnel to the aviation industry since 1963 — has prioritized investing in new technology to transform its business. Most recently, Coopesa used Laserfiche to digitize and automate its documentation processes, which has resulted in a reduction in employee hours spent on updating and tracking down paperwork, better oversight of documents and processes, and a boost in productivity. Additionally, the improvements have shortened the average time planes are grounded for service, enabling Coopesa to offer more value to clients.

“Every day, more and more airlines, competitors and suppliers are transitioning to a digital environment,” says Herbert Cabrera, IT director at Coopesa. “Additionally, many of our mechanics are millennials; they are very willing to work in a sophisticated digital ecosystem. We recognize the need to provide the tools that will empower them to be as effective and productive as possible.”

Safety and Compliance in the Cockpit

Based in Costa Rica, Coopesa offers major maintenance, inspections, modifications, upgrades, refurbishments and painting for the world’s aviation fleets and leasing companies. The company has three hangars, and plans to open a new facility that will accommodate additional offices, back shops and the service of even more narrow- and wide-body planes. As the company evolves its offerings, Coopesa has also embarked on a journey to digitally transform its business as well.

Coopesa’s IT team identified an opportunity to digitize the process of documentation, which is required for every task involved with aircraft repair and maintenance. Documentation enables the company to comply with numerous regulatory requirements from more than 13 aviation regulatory agencies in the region — plus requirements from clients’ countries. Traditionally very manual and paper-heavy, documentation for a single service could take up to three days.

Some of the challenges Coopesa faced as a result of manual, paper-heavy documentation processes included:
  • A lack of transparency and accountability, and an inability to assess the status of projects.
  • Significant amount of manual effort involved with finding, reviewing and approving documentation.
  • Limited ability to make informed business decisions about resource allocation and other strategic concerns.

The company sought a user-friendly, customizable solution that could help employees digitally and securely document service activities and purchases, as well as reduce the manual tasks involved with managing and updating documentation.

“In order to keep up with our growing clientele while continuing to honor our commitment to quality, safety and compliance with regulatory requirements, we turned to Laserfiche digital document management and business process automation,” Cabrera says. “Laserfiche helps us to meet one of our biggest challenges: complying with civil aviation control entities in each of our clients’ countries as well as our own.”

Laserfiche Takes Coopesa to New Heights

Using Laserfiche, Coopesa digitized critical documents related to services and automated many of the tasks related to reviewing, approving and updating documentation. The company also automated the process of material purchase documentation, which must be kept for two to five years for auditing, depending on material type and client requirements.

“Digitizing these processes allows us to avoid manual review of thousands of documents, and mitigated the risk of lost documents that previously had to be physically transferred between offices. We also have a full audit trail for all documents; everything is completely traceable. This digital experience puts us on par with the largest repair shops in the world.”

—Herbert Cabrera, IT director at Coopesa

The company has plans to integrate Laserfiche with other internal systems, to centralize information and enable employees to more easily locate certificates and other critical documents, no matter where they are stored. Another project on the horizon is the digitization of personnel files, which also require strict controls and security.

“For many years, the aviation maintenance industry was reluctant to adopt technological solutions, but now there is a new digital ecosystem,” says Cabrera. “Laserfiche has enabled us to not only participate but act as a leader in the digital transformation of the aviation industry.”

Offering First-Class Customer Experience

Coopesa’s Laserfiche initiatives have significantly reduced costs related to the printing, storage and transportation of paper documents. More importantly, the documentation process — which previously took up to three days — now only takes one to two hours. Clients automatically receive notifications immediately when they have corresponding tasks to complete.

“Streamlining this process is incredibly valuable,” says Cabrera. “We can shorten our turnaround time, while our clients can quickly schedule the return of their aircraft to operation. This has a positive effect on our revenue as well as the customer experience.”

The increase in transparency across the organization also allows for better planning. Staff are empowered with information regarding hangar space, technician and other resource availability to fulfill clients’ service and maintenance needs in the most efficient manner possible. Managers are also better able to measure performance and productivity by examining process data.

Another important benefit: Employees have reclaimed time from tedious, manual processes to be dedicated to more specialized tasks related to quality control and customer service.

“Our biggest satisfaction is seeing aircraft take off from our facilities, and operating safely and reliably,” adds Cabrera. “We will continue to invest in the technology solutions that enable us to be our clients’ partners in maintenance, and to meet their needs with high-value and competitive solutions for service.”

Learn more about why digital transformation is key to success in this white paper – download “Leading for Innovation and Growth: Five Strategies for Driving Digital Transformation.”

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.

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