Across PJH’s nine sites, the company will be rolling out electronic form design, automated document delivery and electronic document storage services. The new systems are expected to handle around 2 million documents each year.
Prior to installing the new systems, PJH had been outsourcing its document scanning requirements.
David Johnston, group IT director from PJH said: We used to send a range of documents to be scanned by a third party supplier. This was costly as well as time-consuming as it could take up to a week before the scanned documents were available for us to view online. We also realised that this didn’t provide us with the level of automation, control and functionality we required. By implementing Version One’s systems, we have been provided with a fast return on investment and the flexibility and advanced functionality we needed.
PJH has been able to replace most of its pre-printed stationery with electronically created forms, reducing the cost of having the documents printed. The company now uses a two-page branded document consisting of a delivery note, proof of delivery (POD) and picking note, which is printed directly on to plain paper. Previously PJH was using an expensive three-part pre-printed document.
We are saving at least £550,000 over a five-year period by significantly reducing pre-printed stationery, no longer needing to outsource our document scanning and by cutting day-to-day administration tasks such as the photocopying and manual filing and retrieval of documents, said Johnston.
The company now has ten Kodak scanners located across its nine sites. They are used for all outgoing delivery notes and incoming PODs. The documents are stored with Version One’s electronic archive and are automatically linked together. This enables staff to view the complete trail of documents from a particular order, as sales invoices and credit applications are also linked to the original delivery notes and PODs.
Version One estimates that the electronic storing of documents could save staff up to an hour, as they will no longer be required to manually search for documents in the company’s warehouse.
Johnston said: We now email documents around the organisation instead of having to post or fax them and where possible, we are rolling-out the electronic delivery of documents to our customers to further improve efficiency and cut costs. We are also considering implementing Version One’s DbCapture software to automate the capture of purchase invoice data. This advanced optical character recognition technology will further improve organisation-wide efficiency, ensuring we remain the leader in our field.
