TRN Group is a haulage and civil engineering contractor from Camden, NSW. The family owned business was formed in 1966 and employs about 290 people.
The Opportunity
In 2012, TRN Group was faced with a fairly common decision for a growing organisation; whether to employ a second accounts payable person or explore alternate options due to the increasing number of creditor invoices to be processed. Over 4000 invoices per month were processed in 2011 and the number was expected to keep increasing.
They took the opportunity to review their whole invoice processing and approval process and found other related issues with time taken to approve invoices and sending paper copies back and forth to project managers and engineers, whether they were in the office or onsite, resulting in mistakes and unprocessed invoices.
The Infoware Solution
After discussing their findings with us, TRN decided to be the first client to implement Infoware’s new web based i4 Creditor Approvals component combined with i4 Doclink + OCR. All paper based invoices and associated dockets are scanned and saved to a folder where emailed invoices are also placed. The invoice images are read and verified by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software with the extracted invoice data and image link then passed to Infoware. The OCR interface solution has been developed in conjunction with our partner Inland Technology.
The Outcome
TRN Group’s work flows changed dramatically with huge efficiency gains. Unapproved invoices are automatically created from the extracted data and routed to the relevant person for approval based on the invoice data (creditor, job or purchase order). The approval person can be working remotely via the web to view the invoice image, with supporting documents, and either approves the invoice as is or makes adjustments as necessary. Should an invoice fail to be approved within a configured timeframe, or if the value surpasses their approval limit, a higher level user is automatically notified to approve the invoice. The invoice is then ready for payment on time when due.
“The introduction of Infoware Services approval app and interface with OCR has streamlined both accounts payable and other areas of our business. Our volume of creditor invoices has increased by 70% since introduction of i4 Creditor Approvals. Previously our creditors clerk was struggling with processing invoices for 4000 invoices and was assisted by a casual a couple of days per week. The volume has now grown to almost 7000 invoices per month and is now being comfortably handled by the one person in 4 days per week. More importantly the culture has changed as these and all other documents scanned can be immediately retrieved away from the office.
Introducing OCR and Infoware’s i4 Creditor Approval process has been a major plus in our company’s administration and costings. The flow on benefits are substantial. For our annual financial audit, we now give our auditors a computer and they can drill down straight to a PDF image of any invoice they wish to sight – rather than going through filing cabinets and archive boxes. Similarly, engineers and project managers can view invoices straight from a link in a job cost report rather than going to a filing cabinet to view the details. Our auditors, clients and competitors are amazed at what we are able achieve with such a lean administration team.”
Seeing the benefits that document imaging can bring to just one aspect of their business, TRN now also scan ALL other documents and link these to the relevant Infoware data with Infoware’s i4 DocLink. In addition to eliminating the need for storage of paper files and easy retrieval of these documents, i4 Doclink also provides a solution for managing those documents which expire and require renewal. These range from sub-contractor workers comp and public liability or other insurances, to employee driver licences, professional certifications, first aid certificates and even vehicle registrations. The applications are almost limitless.
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