The Situation. BE&K, Inc., one of the 50 largest engineering and construction firms in the United States, services a wide variety of industries, including pulp and paper, process chemical and manufacturing. The company, headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., has eight operating divisions that are involved in hundreds of jobs around the United States and the globe at any one time.
BE&K receives thousands of invoices per month, with the majority of them arriving at the company’s Birmingham office. The construction industry’s process of billing in a “pass-through” manner requires complete and accurate accounts payable (A/P) information. For BE&K, that requires the direct involvement of construction managers and experts in the field to correctly identify and approve invoices and receipts through the A/P system. Since these individuals are frequently in different locations, the BE&K pass-through billing cycle (the time between receipt of vendor invoice and creation of a bill to send the customer) could last as long as five to seven weeks.
BE&K approached Image Integration Systems (IIS) as the company evaluated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and workflow and imaging systems that would reduce pass-through billing cycle time and improve control of its accounts receivable, A/P and billing processes. After a comprehensive review process, BE&K chose the IIS DocuSphere® Workflow and Content Manager solution to complement Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP software.
The Solution. Some of the featured elements of the IIS solution include DocuSphere Content Manager, a complete thin-client-enabled document imaging and archiving system for viewing, managing and distributing all forms of electronic documents across internal networks and the web; and DocuSphere Workflow, a standards-based, thin-client-enabled system that automates enterprise-wide business processes across all application systems and platforms using flexible, graphical management tools that easily create, maintain and secure workflow patterns.
Document capture is accomplished with Kofax Ascent Capture and virtual re-scan software (VRS), two Fujitsu production volume scanners at headquarters and smaller Fujitsu scanners for ad-hoc scanning at over 30 regional offices and major project sites.
The IIS software solution for BE&K also includes the certified DocuSphere ERP Integration module for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne (from Oracle); DocuSphere Web; DocuSphere Electronic Report Management; and the DocuSphere Pass-through Billing module.
In a typical installation of this magnitude, the ERP system is often installed first and the customer will take about six months to become acclimated to that new software before installing IIS DocuSphere. In this instance, BE&K had defined new, automated business processes that depended on the immediate availability of DocuSphere with the JD Edwards ERP system to be fully effective. BE&K required IIS to install its workflow and imaging products and software concurrent with the ERP implementation, and integrate these components into one seamless system. Careful and collaborative project management among IIS, BE&K and Oracle resulted in an implemented system that met BE&K’s schedule and functional requirements.
Results. With the workflow and imaging solution in place, the BE&K pass-through billing cycle time has been reduced by 50 percent in many cases. By automating most of the billing process, BE&K also reduced its labor content per transaction by as much as 50 percent, freeing employees to focus on other critical responsibilities. The reduced billing cycle provides the ability to recognize revenue more quickly than ever before – which translates into significant revenue improvement.
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| CaseStudy-BEK updated (pdf) | 214.39 KB |
