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From the
start of the project it was clear that important new ground
would be broken. As a result, it was decided that the best
way to meet the requirements was to form a joint team of software
personnel from Tokairo and Aurora with a single point of contact
- an arrangement that worked well and contributed to a successful
project.
"By
scanning the paperwork as soon as the information had been
entered into the accounting system it became possible to start
the authorisation process immediately," says Clayton.
"The document management system was tightly integrated
with the accounts suite and this ensured that information
relating to an invoice only needs to be entered once. By automatically
extracting cost centre codes and invoice values it became
possible to route the invoices electronically to the appropriate
managers".
The process
is sufficiently intelligent to know whether authorisation
is to be signed off by multiple authorisers, or in a predefined
sequence. Should service level agreements be in danger of
being breached then email reminders are automatically generated.
A measure
of the system's success is that the authorisation cycle has
been reduced from a month to a just few days almost immediately
the system went live.
"In
the rare cases that the accounts department need to intervene
or check the status of an invoice, all the necessary information
is now immediately to hand," says Clayton. "We don't
have to guess any more who had not signed-off an invoice,
received a query and not notified accounts - and there's no
more multiple photocopying or frantic faxing of copies".
One significant
benefit is that each transaction can be monitored through
the whole process with a full audit trail. This significantly
strengthens the ability to demonstrate that proper procedures
and controls are in place. This contributes greatly to transparent
corporate governance - crucial for an American owned company
where the statutory framework has been substantially strengthened
by legislation such as the Sabanes Oxley Act. With similar
EU legislation imminent, such issues will become increasingly
important for European firms.
Following
the initial roll-out for purchase ledger, Paxar are now looking
to extend the technology to other parts of the company. Next
target areas are sales order processing, customer care, a
Web-based customer order tracking system, human resources
management and product development - where the image-base
nature of the label products themselves make TokOpen's technology
an ideal solution.
"The
key to the project's success has been a fortunate union of
the right product with the right kind of integration - provided
in partnership by Tokairo and Aurora", says Clayton.
" It is the product's flexibility and susceptibility
to tailoring - and Aurora's ability to handle that customisation
- that made it work".
"The
end result is a solution that does what it claimed, delivered
on time and to budget. It worked first time with minimal fixes,
delivered the expected benefits on the initial pilot project
and has provided a reliable platform to extend these benefits
across the enterprise. Significantly, it is enabling us to
accomplish this with maximum exploitation of our initial investment".
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