TokOpen & TokAM Case studies

TOKOPEN PROVIDES THE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT AND WORKFLOW POWER FOR SLEMCO

- Using TokOpen to eliminate paper reports


Tokairo's TokOpen document management solution is now playing a key role in eliminating paper reports, establishing efficient workflow business processes and providing substantial cost savings for Louisiana-based electric power company Southwest Louisiana Electric Membership Corporation (SLEMCO) - www.slemco.com.


SLEMCO provides retail electric power to homes, businesses and industrial customers throughout a large part of the state - to more than 80,000 users.


SLEMCO is always looking for new processes to work more efficiently. A vital element was the removal of paper reports in accounting, customer service and warehouse - and the ability of all personnel requiring access to such reports to be able to do so electronically. Also to eliminate filing and the need for storage space by scanning all accounts payable, with the same capabilities for viewing and printings as the paper reports.


The system was supplied and implemented by Houston, Texas, based Advantage Concepts - www.advantageconcepts.com - one of Tokairo's longest established US resellers who provide a wide portfolio of solutions for document management and workflow.

In 1999, SLEMCO introduced an industry standard document management and imaging system to scan field work orders. These were scanned directly into the system with indexes applied manually. The following year, the system was extended to the company's accounting department to scan accounts payable, and an automated scanning front end was installed.


The year after that, the company decided to adopt Tokairo's TokOpen system and expand the scope of electronic document management further - into customer service and warehouse.


A key element was TokOpen's Enterprise Report Manager (TokERM) which automatically captures, indexes and imports the output from a user's transaction system, without ever producing hard copy.

All data is centrally managed so that from a user workstation personnel can search for and view documents on line, exactly as if they had been printed and scanned. This was implemented in Summer, 2001, to eliminate the printing of paper reports in accounting, customer service and the warehouse.

From 2001 to 2002 the number of TokERM reports being processed approached 250, making SLEMCO the largest user of TokERM in the US.

With TokERM, SLEMCO eliminates virtually all paper based reports company wide providing substantial cost savings and reducing time to distribute and retrieve reports. All personnel requiring access to reports access do so through TokOpen and TokERM.

Further functionality was also added which allowed SLEMCO to process reports in two more useful ways.

As a work order-driven organization, SLEMCO's fieldwork is performed according to work orders. The company wanted to be able to view such individual orders as reports and also be able to "burst" them into individual work orders - then save them in a work order file. Tokairo added the functionality to achieve this.

As part of the system expansion, SLEMCO then implemented Advantage Concepts' eXpert Capture - designed to provide an automated scanning front-end that integrates directly with TokOpen.

The next advance was the combination of TokERM and workflow to create an automated process for timesheet approval. A pilot project in the accounting dept was used to tune and perfect the application. Once the accounting dept was running smoothly, the system was expanded company-wide. Advantage Concepts then developed and implemented WorkFlow Automation using the TokOpen API to create a seamless process.

WorkFlow Automation uses the employee number to route the timesheet report to the appropriate supervisor/manager, and the supervisor/manager approves or rejects the timesheet report.

The preliminary timesheet is used for audit purposes, and once all preliminary timesheets are approved, the final timesheets are run. The final timesheets are processed completely by WorkFlow Automation. All necessary approvals are applied and the final timesheets are burst and filed in each employee file.

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