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TOKOPEN
IS PLATFORM FOR GROWTH AT SODEXHO PASS
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Tokairo's document management/workflow system provides firmer
grip on business process management, improves control and
cuts costs
Based
in Camberley, Surrey, Sodexho Pass Ltd - www.sodexhopass.co.uk
- provides voucher and card services to a wide range of public
and private sector organisations. The company is part of the
Sodexho Group - www.sodexho.com
- on whom three out of four UK FTSE 100 firms rely to deliver
cost-effective solutions to their employee or hospitality
catering, or to deliver support services including cleaning,
reception, switchboard and help desks, mailroom, reprographics
and grounds maintenance.
In the UK and Ireland, Sodexho provide catering and a
range of support services to clients in the business and industry,
education, healthcare, leisure and defence sectors.
The group has a presence in 76 countries, employs over 320,000
personnel and achieved consolidated revenues of €11.5
billion in 2004.
An international leader in voucher-based systems, Sodexho
Pass is active in over 27 countries throughout the world,
issuing over 1.6 billion vouchers each year to over 320,000
clients. Expertise extends across a broad portfolio of voucher
services. These include childcare, meals, food, petrol, training
courses, healthcare, eye care, travel and gifts. A major area
of growth for the company is their Childcare Choice voucher
scheme - http://www.childcarechoice.co.uk
.
Now Sodexho Pass is using Tokairo's TokOpen document management
and workflow system to handle purchase and sales invoicing,
expense and asset management and purchase order processing.
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Key
drivers
These included the need to better manage and
facilitate the flow of document-based information
around the organisation through effective workflow
technology; improve document storage and archiving;
faster access to data for users; reduce paper
storage costs; and generally a tighter grip on
a business that was expanding rapidly.
A key requirement was that the adopted solution
- implemented by Tokairo partner Xpro Services
- www.xpro-services.co.uk
- would integrate easily with Sodexho Pass' existing
iScala financial accounting system - www.scala.net.
"We were looking for both a workflow and
document management system that would improve
our efficiency and give us a surer control over
the diverse business processes, particularly in
the area of financial applications where we employ
the established iScala accounting package,"
says Financial Accountant Heather Young.
"Formerly we operated a traditional manual
paper-based system. However, as the business grew
so did the volume of paperwork. For purchase and
sales invoices, bank statements and general financial
working papers, for example, this represented
literally thousands of documents, all of which
had to be stored in filing cabinets".
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Key
reasons why Sodexho Pass selected TokOpen
"Initially we considered a number of options,"
says Ms. Young. "These included off site archiving
and archiving onto CD, but we wanted a more comprehensive
solution that could both automate the document management
processes and introduce workflow. For this, a computer-based
system was required, and it was important that it would
integrate with our iScala financial accounting package".
"We looked at a number of prospective suppliers
and system integrators and eventually came across Xpro
Services who recommended Tokairo's TokOpen system. Xpro
and Tokairo seemed to know what they were talking about.
The system was demonstrated as practical, easy to use
with familiar look and feel, robust, scalable and provided
the powerful workflow functionality we were looking
for".
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How
TokOpen helped
"Currently,
we have 15 users running the system and this will
increase shortly to 30. Our initial focus was
on sales invoicing. It now takes a matter of minutes
to capture all the sales invoices on TokoOpen
electronically; I dread to think how many hours
it would have taken manually. We would have needed
someone to do it full time. Now order details
are passed straight from our production system
to iScala, the invoices are emailed to our clients
and captured in TokOpen so we have no need to
print the invoices to paper. Thanks to the TokOpen
indexing system documents can now be retrieved
using various criteria unlike a traditional paper
based filing system."
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They are now moving to use the system to cover purchasing,
workflow will be used to route invoices to relevant
managers for authorisation, speeding up the whole process
whilst keeping an accurate track on the status of transactions.
Sodexho Pass is also planning to roll out TokOpen to
other areas of the company's business including human
resources and production.
Key benefits bestowed by TokOpen include a more streamlined
financial business process with more rapid and accurate
sales invoicing, improved management reporting and improved
access to purchase invoices with significantly reduced
time in retrieval of documents. There is improved overall
management supervision and a tighter grip on the business.
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