Homeserve Cuts Costs and Improves Efficiency with Version One's Document Imaging

Homeserve - provider of emergency call out and insured repair solutions for businesses and homeowners worldwide - has cut costs, streamlined its purchase-to-pay (P2P) processes and is phasing-out its storage facility thanks to Version One's document imaging technology, DbArchive. This technology, which is tightly integrated into Homeserve's Oracle Financials ERP system, electronically stores purchase invoices and supplier forms and enables the quick retrieval of these documents via Oracle or by using Version One's web browser. Looking ahead, Homeserve plans to further improve P2P efficiency by implementing Version One's data capture technology for the automated capture and verification of invoice information.

Homeserve was looking for a solution to further improve its purchase-to-pay processes. All purchase invoices and supplier forms were previously stored in on-site filing cabinets for the first six months and subsequently, were transported to Homeserve's offsite storage facility for archiving. Retrieving a purchase invoice for query resolution or for after-payment analysis could be time-consuming.

Homeserve now images 3,000 purchase invoices and supplier forms every month using a Kodak i40 scanner. The images are then exported to DbArchive where they can be retrieved either by using Version One's web browser or via drilldown from within Oracle Financials. In addition, invoices are now approved using Oracle's workflow in conjunction with DbArchive, enabling authorisers to view invoices on-screen with a few clicks of the mouse.

Teresa Taft, Project Accountant from Homeserve says, "Authorised staff across all our sites can now access purchase invoices and supplier forms within seconds, enabling invoice queries to be resolved swiftly. We no longer have to spend time posting and faxing-out copy invoices and we're also beginning to phase-out on-site storage as well as our off-site storage facility, cutting costs."

Taft continues, "The speed at which invoices are getting approved ready for payment has been improved and thanks to Version One's technology, the purchase ledger function is now more streamlined than ever before."

Going forward, Homeserve is expanding the use of Version One's imaging technology to incorporate other finance documents, such as claims management job sheets. Up to 10,000 of these are processed each week. Homeserve also plans to roll-out the DbArchive technology to its international branches and is looking at implementing Version One's automated data capture system to further improve its purchase-to-pay processes. This technology, which uses optical character recognition (OCR) to 'read' invoice information, cuts manual data entry by up to 80%.

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