American Fruits and Flavors

Challenge

AFF was growing rapidly and needed to become more automated. In AP alone, every year generated five cabinets’ worth of paper. In AR, an entire trailer was necessary. Documents were being duplicated multiple times, all on paper, because they did not have a central repository.

The company was also seeking a way to streamline processes. They wanted to auto-post purchase orders and combine related documents. The small staffs in each department were losing hours sorting and manually directing documents. There was also the problem of ensuring that all product details were protected for product integrity and FDA requirements. Sensitive materials are a part of their business and include information such as proprietary recipes for clients and even who the clients are. AFF needed strong security for their documents.

Solution

Michael Model, Corporate Controller, attended an AP Expo to explore ways that other companies were automating processes. Attempting to find a solution proved fruitless so he spoke with AFF’s ERP partner for a recommendation. Initial demonstrations of DocLink showed characteristics of a solution that AFF wanted such as an accessible repository, customizable workflow, and seamless integration into SL. A few years after implementation in AP, DocLink was also installed in AR.

Accounting Supervisor Daisy Lorenzo explained a simple AR process not even possible before DocLink: “[What] is helping is having all documents in one place. For POs, when a customer calls, Customer Service puts the PO into DocLink. When it gets shipped, we get the ship list and bill of lading source; then when we invoice them, they go through the ERM printer. The customer’s check goes there too after payment. Everything from start to end for the invoice or sale gets settled in one place. That’s the important thing that has helped us.” This process also involves several users across different departments instituted in a variety of permission levels through the solution.

Benefits

The initial benefits felt in AP were vast enough to warrant an expansion into AR. When the first AR workflow process was put in place, the time for sending out AR invoices was cut down by almost 90%. Though there has not been an increase in personnel since the implementation, Model tells us that the AP staff should have doubled in size due to growth but has not because business processes have been automated so well with DocLink.

• In AR, employees who were frequently working overtime are no longer doing so.
• For storage, the trailer for AR documents is now unnecessary and the annual need for cabinets in AP is obsolete, a constantly growing yearly savings.

Overall, even just the simple solution to a printand-scan process has drastically cut back the amount of wasted time AFF had previously experienced. AFF is continuing to grow and has already started discussing the need for DocLink in Customer Service.