Pluss
Pluss is a social enterprise that currently helps over
2,500 people with disabilities to find a career. Founded over 40
years ago, Pluss carries out its work through a range of
specialist, local employment services and through direct employment
with commercial businesses across the West Country and West
Yorkshire.
The challenge
Joe Wall, Financial Manager, joined Pluss shortly before it made
the transition from being a council department to Local Authority
Controlled Company. Now largely self-funding, Pluss is part
council-owned but operates on commercial lines.
At the time of joining, Pluss had recently completed an upgrade
from Access Horizons to Access Dimensions.
"Our bottom line is very small compared to our turnover - we target
around £300,000 profit on £22m, so every error or
inefficiency has an immediate impact," says Joe. "By consolidating
our company data into one real-time source of information, we had
the starting point we needed to further tighten up our
processes."
Purchasing was the first area under scrutiny. "This was long and
laborious," recalls Joe. "Purchase requests were written down and
then re-keyed into the system. When goods came in, you'd need to
chase a manager to sign the invoice before faxing or posting it
off. This made it difficult to quickly find out who had been paid,
when, how much we'd paid them and who had approved the
invoice."
The approval process itself also needed tightening up. "When you
authorise a lot of invoices in one go, it's easy for mistakes to
get through," says Joe. "We wanted to install a workflow to ensure proper
authorisation by the relevant people - and cut out a load of
paperwork at the same time." On the same lines, Joe was keen to
automate other paper-based processes such as requests for new stock
codes, and creating new customer records.
"... FocalPoint, ReadSoft and Access Document
Management has significantly reduced administration, sped up our
processes and ultimately saved money; we've streamlined our
accounts team by four." Joe Wall
Financial Manager
Getting supplier
invoices into Dimensions was also proving a challenge, relying on
manual methods that took up valuable time and money. Finally, the
company was looking for an easier way to retrieve invoices that
didn't involve trawling through archives and filing cabinets.
The solution
Following detailed consultation, Joe's account manager
recommended Access FocalPoint. This modular suite offers a range of
flexible modules, including powerful purchasing functionality.
Being web-based, it's ideal for Pluss' many
site-based users, and provides a fully configurable authorisation
workflow.
On top of this, Access suggested the ReadSoft scanning system,
'Documents for Invoices,' which automates the final stage of the
purchasing cycle. Together, FocalPoint and ReadSoft create a
seamless 'purchase-to-pay' system.
To complete the solution, the Access consultant proposed fully
integrated Access Document Management (ADM). This software provides
a window on all centrally scanned documents, enabling invoices (and
all other) business correspondence such as graphics and emails, to
be quickly viewed, retrieved and searched by any authorised
user.
Finally, the Access 'Workflow Forms' module was
chosen to simplify a wide range of generic tasks (such as
requesting stock codes). This works by replicating existing
paper-based routines in configurable electronic templates and
automating the capture of specific information as the Forms travel
around the business.
The implementation
Joe and the Access consultant worked closely together to design
the purchase-to-pay (P2P) workflow. Because of the crossover
between FocalPoint and ReadSoft, the decision was made to go live
on both systems simultaneously. Although the implementation highlighted several
issues, the consultant worked closely with Pluss to overcome
these.
"Despite the size and scale of the implementation, our Access
consultant managed each stage well. They were also able to show me
exactly how it worked, so that I could play a more hands-on role in
future," says Joe.
Results
Pluss has gained instant benefits. "The combination of
FocalPoint, ReadSoft and ADM has significantly reduced admin, sped
up our processes and ultimately saved money; we've streamlined our
accounts team by four," says Joe. In addition, Pluss has seen
long-term benefits, such as:
Time and paper savings
Using FocalPoint, staff can now raise purchase requests from any
one of Pluss' sites. Using workflow, requests are fed in a steady
stream to approvers direct to their inbox, making the approval
process far more manageable and more cost effective. "10,000
purchase requests have been made in the first year alone, the vast
majority being emailed direct to our suppliers. This has saved
considerable amounts of time and paper," says Joe.
OCR improves accuracy
ReadSoft's auto-match capabilities complete the workflow. Using
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, the system builds
up a virtual memory of all invoices passing through and can match
invoices straight into Dimensions.
Reduced payment risk
Together, the solution has made the process far more
cost-effective - essential when you process on average 50,000+
invoices per year! The system contains all the checks and balances
to ensure that purchases are fully authorised, limiting for
example, the risk of double payments.
Easier dealings with suppliers
Through ADM, staff can quickly retrieve documents at a moment's
notice. "Being able to see payment terms at a glance is very useful
- especially when dealing with awkward suppliers during a payment
run. Or internally, if someone phones to query an invoice they've
seen in FocalPoint, I can quickly
pull up the scanned image of the document myself. Since installing
FocalPoint, ReadSoft and ADM, I haven't needed to refer back to
hard copy once. This has made it much easier to deal with anomalies
and significantly improved our service levels."
Greater accuracy across the business
Using Workflow Forms, tasks that are labour-intensive and
paper-based are now streamlined and electronic. "Before, it was a
case of 'rubbish in, rubbish out,'" says Joe. "Now, the onus is on
staff to enter information correctly; if a request for say, a new
stock code, gets rejected, people only have themselves to
blame!"
Easy to use, quick to train
Since installing the system, FocalPoint has gained widespread
acceptance.
"A lot of people who perceived a new system as being hard to use
really like it; I've also been able to take control of their system
remotely which has helped me quickly train a high percentage of
staff."
Detailed project reporting
"We've been fans of Dimensions' reporting capabilities for many
years," says Joe. "The Costing
reports are sophisticated, yet easy to use, and give me, and
the stakeholders, the exact level of information we need. I
certainly haven't seen a comparable level of analysis in similar
systems. We'd be really stuck without it!"
The future
Pluss is currently looking at SelectHR to streamline its recruitment
processes and to help manage its equal opportunities policy. "By
utilising Self-service, we're hoping to get the HR function away
from admin and towards their core focus."
Conclusion
Joe concludes, "I'd happily recommended our Access solution for
companies in the not-for-profit sector. It's a really
flexible system which makes my job much easier."
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