ImageFast News

December 2006: Switched on to Philips' Needs

Electronics giant Philips identified a need to speed up their cumbersome and slow accounts approval process and turned to ImageFast Ltd who soon set to work on improvements that would have far-reaching effects throughout the company.

Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care Division (DAP) is a member of the Philips Electronics group of companies. It is a worldwide division with production plants, sales departments and head offices spread across a considerable number of countries.

Although the company’s UK sales office first approached ImageFast with the challenge of improving their invoice approval process, the solution supplied by the Northampton-based information management specialists successfully integrated a myriad of electronic document management systems being used within the company.

The system installed is now being used by all DAP UK managers, and the software is set to roll out to other DAP locations through Europe.

It has successfully improved communication between the Philips DAP divisions across the country – from Ireland to South East England.

The initial problem highlighted by Philips was that of invoice approval. However, once the full potential of Document Management technologies was shown to the IT team and business decision makers at Philips DAP, further improvement opportunities became apparent. ImageFast began by concentrating on the automation of the invoice approval process.

Philips DAP had outsourced its accounting services to a central Philips service in Dublin, Ireland. Therefore, invoices from suppliers arrived in Dublin but required approval from the managers in the UK offices prior to payment. The system in place before ImageFast came on board was cumbersome and slow and needed improving.

Lotus Notes is a Philips Corporate standard for workflow applications, so an application was written to manage the routing of the invoice documents. The next step was how to capture and store the documents. Following a detailed analysis, it was decided that Hummingbird’s DocsFusion/PowerDocs architecture would be the best solution because it is able to support multiple document repositories and multiple index libraries across various locations.

Kofax Ascent capture software was installed in Dublin to scan the incoming invoices. These invoices were indexed and stored on a local document server before being routed via Lotus Notes.

Index information about each invoice was passed from Philips’ AS400 accounting system to both DocsFusion and the Lotus Notes database. This index information linked Notes invoice documents to the images stored in Docs.

ImageFast consultants developed a custom image viewer to plug into Notes to allow the Docs images to be accessed and viewed directly from within the Notes application.

The next step was to provide general office document management to complement the new software.

As a busy sales organisation, DAP UK produces a large number of documents using office products such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Lotus Notes. Hummingbird’s PowerDocs desktop client was installed on clients to provide full document management and retrieval functionality.

In addition, due to the fact that Philips DAP generate a large number of customer invoices on their AS400 system, there was a requirement to capture the information and load it into the document management repository. The MaxRetriever COLD product produced by Maximal technology was used to capture and maintain the invoices. A batch process was set up to ftp a spool file from the AS400 and automatically import it into the document repository on a daily basis. COLD images were stored on a Sony jukebox and managed by K-Par jukebox management software.

The head office at Croydon required the ability to scan various paper documents received from customers, suppliers and agencies. This included faxed customer orders, debit notes, marketing literature and general correspondence. Kofax Ascent Capture was installed on the main scanner in the Sales Order desk and used to capture incoming debit notes and purchase orders. Other departments were configured with basic desktop scanners powered by Hummingbird’s PowerImaging software to capture such items as press cuttings, letter and pictures.

Jon Frost, Philips DAP UK Information Technology Manager, says of the project: “The project has been a resounding success and Philips is delighted with how the technology is performing.

“The successful integration of scanning, document management, COLD, Lotus Notes, AS400 and jukebox management has proved that with a clear knowledge of what the business needs and with the help and guidance of consultants who know the products, much can be achieved."

“ImageFast consultants were able to demonstrate the power of such products and then be able to deliver the infrastructure to support the requirements. By being up to date with the latest technologies and flexible to take on board new challenges, ImageFast were able to deliver high quality systems within budget and within specified timescales."