DocuWare > Case Studies > DAF Trucks: Driving Quality with DocuWare

DAF Trucks: Driving Quality with DocuWare

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Europe

Country

Netherlands

Product

DocuWare

Tech Stack

IBM mainframe system
ERP solution

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Cost Savings

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Transportation

Use Cases

Supply Chain Visibility
Inventory Management

Services

System Integration
Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

DAF Trucks is a Dutch truck manufacturing company and a division of PACCAR, an American Fortune 500 company and one of the largest manufacturers of medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles in the world. DAF Trucks is committed to achieving the highest standards of excellence in its products and services. The company has a long history of adhering to various global ISO and ISO/TS quality standards and using methods such as Six Sigma and Kaizen as part of its business model. The company operates globally, with trading partners and service offices worldwide. The company's accounting department, based in Eindhoven, was handling an average of 50,000 outgoing invoices twice a month and processing 450,000 incoming A/P invoices per year.

The Challenge

DAF Trucks, a part of the American company PACCAR, was facing a significant challenge in managing its accounting department. The department was overwhelmed with paperwork, with an average of 50,000 outgoing invoices printed twice a month and forwarded to internal processing points and around 1,000 worldwide trading partners and service offices. The situation was even more complex when processing the 450,000 incoming A/P invoices received per year in both paper and EDI format. The audit chain involved three checkpoints: receipt of goods in the warehouse, checking that everything in the order was as expected, and that the invoice had the correct price. However, in about 20 percent of cases, at least one of these checkpoints was not fulfilled, leading to about 90,000 cases per year where employees had to consult with the relevant specialist department and send copies of invoices by post to branches worldwide tracking down the information.

The Solution

To address the challenges, DAF Trucks turned to digitization. The company implemented DocuWare, a digital workflow solution for processing incoming invoices. All paper-based invoices were digitized via scanners, indexed by the DMS, filed, and then checked in an approval process. The solution also included a special Internet portal for the distribution of all outgoing invoices. Dealers, equipped with dedicated access rights, were able to retrieve invoices from an electronic mailbox around the clock. The existing IBM mainframe system with an in-house developed ERP solution posed a particular challenge, which was addressed with adaptations that worked well with the flexible DocuWare system. By 2011, it was estimated that more than five million documents had already been securely stored in the central document pool.

Operational Impact

Sending A/R invoices via the digital dealer portal is a significant relief for DAF Trucks and a welcome service improvement for dealers.
Thanks to lightning-fast document access, employees can process queries and complaints quickly and without loads of bureaucracy.
The benefits of end-to-end process digitization is even clearer in their extremely transparent and secure processing of incoming A/P invoices.
DAF Trucks can electronically distribute unclear invoices to a large group of people in the shortest possible time and quickly determine who needs to check and approve the information in the invoice.
The flexibility of the system is also greatly appreciated: if the company would like to switch to a different ERP such as SAP, for example, the DMS can be quickly adapted, thanks to its modularity and variety of existing interfaces.

Quantitative Benefit