Document Management for an Office Furniture Manufacturer
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Europe
Country
- Germany
Product
- DocuWare document management system
Tech Stack
- SAP accounting software
- Siemens-Nixdorfs BS2000 operating system
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Functions
- Procurement
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Founded in 1871 by Albert Stoll, Sedus Stoll AG is one of the leading European manufacturers of office chairs, furniture for communication equipment and multipurpose furniture. With 1123 employees in eight European subsidiaries and over 30 international sales offices, the company had total revenues of 124.3 million Euros in 2003. The company has received high-ranking awards and the DIN ISO 9001 certification for document compliance and was the first German furniture company to go through the Ecological Audit according to EU standards. Quality, environmentally sound production coupled with flexible, order oriented production processes are the most important characteristics of Sedus Stoll. Innovative, ergonomically well designed furniture, as well as customer orientated sales and service are the prevailing strengths of the company.
The Challenge
Sedus Stoll, a leading European manufacturer of office furniture, was facing challenges with its document management process. The process for purchasing production materials was complex and divided between several departments and locations. This decentralized process caused long delays in accessing information, resulting in numerous copies of documentation being sent to different offices. The internal mailing service was overloaded by the delivery of so much paper. Over the years, more and more working copies and local subdirectories of information were created; soon anyone looking for information was forced to also rely on the memory of coworkers. Too often, this information was exchanged by phone, making the transmission of figures especially error-prone. In addition to numerous private subfolders, the purchasing information was also available on microfilm. The Sales and Accounting departments had access to two microfilm readers in order to retrieve order confirmations and invoices. With so many working copies of information, finding needed documents became more tedious and difficult.
The Solution
Sedus Stoll decided to implement a document management system to enable process-oriented, electronic filing and access from any location within the corporation. The company chose the DocuWare document management system. All incoming and outgoing documents are filed in a central DocuWare document pool. Employees from all departments and locations have easy access. Records generated on the host system, such as outgoing orders, credit notes, order confirmations or outgoing invoices are collected as spool files and automatically filed in DocuWare using index information pulled from the accounting database. Incoming paper documents are labelled with a barcode and scanned. Index data is taken from the host system automatically. If no corresponding data base exists, the documents are indexed manually. This ensures that all documents are immediately available from the desktop of each employee authorized to view them.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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