Automated Invoice Processing Delivers Signifcicant Cost Savings
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Toymaster is a national association of independent specialist toyshops. It was originally formed in 1977 as an association of 13 regional toy-buying groups. In 1989 the majority of these groups closed down to form one central office in Northampton at that time servicing members with invoicing, supplier negotiation and marketing services.
The Challenge
The way the Toymaster system works is that the toyshops place orders with Manufacturers for direct delivery and invoices are sent to Toymaster to create sales invoices, which are sent to the shops.
During the ensuing years the number of members has grown to approximately 200, trading from 300 stores. This expansion in the number of members combined with the seasonal nature of the toy buying market, with its peak during the period leading up to Christmas, meant that Toymaster was finding it increasingly difficult to cope with more than 170,000 purchase invoices that needed to be processed each year.
To improve the service delivered to its members, Toymaster wanted to automate the processing of these invoices to eliminate the requirement for temporary staff and overtime during this busy period.
The Solution
After a detailed evaluation of the market, Toymaster selected an automated invoice data capture system from e-Docs UK, one of the UK’s leading providers of Business Process Optimisation solutions. The system is designed to automatically capture invoice data including header, invoice number and all line item information with internal validation to ensure that all invoices are correct.
Prior to installation, e-Docs UK completed a pre-study to precisely define Toymaster’s business requirements and determine the level of customisation that would be required. The deployment of the software-based solution was successfully completed and was run in parallel with existing systems for a couple of months before the final switchover.
Toymaster has derived some important benefits from automating the handling of purchase invoices. It has helped the organisation to eliminate the requirement for recruiting extra staff and paying overtime during busy periods. In addition, it has provided Toymaster with access to important business intelligence. The system provides a detailed analysis of all products sold to individual members enabling the organisation to refocus its catalogues to more accurately reflect their buying patterns.
“Automating our invoice processing has overcome the difficulties that we were facing handling this volume, particularly during the last few months of each year,” commented Colin Farrow, Financial Director of Toymaster. “The high level of expertise demonstrated by e-Docs UK has been a key factor in the successful deployment of a best fit solution. The company took the time to really understand our requirements and its practical and pragmatic approach throughout the implementation ensured that the whole process ran smoothly.”
Colin Farrow concluded by stating: “Following the ‘bedding in’ of the system, we have not needed to employ temporary staff for the September to December period when volumes dramatically increase. In addition, we have almost permanently eliminated any requirement for overtime.”
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e-Docs UK is a leading provider of Business Process Optimisation services that give greater control over documents and processes along with major improvements in productivity, efficiency and customer service.
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