A household name in Australia for sales and distribution of commercial and retail domestic products has moved five departments across to Hyland’s OnBase content services platform.

The company employs more than 8,000 staff across the country, with a significant number of retail outlets in all states. With a diverse portfolio of products spanning several markets, the organisation had relied upon an older Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution for many years which handled the high volume of invoicing and associated paperwork required by the Accounts Payable (AP) team.

Solutions for better management of documentation were required by the HR team as well as payroll and the company’s pricing department. Hyland’s OnBase content services platform was deployed successfully in the organisation’s HR and payroll departments some years ago and had become a trusted tool for the organisation. OnBase had led to better delivery, workflow management and general visibility of documents and files.

Moving forward several years, the company began looking specifically at the AP department, and established a need for better, more process-driven business practices.  These process inefficiencies were coupled with the relatively high cost of running the department. Current systems were not sufficiently scalable to support the organisation’s success and relied too much upon the experience and knowledge of staff, rather than on codified business rules. This lack of process transparency led to potential business continuity concerns, as well as making transactions unnecessarily complex for customers, suppliers and other departments.

Hyland responded to a request from the company to explore an expansion of services, and demonstrated how the OnBase platform would help create better visibility, support current and future processes, and also help establish collaborative workflows.

The new solution would need to help process more than 1 million invoices per year, as well as a plethora of documentation required for procurement and logistics processes.

Hyland engineers also demonstrated the Hyland Brainware for Invoices solution, which can intelligently capture and extract invoice data including vendor, PO, pricing and line items, and then validate that data against financial management systems.

Hyland’s OnBase platform was selected as the best solution for the AP department in a competitive pitch. This was due to the success of the proof-of-concept, longstanding positive results for OnBase content services solutions across other departments at the organisation, and the high levels of service and availability demonstrated in the past. The organisation also purchased licences for Brainware, which would work in conjunction with the OnBase platform and the existing ERP.

Hyland’s OnBase solution has now been deployed to the Accounts Payable department at the organisation. Invoices are sent and received via email, and OnBase integrates directly to the company’s ERP.

The integration includes a series of processes that are strategically placed to match an individual invoice number with data from the ERP system. The company can then approve a payment through OnBase, and payment is automatically scheduled for that specific number.

Ultimately, these business improvements in the back office lead to increased customer satisfaction.

The solution has been configured to suit their specific business needs, and has been integrated with the organisation’s in-house ERP platform.

The automation takes away much heavy lifting from the AP department and has had a positive effect on staff members. Those individuals now spend less time looking for and processing invoices, and subsequently have more time to spend on ensuring accuracy, communicating with other departments and third parties, and general improvement of the department’s business processes. 

Overall, the solution has improved efficiency, saves significant amounts of employee time each day and has reduced errors. Suppliers are paid promptly and efficiently which has had a positive flow-on effect to the company’s supply-chain.

Looking to the future, the organisation is currently expanding the solution to its New Zealand operations and is also rolling out the solution’s mobile app. This will enable staff to perform their roles effectively from remote locations as well as providing better insights into the system outside of standard work hours, should the need arise.