Fire With No Smoke - Or Mirrors

Month Date, 2006: Burley Appliances, a vendor of electric and gas fires, has implemented Version One's form design and electronic document delivery software integrated into its accounting system.

With thousands of customers in 42 different countries worldwide, Burley was spending too much time and money printing, decollating, enveloping, franking and posting financial and returns handling documents. Burley was also experiencing problems with the slow postal service, customers misplacing paper documents, and the time-consuming production and distribution of foreign and multi-copy documents such as invoices, purchase orders and statements.

Chris Stone, Customer Service Manager from Burley says, "We required a solution that could quickly and flexibly produce business documents, including multilingual forms. The technology also needed to be able to automatically produce documents in the correct language and then automatically distribute them, often to several recipients at the same company."

The functionality of Version One's technology enables professional forms such as invoices, credit notes and order acknowledgements to be quickly and easily designed from the desktop. This includes German-language documents, which is important to Burley as its German and Austrian customers require all financial documents in German. The form design software will also be used to add targeted strap lines to Burley's documents, maximising direct marketing opportunities and improving customer loyalty.

"Importantly, Version One's software enables documents to be automatically delivered to different destinations by different methods", says Stone. "With just a touch of a button, a German invoice can be emailed to the sales representative and at the same time, faxed to the customer, emailed to the German tax office and faxed or emailed to Burley's own accounts department. The technology can even send different types of document to various destinations at the same time, for instance an order confirmation can be emailed to the customer whilst the corresponding despatch note is faxed to the warehouse."

Stone continues, "With Version One's technology, we'll be able to produce and electronically distribute documents with efficiency and flexibility, and in doing so, make thousands of pounds savings by dramatically cutting down on pre-printed stationery, printing and postage costs. Emailing and faxing invoices and statements will also mean they are received more quickly, speeding-up the receipt of payment and hence improving cash flow. As there will be less administrative work, five of our staff will have more time to spend on valuable sales-based activities."

Burley will go live with the new technology over the next few months. The first phase will cover order acknowledgments, statements and purchase orders, and the second phase will involve credit notes, invoices and remittance advices. Burley will also be using Version One's software for returns handling, enabling exchange request forms, goods collection notes and inspection control forms to be produced and then automatically faxed or emailed to customers and carriers, speeding-up the inward processing of products.

"This is a very exciting time for Burley", says Stone. "By implementing Version One's technology, we are entering into a new digital age that will transform the way we operate, dramatically improving both company-wide efficiency and customer service. Our new paperless processes will also save us huge amounts of money and staff time, ensuring we remain as competitive as possible in this highly ambitious marketplace."

Comment on this story.

p>