Gough, Gough and Hamer smashes through a paperwork mountain
The engineering equipment distributor has saved time and money, and boosted productivity, after calling on Canon to overhaul its outdated manual accounting processes...
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The Gough Group is a privately owned New Zealand-based company with more than 1000 staff and a national network of 14 branches. The company was founded in 1929 and became the New Zealand distributor for Caterpillar earthmoving equipment in 1932. Today, in addition to the Caterpillar franchise, it owns companies in New Zealand and Australia dealing with transport supplies, heavy engineering equipment, Hyster forklifts and hydraulic systems. The Gough group also has its own rental division and finance company. The need Manually handling this volume of invoices is a tedious task for anyone; to add to the frustration of a manual system was the ‘paper trail’ that resulted in down time due to misplaced invoices and retrieving data. The manual invoice system did not allow the company to get an accurate up-to-date snapshot of its financial position which is crucial if a large company such as Gough Gough and Hamer is to operate effectively from a financial perspective. The company was looking for a more efficient solution that would improve the way accounts payable could process invoices, reducing administration workload and time. The solution needed to integrate seamlessly into the current SAP financial package and provide some tailored options specific to the business. The Canon solution A team from Canon went into the finance department at Gough Gough and Hamer to work onsite and get a real understanding of the requirements and best possible solution. Canon recommended a combination of Canon scanners with Captaris Alchemy and Kofax Capture document management solutions - resold in New Zealand by Canon. Essentially the proposed system would require the invoice to be loaded into the scanner and from there the software takes control. Kofax Capture uses optical character recognition to scan the content; commonly referred to as “data scraping”. This information is then loaded directly in the finance package for validation. Alchemy is the document database where all the information is stored, specially designed to hold large volumes of information and make retrieval fast and efficient. Canon Professional Services ensured the system was tailored to suit the needs of the client. A full functional specification was developed for this project which provided direction from initial development work, customising options and interfacing. Once installation was completed, the Canon team ran a full test system and conducted onsite training for the staff. Now staff can quickly and easily find the information they need from each invoice by entering key words such as “GST” and “Invoice Number” and then the system searches for the corresponding numbers and data associated with the key words. The results It has reduced the amount of work for the company’s processing clerks and reviewing work for the accountants, allowing them to carry out work in other areas of the business. The amount of storage space has been reduced as data is filed electronically and the ‘paper trail’ has reduced drastically! He said his team found the support of the Canon staff to be excellent, “they are proactive, always looking for more efficient ways to handle tasks, and willing to come in whenever needed,” says Nigel. There are six business units within the company structure all of which were operating using different systems. Four have now adopted the Canon system and the final two are about to come onboard. Gough Gough and Hamer are looking at expanding with more Canon systems in the future and at how, together, they can grow and develop the business. For more information contact 8/9/2_ex_h_nl |
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