Document Management for Suppliers

Stationers, Inc., a division of Champion Industries, Inc. is a well-known West Virginia office supply company that prides themselves on their superior product offerings from general business supplies to computer equipment and a wide variety of furniture selections.

With over 500 employees statewide and a 50-year-old reputation built on customer trust, quick and efficient customer service remains one of the company’s main goals. But with an ineffective document management system in place, Stationer’s was incapable of reaching the level of efficiency they desired for real ROI results.

One of their biggest challenges was document search and retrieval. With so many hands accessing the same documents, items were often misplaced and collaboration between departments had become inefficient. Concerned that this outdated system would negatively affect customer service, Stationers found a new solution; GlobalSearch® Enterprise Content Management (ECM) from Square 9® Softworks. With GlobalSearch, business critical information stored in a variety of formats, is easily accessible and securely held within one central location. Any department can find and access the documents they need, the moment they need it.

GlobalSearch comes equipped with KeyFree Indexing, designed to eliminate manual data entry through the power of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). With a simple hover and click over a word or phrase, the technology intelligently reads and enters key data selected into the appropriate index fields, which has already increased Stationer’s productivity by 20%.

GlobalSearch’s unique searching capabilities also allows employees to instantly pull customer information through keywords such as name, address, order number and other search criteria. So now, when a client calls in regarding account information, all paperwork relating to that customer can quickly be pulled up and addressed on the spot. In addition, document history logs allow managers to keep track of who has accessed, edited, and even viewed a document last. This in-depth visibility has eliminated the challenge of managing misplaced paperwork, saving employees at least 10 hours a week in administrative tasks like search, retrieval and filing alone.

GlobalCapture®, Square 9’s Document Capture Automation engine, is also being utilized in the customer service department to scan in daily orders and delivery receipts. Before GlobalCapture, scanning paperwork was a multi-step, time consuming process. But now, employees can batch scan documents within a matter of seconds, eliminating the 4 hours a day normally spent filing away paperwork. Thanks to structured and unstructured OCR technology, GlobalCapture allows Stationers to create custom templates or Marker Zones for each vendor. When documents are scanned, OCR automatically recognizes specific areas of the page, accurately and effortlessly capturing, and indexing all order information and allowing employees to work on higher-level priorities.

Pleased with GlobalSearch and their switch to the Square 9 Global Suite of solutions, Stationers plans on expanding their use of the award-winning ECM solutions. Stationers is looking to eliminate an entire room of file cabinets and repurpose the space for new hires as the company continues to see tremendous growth. In addition, they are currently in the process of scanning 100% of the paperwork in the Accounts Payable department through the power of GlobalCapture. To learn more about Stationers Inc., please visit www.stationers-wv.com.

Interview: Jennifer Walters, Office Processor Manager, Stationers Inc.

Q. What business challenges led you to Square 9’s software solutions?

Jennifer Walters: We already had a document management solution in place, but after discussing some of our pain points with our sales representative we decided to change from Fortis to Square 9. After seeing how GlobalSearch would work with our company’s daily processes, as well as how much quicker we’d be able to find what we’re looking for, it was an easy decision to switch.

Q. How have daily processes changed since implementing Square 9’s Solutions?

Walters: Before Square 9 we were already using capture automation, but now that we’re using GlobalCapture, our processes are more user friendly and data capture is completed in a shorter amount of time. It’s a lot easier to scan in bulk and we have complete confidence that the data is accurately being captured and indexed away where it needs to be.

Q. In what ways has Square 9’s product suite improved business performance?

Walters: Since implementing Square 9’s solutions we have been able to make processes more efficient and better utilize the office staff’s time for more important tasks. Our customer service department is benefitting the most since our transition to GlobalSearch and GlobalCapture because all support cases can be completed without anyone having to leave their desk to find the documents to reference. Since everything is stored in one place, employees can find what they’re looking for with simple keyword searches. This not only makes it easier for the employees, but it makes the customer or vendor on the other end of the phone happy as well.

Q. Would you recommend GlobalSearch and GlobalCapture?

Walters: Yes, we would definitely recommend GlobalSearch and GlobalCapture. They are very easy to use and the fact that we have the ability to access information through the web is huge! There are so many features that we can utilize as our company grows and we are now moving forward with more digital documents than paper, which was a part of the plan all along.