Leverdy's Implementation of Document Management System

• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

• Retail

• Business Operation

• Inventory Management

• System Integration

Leverdy, one of the 5 largest newspaper and magazine wholesalers in Germany, was dealing with a massive volume of documents. The company had to manage the daily delivery of up to 300,000 copies of a total of 5,600 magazine titles, which resulted in a huge number of delivery slips – basically ten million pages of paper per year. In addition, around 4,600 retail invoices were sent weekly to the magazine dealers by post, email or fax, about 1,000 pages of subsequent delivery slips and 4,000 to 5,000 pages of collective invoices for chain stores that have several branches. The distribution managed on Sundays (which is handled separately in the company) as well as transport invoices and returns of unsold magazines, produced even more documents that had to be stored. In total, around 15 million documents circulated at leverdy, with much of it produced by their Phoenix merchandise management system every year. The wholesaler had to retain all documents for tax purposes for ten years and their customer service department also needed access to various documents, again and again.

Leverdy is Germany's largest publication distribution center, located in Leverkusen. The company is part of the leverdy network and is one of the 5 largest newspaper and magazine wholesalers in Germany. Leverdy is the result of several mergers of companies which were active in this market for decades. Today, leverdy supplies around 4,700 sales outlets such as kiosks, supermarkets, gas stations or bakeries with newspapers and magazines every day - in an area with around 3.9 million inhabitants and almost two million households.

To cope with the huge volume of documents, Leverdy opted for a modern document management system. Their local DocuWare Partner simply set up the interface between Phoenix and the DMS using DocuWare's standard technologies. Digital file cabinets were then created step by step for all document types. Each file cabinet is password-protected, so that only authorized users are granted access. Today, all documents created in Phoenix are automatically indexed and stored in the central document pool. This greatly simplifies the work of the 18 employees in the Customer Service department. With the help of various search functions, they see the documents they need on the screen in seconds and can immediately provide customers with information by telephone. Similarly, a copy of a receipt can be forwarded from the archive to a customer by email with just a few clicks. In addition, DocuWare optimizes their storage locations. With its integrated migration workflows, document inventories are transferred from operative and expensive storage to more cost-effective, long-term storage locations. This means that documents with high access rates are quickly available, while legacy documents with low access rates are moved to inexpensive, long-term storage.

• The implementation of the document management system has greatly simplified the work of the 18 employees in the Customer Service department.
• With the help of various search functions, they see the documents they need on the screen in seconds and can immediately provide customers with information by telephone.
• A copy of a receipt can be forwarded from the archive to a customer by email with just a few clicks.

• The company was able to significantly reduce the space required for documents that need to be retained.
• A warehouse rented in the neighborhood was gradually dismantled, which also reduces the company's rental costs in the long term.