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Smithfield Foods Streamlines Accounting with DocuWare
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Food & Beverage
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Smithfield Foods, a large pork processing group, was struggling with a highly manual and paper-based accounting process. The company's accounting department received over 12,000 invoices annually, which were compared with open purchase orders or forwarded to the responsible manager for approval. However, the payment process only took place every 14 days, meaning approved invoices often had to be stored again. The final documents were placed in hanging files, while older documents were transferred to an external archive. Over time, the space requirements and manual processes became a burden. Different employees had to access documents – often multiple times – and then had to file them again.
About The Customer
Smithfield Foods, based in Norwich, UK, is part of the American Smithfield Group, the largest pork processing group in the world. The company has leading private brands and numerous private label solutions, generating total annual worldwide sales of 15 billion dollars. The accounting department of Smithfield Foods receives more than 12,000 invoices each year. Prior to the introduction of the Document Management System (DMS), payment approval was completely paper-based.
The Solution
Smithfield Foods implemented DocuWare, a digital document management system (DMS), to streamline its accounting processes. Incoming invoices are sent to their electronic archive in different ways. Invoices received by email are stored directly from Outlook, while paper invoices are quickly stored after scanning. In both cases, DocuWare reads important index terms straight from the documents. The DMS then compares the invoice information with open order data to approve payment. If these match, the invoice is released; otherwise, an automated approval process begins. The DMS sends a link to the archived documents by email to the responsible managers for approval. For payment, the DMS compiles the released invoices every 14 days in a digital file that is available at the push of a button.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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