Value Place Hotel Chain: Better Reporting Offers Value

• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
• Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)

• Software Design & Engineering Services
• System Integration

Value Place, an extended stay economy hotel chain, was struggling with its accounts payable (AP) process. The company was manually keying AP invoice information into their MAS 90 accounting system, routing the paper documents to the correct personnel for approval, then physically filing the paperwork. This process was time-consuming and prone to errors, with documents often getting lost or misfiled. The approval and payment process generally took two to three weeks, due to mailing invoices around the country for approval. Value Place planned to migrate its accounting information from a MAS 90 to a MAS 500 system and needed to implement a document management solution that could be completely integrated and rolled out with the new accounting system.

Value Place is an extended stay economy hotel chain with more than 70 locations in the Southern and Midwestern United States. The company is rapidly expanding and is a growing force in the hotel industry. All the accounting functions are handled at Value Place’s headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. One of the most important document types, the accounts payable (AP) invoices, amount to more than 2,000 a month. The company was looking for a solution to streamline its AP process, reduce document retrieval and research time, and provide authorized employees with access to accounting information.

An Authorized DocuWare Partner teamed up with Pinnacle Solutions to provide Value Place with a highly integrated solution in which AP employees can initiate electronic document workflow processes and view documents from the MAS 500 interface. Today, AP employees key invoice information into the MAS 500 system, then place a barcode sticker on the invoice and scan the document. The barcode is used as a match code to automatically pull index information from their accounting system to electronically store the document in DocuWare. Now, invoices are electronically routed for approval. This solution has allowed the company to provide authorized employees the ability to automate their workflow processes, which has sped up invoice approval time. As part of the solution, Value Place purchased two Konica Minolta BizHub 600 MFPs and one Konica Minolta C352 MFP.

• Accurate filing has been achieved with no additional man power.
• Document retrieval has been reduced from 30 man-hours a week to just seconds per inquiry because information can be accurately accessed in so many different ways.
• Even audits can be done remotely, streamlining the process.

• Reduced document retrieval time from 30 man-hours a week to just seconds per inquiry.
• Reduced invoice payment cycles from two to three weeks to a matter of days.
• Saved the Accounting department the expense of adding personnel to keep up with the growth.