e-docs UK is a leading Business Process Outsourcing company that offers a wide variety of software systems and document management services primarily in the areas of Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. Delivering solutions to more than 100 companies, including many Shared Service Centres, e-docs UK brings automation to manual tasks, improves process management and provides greater control and visibility for ensuring regulatory compliance. Recently e-docs UK was tasked by one of their clients, NFT Distribution, with automating their Proof of Delivery process.

Challenge

Founded over 30 years ago NFT is the UK’s leading provider of chilled, time-critical food and drink logistics solutions. It provides primary and secondary logistics to simplify the chilled food and drink supply chains for a wide range of customers including major European brand and private label manufacturers and importers, regional food and drink manufacturers and leading UK and European grocery retailers.

NFT has a strategy to deliver constant improvement in order to enhance customer supply chains and continue to increase its share of the total UK grocery logistics market. To this end, the organisation has invested in a world class infrastructure and the most advanced systems to capture and deliver best performance, outstanding value and an exceptional customer experience. As part of this strategy, NFT wanted to improve the processes used to handle and manage proof of delivery (POD) notes and speed up the identification and resolution of discrepancies.

Solution

After conducting an extensive review of the market, NFT asked e-docs UK to design and develop a cost effective solution that would streamline the handling of more than 100,000 PODs every week. One of the UK’s leading independent providers of business optimisation solutions, e-docs UK recommended an integrated system based around the enterprise capture platform ABBYY FlexiCapture. The proposed solution would not only efficiently handle this volume of PODs but also incorporate a web-based, query management system.

In the new system all supplier PODs and retailer goods receipt notes are scanned and then sent to ABBYY FlexiCapture where the documents are read and meta data is automatically extracted for indexing using multiple criteria including supplier name, PO number, delivery date and delivery point. With this information readily available in the system the search and retrieval processes are significantly improved.

“We would not have been able to deliver this solution within budget with any other capture product on the market than ABBYY FlexiCapture,” says Colin Baterip, managing director of e-docs UK. “On an annual basis we have saved over £100,000 in production costs thanks to a variety of features in FlexiCapture: the flexible document definitions, powerful indexing and validation, and the significantly reduced time for preparation and scanning were all huge wins for us. Those features, coupled with a very competitive licensing cost, made our decision easy and we plan to use ABBYY FlexiCapture for input management in the future.”

Results

“Implementing this system with e-docs UK highlighted a number of areas in our business where improvements could be made,” says Stephen Szikora NFT’s Head of IT. “It has helped us to us get a grip on our data and systems and the integration with both the Sainsbury and Tesco electronic GRN systems has been a real bonus.”

Over 85% of the documents uploaded to the e-docs UK OneView server can be viewed the same day, a powerful benefit to NFT. NFT customers, such as Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons now have direct access to all delivery documentation enabling them to rapidly locate and resolve discrepancies and keep on top of supermarket returns. Every request is automatically allocated to an advisor for action and a powerful reporting capability allows NFT to effectively measure and manage the performance of the customer services team to ensure that targets for improving service levels and customer satisfaction are met.

“The e-docs UK system meets the needs of food and drink manufacturers for rapid and timely access to delivery documents and feedback from our customers proves the system is a complete success,” says Andrew De’Vere, NFT’s Director of Warehouse Operations with responsibility for Customer Services. “Over the last three years we have invested over £20m in technology and infrastructure solutions, and this new system is helping to consolidate our position at the forefront of chilled, time-critical logistics. This solution has enabled our customer services team to be more productive, spending more time building relationships with clients and handling any issues that occur along the supply chain.”