DIGITAL AUTOMATION THROUGH DOCUWARE

In 1972, brothers Huw and Eurof Owen launched light haulage operations from Llanelli, South Wales with one van. Owens Brothers (as the business was then known) started by carrying furniture, kitchens and piano parts and soon acquired two small lorries. Since that time, the company has grown and evolved to become the nation-wide transport and courier business that it is today.

Owens Group are hugely respected within both its industry and within the geographical areas that it operates and this is exemplified by them celebrating their 50th year in business this year.

CASE STUDY

Owens Transport Makes Documents Journey Digital

Infinity Document Solutions were invited by Owens Group UK to help Owens to digitally transform their purchase request and invoice approval process. Owens were looking to make their processes quicker and easier for their staff whilst also improving accountability and controls into their system and reducing the reliance on paper documents.

Owens wanted to improve the visibility of its processes and give easier access to staff of documents and data and enable them to see where orders were within the system and to be able to digitally request, authorise or cancel orders electronically on laptops, phones and tablets helping both procurement and finance departments improve efficiencies and transparency in their processes.

The project started off with the bespoke creation of an Owens digital purchase request form, which would be completed for all orders. These digital forms were then electronically routed to the relevant authorisers within the business who would accept or decline the purchase request. If accepted, the request would be actioned and the goods ordered and if declined the purchase request would be digitally returned to the originator with the reasons for its rejection. This process was dramatically speeded up through the DocuWare digital workflow, as the authoriser can receive the request instantaneously, wherever they are physically located within the business.

Owens also asked Infinity to utilise DocuWare to enable the digital capture of their incoming invoices into the finance department and to help them improve the visibility of all documentation regarding their orders. Infinity achieved this by setting up bespoke, relevant Data index fields that easily captured information off incoming invoices and enabled the finance department to easily locate invoices and purchase orders and tie them together via order numbers, customer name etc. This data capture was also used to digitally send relevant finance line items to a csv file which Owens could then pull into their SAGE 200 finance system and to significantly reduce the amount of manual data entry into SAGE.

Owens

Owens Group UK, as a very well established and respected company and employer for 50 years, strive to continuously evolve their business culturally and technologically and Infinity Document Solutions were delighted to be asked to help them with their most recent digital transformation project. Infinity Director Gareth Williams said of the project, “We were delighted that Owens Group UK put their trust in Infinity Document Solutions to partner with them on this project and we very much hope that they are pleased with the outcome. We are very proud of the DocuWare system that both Owens and Infinity have worked very hard on together over recent months and I believe the drive and ambition of the Owens Procurement, finance and leadership teams, as well as the technical team of Infinity Document Solutions, saw this project completed on time and in budget and I think both companies can take a great deal of pride in that.”

About Infinity DS and DocuWare

DocuWare have been a leading light in the Document management space for over 20 years but now more than ever with people looking to digitally transform their companies and organisations it is proving to be a catalyst for change. Infinity have been partners of DocuWare since their inception in 2012 and have enjoyed seeing the technological advances that DocuWare have brought to the world of work and how they give compliance and security to documents and processes whilst also saving time, money and crucially the environment.

Gareth Williams, of Infinity said, “We love working with DocuWare. We are constantly amazed how far we can push the technology to meet the clients’ requirements and its potential to transform a business is seemingly limitless. What we and our customers really appreciate is the ability to replicate existing paper-based processes so easily, meaning the customer has very little change to its work practices and therefore very little resistance from staff. People sometimes think that digital transformation means lengthy, expensive I.T. development that changes the way that they have to work, but this is simply not the case with DocuWare.”