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DocFlow X SAP
WHICH APPLICATION SCENARIOS?
• Checking and approval of supplier invoices
FINANCE • Electronic storage of tax documents
• Real‐Time Finance Dashboard
• Distribution of payslips online and via email
HUMAN • Complete management of the Employee Personnel File
• Electronic management of requests for leave and schedule
RESOURCES changes
• Electronic management of business trips and expense reports
• Archiving of sales‐cycle documents (from proposal through to
SALES
payment)
• Supply contract management
• Management of customer documentation with SAP CRM
• Issuing PO requests
• Issuing purchase orders
PURCHASING • Tender offer documentation
• Complete management of the purchasing order file
• Supplier qualification
• Technical documentation attached to products/equipment
PRODUCTION • Management of order documents and authorisation processes
• Management of SAP PLM documentation
• Archiving of data and archival SAP documents (Application Data
Archiving)
IT SYSTEMS • Management of ICT asset life cycle
• Management of software orders
• Failure reports and service requests
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INTEGRATING SAP
WITH ECM
recent years,
organisations have
focused their
attention on ERP
systems to manage
transaction data
rapidly and effectively.
But over and above
the data, business
processes are based
on the documents underlying the transactions and on
collaborative processes between the various different
corporate functions involved. ERP is the optimal solution for
managing data, but because it is a closed system, it cannot
support organisational processes. While it is actually possible
“ ”
to manage document processes through SAP without using a
separate document system, it involves high costs and major
complexity during the implementation and management
phases.
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SPEED AND EFFICIENCY IN ALL COMPANY AREAS
DocFlow has developed an Enterprise Content Management
solution that has a direct, certified interface with SAP, one of
the most popular ERP packages in the world, and connects
transactions to documents and information (structured and
otherwise) In a subsequent step, DocFlow automates
management of the associated processes.
“ ”
DOCFLOW HAS DEVELOPED AN ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT
SOLUTION THAT HAS A DIRECT, CERTIFIED INTERFACE WITH SAP, ONE OF
THE MOST POPULAR ERP PACKAGES IN THE WORLD, AND CONNECTS
TRANSACTIONS TO DOCUMENTS AND INFORMATION (STRUCTURED AND
OTHERWISE) IN A SUBSEQUENT STEP, DOCFLOW AUTOMATES
MANAGEMENT OF THE ASSOCIATED PROCESSES.
With this integration, all company areas where activities are
based on transactional data contained in the management
system can save time and resources. The SAP/DocFlow
combination leverages the investments that businesses have
already made in their management systems, enhancing and
optimising them. The integration occurs both at server level,
facilitating the acquisition of documents coming from
different channels, and at client level, so that users can
manage documents and processes directly from SAP's
screens. So a single interface gives users everything they
need: the transaction, the associated document, and the
process that is being executed. In practice, the DocFlow
solution acquires documents from different channels and
classifies and links them to the specific business process so
that they are ready to enter the workflow. At this point the
business user is notified, and this user registers the
document in SAP.
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Whenever users manage a SAP‐generated event, the system
automatically provides the documents and associated
information and allows them to start the approval process,
after which a message is sent to the management system to
notify the user that the process is finished. An additional step
is Electronic Storage, which is implemented by the DocFlow
solution.
“ ”
DOCFLOW DOES NOT IMPOSE A PRESET MODEL: RATHER, STARTING FROM
BEST PRACTICES DEVELOPED OVER YEARS OF EXPERIENCE, IT OFFERS
TAILORED APPLICATIONS CREATED TO MEET SPECIFIC NEEDS
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APPLICATION SCENARIOS
FINANCE
CHECKING AND APPROVAL OF SUPPLIER INVOICES
The processes of checking (VeFa) and approval of payment of supplier invoices are the most costly in terms
of resources, due to their importance and sensitivity.
In fact, VeFa is often the only real process for controlling job order expenses, and managing it correctly
makes it possible to align the administrative path from order right through to payment.
The process of automation can be broken down into three steps:
• pre‐booking: preventive check of the invoice, data recovery and correction, and sending to SAP's
registration transactions
• post‐booking: payment (total or partial) approval flow, by level of procurement, serial or in parallel.
• payment: cross‐check of the payment due dates indicated by SAP with the invoice's actual approval
level.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE BUSINESS SOLUTION BUSINESS BENEFITS
• Simplify and speed‐up checking • Automatic reading of content of • Efficiency: fewer resources for
and approval of invoices from invoices (OCR) the check, approve and archive
their arrival time in the company, • Integration with SAP Business cycle
without circulating paper Workplace for automatic • Effectiveness: accounting person‐
• Efficiently involve the buyers for registration by SAP nel can concentrate on that part
authorisations • Workflow via web/email/mobile of their work with a higher value
• Make the process transparent and phone with “intelligent” return
auditable notifications and work codes • Compliance: an automated
process is a controlled and
measurable process
• Competitiveness: improves the
image the company presents to
the outside world
• Opportunities: freed from paper,
the process can be outsourced
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APPLICATION SCENARIOS
HUMAN RESOURCES
ELECTRONIC MANAGEMENT OF REQUESTS FOR
LEAVE AND SCHEDULE CHANGES
The complete automation of managing employee leave is just one of the many examples of “distributed”
HR processes that can be converted to an electronic system with significant advantages for the company.
A natural candidate for this type of automation is any process where requests from employees involve:
• Filling out a paper form
• Approval by a manager or by HR personnel
• Entering the reference SAP transaction
The automation made possible by DocFlow allows everyone involved in this company process to be more
efficient and free up resources. And the advantages increase with the number of employees and the
complexity of the company.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE BUSINESS SOLUTION BUSINESS BENEFITS
• Speed up and simplify the • Automatic reading of paper • Efficiency: fewer resources
request process without forms via OCR needed to collect forms, plus
circulating paper • Workflow via web/email/‐ automatic registration
• Never miss payroll dates mobile phone with “intel‐ • Effectiveness: reports and
• Archive and consult the ligent” notifications and work early indicators of progress in
documents produced codes the process
• Automatic registration of HR • Compliance: total transpa‐
SAP transactions rency and complete moni‐
toring of the process
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APPLICATION SCENARIOS
SALES
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT FOR CUSTOMERS WITH
SAP CRM AND SIEBEL
When implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, it is essential not to forget the
importance of efficient and effective management of documents (and their associated processes) that are
not strictly linked to CRM.
There are document‐related activities, commonly performed by CRM, that lend themselves well to
automation:
• Registration and archiving of incoming documents
• Putting communications and contracts into envelopes and mailing them
• Bringing order to the company’s archives
DocFlow's CRMDocs solution offers a broad array of functions for improving a company’s CRM processes.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE BUSINESS SOLUTION BUSINESS BENEFITS
• Speed up and simplify the • Centralised archiving of all • Efficiency: fewer resources
request process without customer documents needed to manage docu‐
circulating paper • Paperwork processing history mentation
• Never miss payroll dates • Automatic dispatching • Effectiveness: documents are
• Archive and consult the • Bidirectional integration with not lost and can be
documents produced the principal CRM systems immediately accessed by the
Contact Centre
• Compliance: immediate calcu‐
lation of KPIs and service SLAs
for conformance to internal
and external regulations and
sector standards.
THE WORK PROCESS
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APPLICATION SCENARIOS
PURCHASING
COMPLETE MANAGEMENT OF THE PURCHASING
ORDER FILE
Procurement is one of the main factors in a company’s competitiveness. For this reason, this process needs
effective procedures and efficient systems that apply criteria in order to streamline the various operational
steps, each of which produces a precise type of document that is, to a greater or lesser extent,
unstructured. One characteristic of the purchasing process is that it cuts horizontally across the
organisational chart: not all of the persons involved can have access to SAP, and the life cycle of a purchase
order requires the management of “push” feedback and synchronisation. SAP supports the transactional
part of the purchase order’s life cycle but, by their very nature, the remaining unstructured content‐
enabled parts are overlooked.
The growing need for compliance and audit support justifies the introduction of a system that is specialised
and integrated with SAP for managing every single document associated with the purchase order.
The automation functions that DocFlow adds to the procurement process are an effective response to this
need.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE BUSINESS SOLUTION BUSINESS BENEFITS
• Manage a highly complex and • Centralised archiving of all • Efficiency: fewer resources are
widespread process documents, categorised by needed to manage
• Increase the transparency of “supplier purchase order” documentation
authorisation processes • Paperwork processing history • Effectiveness: buyers are
• Archive purchase order history • Automatic dispatching to the focused on the process and
documents and make them supplier not on shuffling documents
“always available” for • Integration with SAP • Compliance: the adherence of
consultation procurement business authorisation processes to
processes internal and external
regulations and sector
standards can be documented
THE WORK PROCESS
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APPLICATION SCENARIOS
PRODUCTION
MANAGING DOCUMENTATION ATTACHED TO
PRODUCTS AND EQUIPMENT
In SAP, the documentation attached to product codes, tools, machinery and equipment in general is a truly
huge subject.
Any “element” entered in SAP is accompanied by a more or less significant volume of corresponding
documents relating to quality, production data, operations management, repair, and much more. As
regards sources, this documentation can come from inside, it may be automatically generated by
production systems, or it might originate from suppliers. To all this we can add “legacy” documentation
that already exists on various types of media, on disk or even in hardcopy form.
DocFlow manages these “attachments” with a document system integrated with SAP that archives all the
documentation and makes it available in a simple, secure way via the web.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE BUSINESS SOLUTION BUSINESS BENEFITS
• Organise, and keep a history • Automatisms for archiving the • Efficiency: fewer resources
for, all production previous documentation needed to manage
documentation documentation
• Integration with SAP business • Effectiveness: documents are
• Share the documentation with processes not lost and are easily
other business units accessible from the web and
SAP
• Compliance: the system
satisfies internal and external
regulations and sector
standards linked to the
archiving of the documents
THE WORK PROCESS
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APPLICATION SCENARIOS
IT SYSTEMS
ARCHIVING UNSTRUCTURED CONTENT: FILES, EMAIL
AND SAP AND SHAREPOINT DOCUMENTS AND DATA
The need for space to archive unstructured digital content is continuously expanding, and large companies
are struggling to manage, rationalise and keep up with requests.
The level of growth is such that companies need a management system that is effective and, especially,
cost‐effective.
Projects to archive unstructured content should start with the areas that are the most problematic in terms
of information management, archiving costs, and legal aspects.
That said, most IT managers agree on the following order of importance of unstructured content:
documents and images, emails, files, SAP documents and reports, and everything else.
It is well‐known that SAP does not delete master data in real‐time, and consequently the size of its
database grows with the number of transactions generated until the client decides to remove closed
transactions. Data Archiving stores all old content in the form of files, freeing up space in the database and
permitting its repopulation.
With DocFlow's “Integrated Content Archive” it is possible to implement an integrated solution for the
main platforms that “generate content” in companies today.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE BUSINESS SOLUTION BUSINESS BENEFITS
• Save storage space • A single solution for archiving • Efficiency: lower costs for
• Preserve the history of any content produced in the system management and
everything produced in the company migration
company • Internal management of • Effectiveness: SAP and other
security, backup and disaster systems run faster
recovery • Compliance: single access
• A solution with a lifetime of point for the company's
over 10 years archived documents and data
• Integration with SAP
procurement business
processes
THE WORK PROCESS
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CASE HISTORY
GALILEO AVIONICA
DocFlow Synergy for dematerialising the payables cycle and
improving the governance of documents supporting
business processes managed by SAP.
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CASE HISTORY
SOLVAY ITALIA
DocFlow to improve the workflow of invoices and accounting
documents, thanks in part to automated processes for
connecting to SAP.
The company The solution
Founded in Belgium in 1863 by Ernest Solvay, the The DocFlow solution optimised document flows
Solvay Group is a multinational company by leaving the internal document‐scanning
operating in three sectors: chemicals, process (which was performed with the previous
pharmaceuticals and plastics. Production is highly system) unchanged. In the Italian office, the
diversified with a very complex product portfolio folders of documents that arrived from Lisbon
of more than 1,500 registered trademarks in the every month disappeared, and there was no
various sectors. Such a rich and complex offering longer any need to archive them in paper form,
requires the Group to conduct constant research with everything that follows on from this in terms
in order to correct and improve its products, in of efficiency and savings. The documents are
addition to seeking out new applications. archived on a server at the Bollate site and an
automated process extracts them and uploads
The need them to SAP during the night. Documents are
extracted once every twenty‐four hours and the
Document management has deep roots at Solvay, company checks that everything takes place
and began over 15 years ago with the correctly, including by means of sample checks,
implementation of a solution for optically before giving the green light to perform a secure
scanning and loading documents into the SAP transfer to DocFlow and Electronic Storage.
management system, which was adopted
internationally, and a workflow system towards The project
which various types of documents were routed.
More recently, following a European‐level To implement the project, which had a strong
administrative reorganisation, Solvay Italia commitment from the company's top
needed to optimise its document management management, fifteen suppliers were initially
system to contain costs and reduce the negative considered and this number was then reduced to
impact on process efficiency. In particular, two. The abilities demonstrated by DocFlow in
attention was focused on the workflow of the area of taxes, and its capacity to make a
invoices and accounting documents. Following precise assessment of the starting situation in
the creation of a service centre in Lisbon, order to identify possible areas for improvement
Portugal – which brought together a good part of without overturning the existing system, were
the Group's accounting processes, with the fundamental for its inclusion in both the first
addition of accounting closures – a major selection and in the final choice. The DocFlow
exchange of hardcopy documents was supplier was appointed the Electronic Storage
engineered between this centre and Italy, to Manager, with a commitment to guarantee the
undergo the checking and calculation processes availability of a legally‐compliant archive for ten
that precede archiving. In addition to optimising years, together with its constant adjustment to
this flow, an important project driver was legal changes. Having resolved the invoice
compliance for the preservation of documents problem, Solvay Italia turned its attention to
over time (for Italy, this period is ten years). managing shipping documents and payslips with
DocFlow.
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CASE HISTORY
The company
Wolters Kluwer is an international publishing group operating in 26 countries. It is present in Italy through
Wolters Kluwer Italia (WKI), which includes ten of the most authoritative and accredited brands producing
publishing and software products and services: Artel, CEDAM, Indicitalia, Mitos, OA Sistemi, OSRA, Pragma
Software, De Agostini Professionale, Utet Professionale and Ipsoa Editore.
The need
At Wolters Kluwer Italia, technological choices in the administrative area have always been driven by the
need to standardise and integrate the company's activities and the associated management systems. For
this reason the SAP system was implemented in all acquired companies, and it has provided an excellent
level of integration. But some administrative processes were still not optimal, because they were too
paper‐based. Additional measures became necessary, especially in two areas that displayed a variety of
critical issues owing to the number of functions involved and the volumes of documents handled. The first
area was communications and documents coming from customers (particularly in the Accounts Receivable
process) and the second was Accounts Payable.
The solution
DocFlow was adopted for both processes and it created a single point for managing and archiving
documents and uniformly managing all processes, and all integrated with the management system. In the
first area of intervention (customer communications), DocFlow optimised all CRM activities by directly
connecting the telephone number of the customer calling Customer Service to the associated customer
master‐file record in SAP and to the customer’s updated situation. By integrating CRM‐SAP with the
DocFlow Synergy document system, Wolters Kluwer Italia is now able to keep track of its document flows.
Among the principal benefits of a document system integrated with SAP are: greater ability to respond to
customers, greater simplicity in finding information, and the ability to enter any type of document (orders,
invoices etc.). In the second area of intervention (Accounts Payable), one of the objectives was to improve
workflows and authorisation flows. When a supplier invoice arrives, it is electronically archived and routed,
which involves separating invoices with orders from invoices without orders. Once entered into the
document system, the invoices are ready for a triangular check (order/packing list/invoice) which is then
followed by authorisation and management of payment to the supplier. The main benefits include:
reduction in handling times for invoices, greater efficiency and reliability of processes, and reduction in
storage costs and their management.
The project
Before introducing the document system, a preliminary analysis and internal audit of the processes had to
be carried out. In the receivables cycle, for example, this initial phase mapped 38‐40 document processes
involving ten different offices. The initial process analysis phase was then followed by a phase in which the
interventions were planned and implemented. In all these phases, a determining role was played by
DocFlow, which was able to develop a project that met all of the effective needs.
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WHO IS DOCFLOW
® ®
®
Corporation; Microsoft SharePoint is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation 15
DocFlow is a registered trademark of DocFlow Italia; SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG; SIEBEL is a registered trademark of Oracle
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