|
 |
 |
Saves 49 hours per week in handling customer's purchase orders |
|
|
Saves 9 hours per week searching for misplaced or misfiled documents |
|
|
Saves 6 hours per week handling Sales Order Acknowledgements |
|
|
Saves 16 hours per week handling Packing Slips |
|
|
For over two decades, Seal Dynamics, Inc. (SDI) has been serving the OEM, MRO, and airline industries as a manufacturer and supplier of state-of-the-art mechanical components. Seal Dynamics Inc began operations as a value-added supplier to the manufacturers of industrial and commercial applications as well as maintenance and repair for military and non-military airframes, engines and accessories.
Today, through a dedicated commitment to broadening their services and product offerings, Seal Dynamics Inc. has developed into an organization that provides full-spectrum engineering Backed by a team of engineering and sales professionals; Seal Dynamics has the experience and expertise necessary to provide products, service, and support that are unmatched in the marketplace.
As part of their commitment to continuously improving processes in order to provide their customers with the highest quality products at competitive prices, Seal Dynamic's Management Team began considering the use of Electronic Document Management (EDM). The first step in the process was to quantify potential savings into actual dollars and to develop a return on the capital investment. Seal Dynamics performed a detailed study of their operations in terms of analyzing paper-flow and requirements throughout the company. The result was an incredible potential savings of over $300,000 each and every year. It was felt that even if SDI's internal analysis was only half correct and not all the savings could be realized, SDI still had the potential to recover their investment within one year and realize increased savings and productivity every year after implementation.
The next step in the process was for Seal Dynamics to identify their Document Management requirements. Using the internal Return on Investment study as a guide, SDI documented a future vision of how the company could operate in a completely paperless environment. This vision included the capturing of all inbound paper documents, eliminating paper filing from the customer service and operational departments, the quick and easy retrieval of documents required for every shipment and customer queries, the ability to print on demand custom laser generated SDI forms, and the desktop emailing and faxing of quotes and sales order acknowledgements was then documented. To complicate their requirements further, Seal Dynamics' advanced ERP system was based on an HP Unix server running an extremely powerful but mostly unknown, 4th generation programming language and database manager known as Progress. To provide the ultimate solution, any proposing vendor would have to interface with this system.
Seal Dynamics investigated several different products and systems integrators for the best possible fit for their needs. They encouraged the vendors to not only look and understand the current operations but to also offer ideas and suggestions on how to improve the SDI vision. Of the ten different solutions first looked at, SDI’s final selection was Fortis by Westbrook Technologies, proposed by New Jersey integrator InfiNet Business Systems (IBS).
InfiNet Business Systems was able to incorporate a “best of breed” of solution that addresses the many requirements that SDI had identified in their original analysis.
Fortis provides the scanning and imaging of inbound and SDI created documents.
Fortis Electronic Reports Management (ERM) provides automatic importing of ERP documents and reports from SDI’s Unix based ERP solution.
Documents and reports are emailed via Microsoft Exchange or faxed through a Castelle FaxPress fax serving solution.
InfiNet Business Systems brought further value to the relationship through customized modules developed for their base of Fortis clients to enhance an already feature rich product. One of these modules, the InfiNet DataMerge provided tremendous cost savings. By sharing index data already stored within the Progress database, InfiNet DataMerge eliminated redundant key entry within the two systems to further increase the Return on Investment.
Due to the mission-critical nature of the Document Management system within SDI, InfiNet also introduced DoubleTake by NSI Software to Seal Dynamics. DoubleTake is used for real-time database and image replication which provides SDI with both Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery protection. DoubleTake ensures that Fortis will continue to serve Seal Dynamics in the event of a hardware failure or even as the result of a disaster within the data center
Seal Dynamics still looks consistently for ways to increase efficiency and productivity with their document management system. Just recently Canon ImageRunners were purchased which not only provide laser quality printing and copying but also serve as high speed scanners for image capture to Fortis. The result is that SDI is very close to realizing its paperless vision of the future.
Reviewing the initial Return on Investment Analysis against the areas currently implemented, Seal Dynamics continues to achieve a calculated savings of approximately $200,000 to $250,000 per year. This is clearly demonstrated by the chart below detailing the time saved per week through Electronic Document Management. Most importantly, SDI is in a position to grow its business while gaining increased benefits from its DMS system.
|
