The Victorian health care provider recently went live with Xcellerate IT’s document capture solution. We met with Liz Bramich, Assistant Finance Director, to check how the system implementation has gone and how things have changed in the Accounts Payable (AP) Department in the last month.
South West Health Care (SWH) was established in 1855 as one of the first healthcare providers in regional Victoria. Today, South West Health Care provide 125 medical, nursing, psychiatric, allied health and community health programs to over 100,000 people in South West Victoria.
South West Health Care has recently undertaken a $100m+ redevelopment plan in order to provide a better and more comprehensive range of health care services. This included enhancing services and relationships with all its major stakeholders.
The solution implemented by Xcellerate IT has assisted South West Health Care to increase efficiencies in AP and improve services to internal and external customers and suppliers. South West Healthcare were able to see the system in operation at the nearby Wannon Water offices, which in combination with many other reference sites, gave them confidence in Xcellerate IT’s expertise and experience.
As a demonstration of Xcellerate IT’s ability to rapidly deploy its Invoice Capture solution, the project was approved in mid-December 2010, commenced in March 2011 and went live early April 2011. We met with Liz Bramich only a few weeks after the system went live to hear her thoughts on the outcome.
What challenges were you experiencing in the AP department?
The volume of invoices had doubled with the implementation of the Oracle based finance system and centralised PO solution for the 4 warehouses which utilise the SWH Payables operations to process an average of 6,000 supplier invoices per month.
Staff at outlying warehouses needed to access invoice information stored at the central location and time delays in handling and resolving queries were impacting on supplier delivery. We did not have a method in place to track invoices sent from suppliers.
And what were the main goals when you looked at Accounts Payable Automation?
We wanted to implement a straightforward solution that could allow a scanned image of supplier invoices to be attached to the invoice entry/query form in Oracle and then be tracked and reviewed easily by all staff involved in the process.
How challenging was the implementation of the software solution?
We had to overcome a few obstacles due to our own IT team’s priorities. Understandably, we had to ensure compatibility with the Oracle FMIS and Healthsmart corporate requirements. However, Xcellerate IT were very flexible and provided assistance to ensure the project implementation was achieved on time and below budget.
How has the Xcellerate IT’s solution assisted your Accounts Payable department in increasing efficiency, and decreasing time spent on invoice handling?
Our limited storage area resulted in a time consuming process to access hardcopy of invoices so this has been immediately eliminated. Copies requested by staff can now be quickly emailed from the attachment already scanned in Oracle or high volume areas can be given direct access to Oracle inquiry to query invoices independently of our Accounts Payables staff.
What are the main benefits provided by the solution?
It is still early to identify dollar savings. However, certainly the business goals of achieving a simple solution to resolve invoice queries promptly was obvious from the first day, due to the ease of accessing detailed information from the source documents electronically.
With the scanning system we are able to enter invoices immediately into the Finance system and then holds occur automatically if goods are not received or price variances occur. Supply staff then review holds report and can access the invoice details from the attachment(s) so invoices do not need to be distributed and can then be tracked and reviewed easily by all staff involved in the process.
What future plan to do you have as a result of the solution?
As staff have now been able to see firsthand the ease of attachment and retrieval of details of supplier purchases, it is intended to roll this solution out to the other 3 large agencies in the region.
Whilst this Kofax-based system that Xcellerate IT have implemented for us is quite simple, it provides an enterprise platform that in the future can be enhanced to enable automated capture of invoice header fields, with validation of transaction and supplier details in the Finance system.
About Xcellerate IT
With 14 years of experience in streamlining business processes, Xcellerate IT is a leading provider of business process automation solutions. Xcellerate IT’s enterprise capture and work management solutions seamlessly integrates with major business applications, empowering organizations to increase productivity and organisational effectiveness by decreasing manual processes.
Xcellerate IT’s solutions are widely used across multiple industries in manufacturing, finance, local and state government, healthcare and a wide range of companies that require the capture of critical information from paper, electronic documents and forms.