The Illawarra council went live with Xcellerate IT’s solution for AP Automation in November 2007. We met with Emanuel Sarkhosh, System Accounting Officer, to check how things have changed in the Accounts Payable (AP) Department over the last 3 years.
Sydney, 3 December 2010 – For a council that claims to be a “city of innovation”, it is no real surprise that Wollongong City Council is one of the first local organisations in Australia to have automated paper-driven business processes.
With a population approaching 200,000, Wollongong City Council is one of our first deployed solutions for Account Payable Automation in local government. Australia’s ninth largest city Council went live with AP Automation technology in November 2007, and in the last three years it has been an invaluable reference site for Xcellerate IT allowing several other councils keen to streamline their accounts payable processes by viewing our solution in action.
The AP Automation solution adopted by Wollongong City Council is the Kofax Capture platform designed for AP processing integrated with TechnologyOne Financials. The invoices are scanned and processed in a centralized environment, processed through the recognition module and validated by AP personnel for exceptions. The validated extracted information is then passed to the Release Module where it is uploaded to TechnologyOne Financials with the image sent to SharePoint.
What challenges were you experiencing in the Accounts Payable department?
“Our invoice processing procedure was quite time consuming and prone to human error due to the manual input of data. The processing lag had the potential to create budgetary implications when the recognition of expenditure was significantly delayed. However, it is important to point out that these issues were not limited to invoice processing but the non-compliance with other procurement processes" said Emanuel Sarkhosh, System Accounting Officer.
And what were the main goals when you looked at Accounts Payable Automation?
“As a growing council, the objectives were to adopt a solution that was able to reduce the manual keying, seamlessly integrate with our financial system and provide us with a more efficient use of employee resources” added Sarkhosh.
How many invoices is the AP department processing?
“In the last three years we have processed an average of 50,000 invoices per year".
What were the main benefits provided by the solutions?
“The solution added value to our AP functions by providing us with a more efficient use of employee resources. The majority of suppliers are paid on time and we reduced dramatically the processing times by eliminating data entry”.
Howard Boretsky, Managing Director from Xcellerate IT said “Wollongong City Council was one of our first major local council projects and we are proud of our successful relationship. It is an ongoing partnership, as we continue to work closely with the Accounts Payable Department providing support and upgrades to improve the way they streamline their processes”.
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.