DELIVERY NOTES
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Managed Print Provider
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THE ORGANISATION
A national provider of managed print, copy and scanning solutions.
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WHAT DO THEY DO?
​Sales, support and service of printers, photocopiers, scanners and related software solutions to thousands of UK organisations.
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REQUIREMENTS SUMMARY...or problems to solve!
Ensuring reliability and consistency of the print, copy and scan services being delivered.
One specific area identified for streamlining was the process for outbound delivery notes.
Staff in the order processing team would manually print delivery notes, one at a time, when required.
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The organisation has multiple warehouses around the UK so it was important that the operator selected the correct location where the delivery not should be printed – and they didn’t always get it right!
It was also important that a copy of the delivery note was stored within their Microsoft SharePoint environment. To do this the physical delivery notes had to be scanned back into the system by each warehouse, after they’d been printed.
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Legacy software would receive the scanned file, read the delivery note and save it. Unfortunately, this solution was unreliable and the delivery note numbers were frequently read incorrectly, which then prevented a copy of the correct delivery note being accessible.
Finally, staff would have to input data every day to record all the collections and deliveries via a web portal, hosted by their transport couriers. This was the same data that had already been entered into their ERP system, as documented on their delivery notes.
The high volume of transactions, coupled with all this manual processing, inevitably led to costly errors and significant amounts of wasted staff time.
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THE SOLUTION
A new solution was implemented where operators always print to a single workflow print queue.
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After that, Altman IM’s automated workflow solution automatically handles all the required processing.
Key data is extracted and used to ensure that:
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Delivery notes are reliably printed to the correct location
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Details can be provided to the couriers through integration without re-keying
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A copy of the document is saved within Microsoft SharePoint
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Click to jump to the 'Process Steps' section for more detail on the solution.
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OUTCOME & BENEFITS
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Accurate and reliable production of delivery notes
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Vast improvement in efficiency
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Significant saving in staff time and resources
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Human error eliminated
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Dramatic savings realised in time and money
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SOFTWARE DEPLOYED
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PRISM Capture
PRISM WorkPath Server
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Altman IM digital workflows are always customised to suit the way your organisation works. The various stages required and sequence vary from customer to customer. The outline below details the flow deployed in this particular project.
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PROCESS STEPS
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1. Input
Delivery notes are printed from their ERP System to a PRISM Workflow Input Print Queue.
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2. Data Extraction
PRISM Capture extracts the following data fields form the page:
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Delivery Note Number
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Order created by
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Printed date
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Reprint or not
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Stock location
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Delivery address
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Since the ERP system already has validation rules set on the field data this process is almost 100% accurate and does not require any human involvement after the workflow receives the printed delivery note. There are still, however, email notifications configured just in case any mandatory data is missing or incorrect.
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3. Outputs
Once processed the data and document pair are output in three different ways:
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CSV File. The extracted data is populated in a comma separated file (csv) file and output to folder. Third party software provided by the courier imports each new CSV file to their logistics system.
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Printer. The delivery note is printed to the local warehouse determined by the stock location data.
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SharePoint. A copy is named and filed within the company SharePoint folders for easy retrieval at a later date if required.
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DELIVERY NOTE PROCESS VARIATIONS
There are many similar implementations of delivery note processing solutions. A common requirement is to save to folder the delivery note file at time of printing. Then, when the signed delivery note is returned to the offices it is scanned and appended to the original.
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