Prepress

Broxap gets streets ahead managing paper using an Invu EDM and Kodak scanner solution to improve efficiency and customer service

Thursday 24. January 2008 - Eastman Kodak Company today announced that Broxap Limited, one of the UK's leading manufacturers of street furniture and associated products, has installed Invu's electronic document management (EDM) system and two Kodak i160 desktop scanners to provide a company-wide solution to manage all client related paperwork.

Linking to its CRM and ERP systems, this is enabling staff to provide a faster and more responsive service to customers as paperwork is now available at a touch of button on screen not stored in disparate filing cabinets. The project has been completed by Kodak reseller, Copifax.

Broxap designs, manufacturers and installs a massive range of street and cloakroom furniture, cycle shelters and seating. With over 14,000 products, Broxap’s customers include the majority of local authorities around the country, along with building developers, architects, NHS trusts and local education authorities.

Headquartered in Chesterton, Staffordshire, the business has grown organically and through acquisition to employ 300 staff today and turnover £30.8 million[1]. Initially a foundry making cast iron street furniture such as benches, posts and railings, acquisitions have enabled it to diversify and include KCS and Cosy Kennels (kennel and cattery systems), CEL (cloakroom and changing room equipment) and Maelor Trafflex (plastic litter bins and traffic island bollards).

Simon Ellis, Broxap’s graphics studio manager, says, “We’ve supplied 10,000 cycle stands to Transport for London, the Royal Ascot band stand and kennels to the Ministry of Defence. You won’t necessarily realise it, but when you walk down pretty much any UK high street, Broxap will be there.”

Prior to Invu being installed, Broxap’s business was practically run using faxes as all orders and client correspondence was documented. Barry Stanyer, Broxap’s IT manager explains, “There were mountains of paper in filing cabinets and it could take 20 minutes or so just to find one customer file. Emails were continuously going round the company asking about missing paperwork so it was clear that the whole document management process needed to be changed using today’s technology.”

At the outset, Broxap, had a number of objectives. Firstly, it wanted to move towards creating a paperless office environment. Secondly, improve customer service by offering a faster “one call” response whereby agents could respond to queries first time rather than having to search for answers buried in difficult to find paperwork. Thirdly, enhance staff efficiency by cutting out the time consuming process of people looking for information.

Having considered software from various vendors, Invu was selected because it was cost
effective, simple to use and painless to integrate.

Peter Emmonds, Copifax’s document management consultant, says, “Each job can generate a lot of paperwork such as sketches, site surveys, engineers’ drawings, photographs, purchase orders, invoices and emails. Today, each one is assigned an order number and any documentation associated with it is catalogued together. Invu is like a thread through them all based on that number. Staff have therefore saved hours looking for information as Invu allows a clear picture from womb to tomb about a specific job.”

Over the past three years, Broxap’s business has grown over 20% year on year and its existing accounts package has been unable to scale sufficiently, without requiring considerable bespoke tailoring, nor produce the management reports needed by the board. Barry Stanyer says, “To address this, we installed Microsoft’s Dynamics AX[2] 4.0 ERP solution in December 2007 to manage inventory, warehousing, MRP, sales and purchase order processing. Broxap’s board is very keen to use technology to help drive the business forward and deliver efficiencies. The new ERP software is very expandable which will support us over time.”

This means a client phoning in, for example, with a payment query or a contractor calling asking about how much concrete to lay when installing a specific type of bollard, can be dealt with faster than ever before. This is because, not only does Invu manage all documentation in one place using a familiar Windows-like GUI, it also links to both Broxap’s ProspectSoft CRM software and the new Dynamics AX ERP solution. This is achieved using Invu’s Code Free desktop search software. All staff do is simply highlight an order number, for example, when in ProspectSoft or Dynamics AX and Code Free will search and find all the associated documentation in Invu.

To ensure system performance, Invu runs on a dedicated server running Microsoft Server 2003, with 50 staff in accounts, customer services, sales order processing and so on accessing it using Microsoft XP and Vista-based desktop PCs.

Given Broxap scans between 800 and 2000 documents per day, two high performance Kodak i160 duplex desktop scanners have been purchased. Barry Stanyer says, “In the past, we had a scanner to just process paper invoices, but it wasn’t man enough for the job especially with the Invu deployment. Copifax introduced us to Kodak given its reputation for quality, reliable and easy-to-use scanner technology. The i160s have been very good and, since we bought them, we’ve never had an engineer out. When we need consumables, it’s just a quick call to Kodak and they respond extremely quickly.”

Barry Stanyer concludes, “Copifax has been an ideal partner on the EDM project and have really helped us whereas a previous reseller was pretty awful. They’ve been particularly supportive by providing a rapid and attentive service and have assisted us with the new ERP roll out to ensure maximum value is realised by having Invu integrated with the Dynamics AX system.”

Jonathan Tripp, Kodak’s document imaging marketing manager, UK & EAMER, said, “With reliability second to none, the Invu-Kodak EDM solution has radically changed how Broxap works resulting in a far better and more ordered way of managing the vast amounts of paper work generated from day-to-day operations. Staff can now get on with what really counts – looking after customers – not wasting time looking for paperwork.”