Avanti Restaurant Group Creates a Seamless Process for Managing Vendor Invoices with docAlpha, DocLink and Microsoft Dynamics GP

Intelligent data extraction and document handling helps a growing design and construction company get more from their DocLink ECM and Microsoft Dynamics ERP, allowing them to target and prioritizing prompt payment discounts

The Challenge

As Accounts Payable Supervisor for Avanti Restaurant Group, Michael Paine’s first assignment was to find a better way to handle vendor invoices in a way that scaled as the company grew. While the company had digitized its process, it relied on a complex structure of Windows folders to store and retrieve invoices, and relied on email to route and secure approval for vendor payments. At the end of the process, information had to be entered manually into their Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP system, creating another process bottleneck.

As Avanti Restaurant Group continued to grow, they found that they struggled to keep up with increasingly flow of vendor invoices.

To streamline their processes, they invested in DocLink, an enterprise content management system from Altec, that helped them to better organize and manage their digital purchasing documents and automate workflows for approval.

One big problem that DocLink helped to solve was keeping up with document handling and data entry.

Avanti Restaurant Group takes advantage of prompt pay discounts from its vendors, so being able to efficiently process invoices and monitor the process can translate into significant costs savings, beyond efficiency gains.

“We have a lot of invoices we need to process immediately to capture discounts for Net 10 payment,” Paine said, “Being able to sort and prioritize invoices by discounts and due dates is a big benefit for us.”

The Solution

To solve their process problems and capitalize on vendor discounts, Altec implemented the docAlpha transformation platform from Artsyl technologies, which automatically extracts information from digital or scanned paper invoices and feeds it into DocLink.

docAlpha, developed by Artsyl Technologies, integrates with ERP and ECM systems in a way that allows vendors to email invoices into a mailbox monitored by the system. Paper invoices can be batched scanned and directed to docAlpha for processing, too. No matter how the invoice gets there, docAlpha automatically finds and extracts information like invoice number, amount and vendor details, then interacts with other business systems to create transaction records, along with a digital image of the invoice.

As part of that process, docAlpha can cross-reference ECM and/or ERP vendor records to ensure that all the information it extracted is correct. It can automatically correct obvious errors — or route any exceptions to an AP team member for further review/resolution.

The Results

According to Paine, merging the capabilities of docAlpha and DocLink has helped Avanti Restaurant Group to achieve a new level of control over their processes while increasing efficiency.

As a result, Avanti Restaurant Group’s AP team has been able to be continue to keep up with vendor invoices, even as the company grows and the volume/velocity of invoices increases.