Government Scientific Takes the Pain Out of AP Invoice Processes with docAlpha, KwikTag and Dynamics NAV

docAlpha automates document handling and data entry to support end-to-end AP process automation for KwikTag and Microsoft Dynamics NAV

The Challenge

As Chief Operating Officer for Government Scientific Source, Scott Stackhouse has seen the company change and evolve rapidly, growing from $15M in revenues in 2013 to $215M last year. That evolution has been exciting, but it also had the potential to stress the company’s back office processes in a way that had the potential to impede future growth.

According to Government Scientific Source COO Scott Stackhouse, one key to choosing the right AP automation solution was integration with the company’s Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system.

“Prior to digitizing and automating our accounts payable process, our AP team literally printed out digital invoices and entered information manual in our NAV ERP system,” Stackhouse said. “We asked ourselves “how can we do this better, more cost-effectively without continually adding data entry staff to keep up with volume?”

The Solution

According to Stackhouse, Government Scientific Source chose to implement the KwikTag enterprise content management system from ImageTag to better manage their AP vendor invoice process. As a result, Government Scientific Source would be able to handle their business documents in a way that was streamlined and more efficient.

One key component to getting both scanned paper and electronic documents into KwikTag efficiently, by automating the painful process of data entry and manual filing of documents into the right folders was a solution called docAlpha, from Artsyl Technologies.

In support of Stackhouse’s goal to streamline both scanning and filing process, docAlpha intelligently identifies data within scanned paper and digital documents, like an invoice number or supplier name, so it can pass along information to KwikTag to trigger specific workflows. Those workflows than route documents to appropriate stakeholders for coding and processing.

The Results

According to Stackhouse, merging the capabilities of docAlpha and KwikTag has helped Government Scientific Source to achieve a new level of control over their processes while increasing efficiency.

“Our AP team loves it,” Stackhouse said, “It takes the tedium out of their jobs and gives them greater control over the process even as business grows.”

Those efficiency gains largely came from allowing the AP team to batch scan documents all at once, then relying on docAlpha to automatically sort through them, identify the document types and provide data to KwikTag so they could be filed automatically.

As a result, Government Scientific Source’s AP team has been able to be continue to keep up with demand and increases in vendor invoice velocity, even as the company went from 50 daily vendor transactions to 600-700 each day.