Park West’s successful landscape business had a paper problem. The 11 separate companies (including their headquarters) created paperwork havoc for their Accounts Payable (AP) Department. They required an electronic document management alternative that could meet their criteria to standardize the process for all 11 companies. They needed this at a price that would enable them to realize return on investment in a reasonable length of time.
March 15, 2005
Case Study: ŪPark West Landscape Gets ROI Fast with ViewWise
Successful landscape development projects require the highest level of expertise andprofessionalism. Park West Landscape, headquartered in scenic Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, hasbeen surpassing that requirement since their founding in 1979. They are among the leadinglandscape construction and maintenance companies in the Western United States and have 10divisions spread out across the west to meet the demand created by their reputation.
Of course, success has its price, and one of the problems created by Park West's success involvedpaper. The 11 separate companies (including their headquarters) created paperwork havoc for theirAccounts Payable (AP) Department. They required an electronic document management alternativethat could meet their criteria to standardize the process for all 11 companies. They needed this at aprice that would enable them to realize return on investment in a reasonable length of time.
There Has to be a Better Way
When Bret Frohlich, IT Manager for Park West, came upon the scene, his first job was to organize allthe paper files in the warehouse. The 11 companies generate about 68,000 invoices per year. ParkWest is on a seven-year retention schedule and paper had been piling up to the point that theyoutgrew the available space in their HQ warehouse and they had to outsource excess storage.
Park West's onsite warehouse holds over 1,100 boxes. They stored 900 additional boxes offsite at ahigh monthly cost per box. Plus, they incurred additional charges whenever they needed to getsomething out of offsite storage. The first thing Park West did was reorganize the warehouse so theycould save the outsource fees, but it still cost thousands of dollars to get their outsourced boxes back.
With the warehouse under control, Frohlich turned his attention to newly generated invoices to findwhy their existing imaging system was not meeting their needs. Park West did have an existingimaging system that had been operational since 2000. However, their existing imaging system didn'tfunction properly at their divisions. They needed a system that would work quickly across theirnetwork, so their records would be immediately available company-wide.
The Old Method
Park West quickly realized that it took two months for an invoice to get into their existing documentmanagement system. In their old workflow, scanning was outsourced to an outside service bureauthat would pick up all the paper once a week and return a disk the following week when they came topick up the new paper. Frohlich also learned that not every piece of paper was making its way fromthe outer divisions to Headquarters. Each division had its own variation of how they treated thepaper. Some even made their own set of copies as a safeguard.
The existing workflow generated excessive costs. Frohlich was able to pinpoint exactly where themoney was being lost. For example, missed opportunities to obtain deeper discounts for rapidpayment of invoices.Frohlich added up all the costs of their existing inefficient system. He realized that Park West couldsave a significant amount of money by centralizing AP processing electronically.
The problem with centralizing AP processing was that their existing software couldn't enable efficientviewing by the divisions. The database consisted of a 68 MB applications file and 15 GB worth ofstorage. In order for a person at a satellite location to view a single file, they had to first download thewhole 68 MB application and keep it running on their desktop to view files from the 15 GB of storage.It was impractical. They needed a network document management system that worked over theWAN in real time.
The Search for a Solution
When Park West evaluated the specific requirements of a document management software solution,they came up with the following: minimum specifications:
1. A SQL based product that would allow it to work over a WAN. Says Frohlich, "The differencebetween a WAN and LAN is huge!"2. Multi-level security and multi-level storage that could be integrated with the existing Windowsnetwork.3. Storage Management capability that would enable them to back up the new files withouthaving to back up the entire 15 GB every time.4. A Web-based client so users could connect to imaging without first having to install proprietaryclien... [download for more]
