E-Business
Issue No. 5 - April/June 2002
Baulderstone Imaging Solution
Each project undertaken by a large construction company is accompanied by so many administrative and legislative requirements that paperwork can pile up faster than the building rises.
“Hundreds of invoices are part and parcel of a large-scale building or infrastructure project,” says Julie Keldoulis, manager of financial processes for Baulderstone Hornibrook, one of Australia’s largest construction groups. “The logistics of managing these can become a nightmare if the process isn’t carefully monitored. The accounts department requires coding and approval by the project personnel, who might be located on site anywhere in Australia.”
As part of a project to implement changes to its financial accounting system, the company recently reappraised its system for document distribution and approval. After evaluating various possibilities for managing hard-copy invoices, including implementing its own scanning system in-house, Baulderstone Hornibrook decided to conduct a pilot using South Australian company Scan Conversion Services’ document workflow management process.
“The cost of suitable equipment, resources and skills necessary to perform such a task efficiently in house far outweighed having a professional organisation like Scan Conversion Services doing it for us,” Julie says. “Their knowledge and experience of imaging technology combined with the time they took to understand our business processes at the outset have assisted us immensely. Our own accounts staff can now be utilised for more productive, core business activities.”
Scan Conversion Services’ pilot study showed that scanning and converting all hard-copy invoices into electronic images would enable Baulderstone Hornibrook to electronically distribute these images to the appropriate site. “This method eliminated the necessity to manually post the invoices and prevented loss or misplacement,” says s...
