DocuWare Saves the Day and Costs while Increasing Productivity for PEER Bearing

PEER Headquarters, Waukegan, IL

Under pressure to streamline its workflow for sales orders PEER Bearing Company turned to DocuWare. The results were cost savings and increased productivity, allowing the department to keep up with a growing order volume without adding staff. Additionally, compliance with regulations from the IRS, Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA are met with a secure, electronic audit trail.

Founded in 1941, PEER Bearing Company has earned a reputation in the bearing industry as a dynamic and customer-focused manufacturer delivering valued solutions to a global market. PEER has a wide range of bearing and bearing-related products, including radial ball, mounted units, tapered roller and agricultural bearings and seals.  With TS 16949 certified manufacturing facilities and a strong focus on quality assurance, PEER services top OEM and Distribution companies within, but not limited to, the agricultural, HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air  Conditioning), electrical, transmission, and material handling industries. Headquartered in Illinois, PEER has sales and manufacturing facilities in the United States, South America, Europe, and China.   

In the U.S. headquarters office, orders were received from customers using a combination of manual processes and fax transmissions. Once the order was placed, an acknowledgement confirming the terms of the order was printed and faxed back to the customer. A minimum of three people handled each of the more than 10,000 pieces of paper that were received or faxed each month. This time consuming process was constantly subject to the loss or misplacement of paper documents. These important sales records were stored in file drawers and eventually moved to boxed storage in a warehouse. Nearly 140 man hours a week were needed to organize and file the orders paperwork. With so much paper in the office, employees were always leaving their desks to find the information they needed.

Pam Nasulund

Pam Naslund, office manager for PEER started calculating the cost of business for her department. She found that according to industry standards, the cost of sending and receiving faxed documents is approximately $0.15 per page, including toner, paper, machine maintenance, depreciation, and long distance phone charges for a company that operates internationally. With 10,000 pages faxed per month her department was spending $18,000 annually in printing and faxing costs. The labor costs associated with faxing, filing and retrieving paper documents added an approximate $42,000-bringing the total cost of processing orders to $60,000 a year.

Armed with information on her current costs and the steady growth in their order volume, Naslund was ready to implement an electronic solution.

PEER had a few basic requirements: 1) the ability to receive fax orders electronically, 2) an electronic workflow component for sorting incoming orders by region and directing them to the appropriate Customer Service Representative (CSR), 3) a solution to make it easy to store and retrieve electronic files, along with the ability to link documents, such as purchase orders and acknowledgments in an easy to manage digital system, and 4) the solution also needed to work with the company‘s existing ERP system, Epicor’s Manage2000.

After reviewing available options, PEER chose DocuWare because of its simplicity in implementation, cost, and its scalability and flexible platform. Using an existing copier to scan paper documents, the department‘s document management system was implemented. DocuWare and PEER‘s paper system ran in parallel for a few weeks until employees were comfortable with the new system.

PEER's Bearings

“With more orders coming in and the size of orders growing, we could have never kept up under our old business processes. As our business increases, our current customer service group is able to handle the load,” says Naslund. 

Today no matter how an order is received, either by phone, fax or e-mail, they are all processed electronically and routed to the correct employee via DocuWare‘s workflow processes. Once a CSR processes an order, they issue a sales order acknowledgment which is automatically faxed or e-mailed to the customer through DocuWare according to the rules in the system for each account. The order, sales order acknowledgement and PO are automatically indexed and stored in DocuWare, linking this important information together.

Moving to a paperless process, with secure automated storage and fast accurate retrieval of information, has greatly impacted the productivity of the orders department. Under the paper-based system, employees were frequently away from their desks searching for documentation. With DocuWare, the information is always right where they need it and management can visually track the workflow and redistribute order processing as needed.

“Our processes haven‘t changed, just our productivity,” adds Naslund.

DocuWare‘s ability to retrieve and link all the information about a customer or order, regardless of document type, has proved to be enormously helpful. Now, a CSR can do one search and find all of the relevant information about a customer or a specific transaction.

This feature is especially useful when processing orders authorized under a blanket PO. Employees can easily see quantities that were authorized, ordered and shipped.Quick access to information provides a higher level of customer service being able to handle pricing and inventory matters with accuracy.

Resolving complaints has been simplified with the advent of digital workflow. Not only do the CSRs have instant access to information, but because the process uses electronic stamps, they can also find out how the order was received and who processed it.

“Our customers range from large distributor‘s to Amish farmers who can only call in on certain days. Regardless of the customer, having all their information at our fingertips has boosted our level of customer service tremendously,” notes Kathy Billeck, customer service supervisor.

The company was able to realize immediate cost savings averaging $47,700 a year. This was achieved because of DocuWare‘s ability to route incoming faxes electronically and automatically e-mail or e-fax sales order acknowledgements, resulting in a 90 percent reduction in fax volume. Additionally, automatic indexing and electronic retrieval reduced labor costs by 75 percent. 

 “We‘ve cut our paper usage and eliminated two full-time positions, all during a period of high growth. With revenues up 26 percent, handling this growth pattern is no longer a problem and we’ve already realized our return on investment in just under a year,” reports Naslund.