Document management may not be the first thing that comes to mind when discussing digital transformation, but it is in fact one of the top business needs that benefits directly from digitization and automation with the right solution. In SWK’s on-demand webinar, Go from Chaos to Control with Advanced Document Management, our partner Altec walks you through how to achieve this with your Sage or Acumatica ERP when integrated with DocLink.
In this webinar, we walk you through several ways to digitally transform your documentation, invoicing and approvals processes from automated recording to streamlined approvals with the help of this modern solution integrated with your accounting software:
Skip to the Sections That Matter
Looking for specific information? Use the chapter breaks and transcript below to skip forward to the parts that interest you. (Timestamp information is located to the right or top of each section. Please select that time when you are watching the video.)
Digital Transformation with DocLink (1:42 – 3:00)
- Exploration of the digital transformation journey and how DocLink facilitates this evolution by improving accessibility and efficiency.
- Discussion on DocLink’s integration with existing systems to streamline operations and workflows.
Streamlining Operations Across Departments (3:00 – 4:32)
- Examination of DocLink’s automation capabilities for document capture, approvals, and workflow management.
- Demonstration of DocLink’s impact beyond finance, highlighting its utility in HR, sales, and legal departments.
Operational Efficiency and Cost Reduction (4:32 – 6:02)
- Insights into how DocLink aids in operational cost reduction and ensures document security and compliance.
- Emphasis on DocLink’s adaptability across various industries, addressing unique document management challenges.
Efficient Workflows and Automation (6:02 – 9:44)
- Overview of DocLink’s extensive applications, from OCR-driven AP automation to enhancing order entry processes.
- Discussion on facilitating interdepartmental collaboration, showcasing DocLink’s broad applicability.
Deep Dive into DocLink’s Capabilities (12:11 – 27:01)
- Presentation of case studies where DocLink’s implementation resulted in significant operational improvements.
- Highlighting the benefits observed by businesses, such as increased efficiency, reduced manual processes, and improved document security.
Visibility, Security, and Compliance (27:01 – 38:59)
- Addressing the importance of visibility, security, and compliance in document management with DocLink.
- Insights into DocLink’s features that ensure documents are secure, accessible, and in compliance with regulations.
Q&A Session: Insights and Applications (39:00 – 42:00)
- Summary of the Q&A session, focusing on DocLink’s deployment flexibility, including cloud and on-premise options.
- Addressing DocLink’s capability to manage complex document workflows and its suitability for various business sectors.
Go from Chaos to Control with Advanced Document Management Transcript
1:07 – Courtney Pollock
SWK is here to help you fulfill your vision of a smarter and easier way to run your business by providing your tools, support, software, and industry knowledge whenever you need it. So, whether you’re here to explore a new solution or you’re just here to learn, we’d like to encourage you to ask any questions you have while the experts are here. And as a reminder, SBK is constantly sharing important updates and software tips and tricks on our social media channels. You can follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube for our recorded webinars and also more educational content.
1:37 – Courtney Pollock
With that said, I’m going to hand it over to Caleb for the main event.
1:43 – Caleb Castellaw
Awesome. Thank you, Courtney. And welcome everyone again. Thank you for taking time out of your busy days to learn a little bit more about document management, and ultimately what we’re going to be talking about is not just document management, but digital transformation. And digital transformation, gosh, has been kind of a buzzword in business technology for the last years, but it still rings true. And all different organizations are at different stages in their digital transformation journeys, right?
2:16 – Caleb Castellaw
Some have adopted, you know, cloud solutions for different business units and are well on their way. Some are, you know, looking to make that jump from, you know, legacy systems, uh, doing mostly, you know, reports on Excel to more, uh, comprehensive systems. And that’s where you have an awesome partner like SWK to guide you, uh, through that technology journey. But today we’ll be talking about a few business needs that you may have. One is access to critical information. Do remote workers have the ability to access the critical information they need, whether they’re at home or in the field?
3:00 – Caleb Castellaw
We’ll also be talking about efficient workflows. And when we’re talking about workflows, we’re specifically talking about documents. So, are documents able to be routed and approval processes able to be streamlined? We’ll also talk about reducing the operational costs. There’s lots of costs related to document management. Think about external filing services that you may have, filing cabinets, the time it takes to retrieve documents, whether that’s from physical means such as filing cabinets or in a network file share without real structure behind those documents.
3:43 – Caleb Castellaw
And we’ll also be talking about visibility, security, and compliance. Are your documents secure? Is there a way to restrict the access of certain members of your organization from seeing certain documents? We’ll talk about all of these needs here today. So, take a minute and ask yourself these three questions. One, does your current system require a lot of touching, moving, and filing of documents, right? Are you printing and then re-scanning to then send via email or just walk a physical paper down to someone’s desk for them to go ahead and review that document, put their stamp of approval?
4:35 – Caleb Castellaw
Are your approval processes manual or inefficient? Is there a way to see how many documents, whether that’s an invoice, an order, contract, are on someone’s desk for their review and approval? And do you spend a lot of time doing data entry, whether that’s data entry off of invoices into the invoice entry screens of your respective ERPs or data entry off of orders into the order entry screens of your respective ERPs? So, we have a poll here. We want to get your feedback. What are your current business needs, right?
5:15 – Caleb Castellaw
We had those four that we talked about. Is it A, access to critical information? B, more efficient workflows? C, to reduce operational costs? I mean, I think everyone falls under that bucket. Or D, visibility, security, and compliance of your documents? Or is it E, is it something else? Courtney, do we have any preliminary findings here?
5:47 – Courtney Pollock
Yes, it is very active. So, thank you everyone who’s participating in the poll. Right now, you know, it’s a bit across the board, but a clear, clear leader is definitely more efficient workflows.
6:00 – Courtney Pollock
So, we’ve got a bit of everything, but
6:04 – Caleb Castellaw
Okay. A bit of everything, but yeah, we can focus on that part more specifically just cause that’s the, that’s the business need of a lot of people here. So that’s awesome.
6:13 – Courtney Pollock
Yep, so thanks for your participation. If you’re still putting your answers in, I’m going to close the poll out in just a second.
6:20 – Caleb Castellaw
Okay.
6:22 – Courtney Pollock
So, I’m not sure if you can see those results, Caleb, but we’ve got, you know, you know, access to critical information, you know, more efficient workflows, reducing operational costs, and visibility, security, and compliance. And I’m sure some people, you know, selected some multiple issues that they’re dealing with.
6:43 – Caleb Castellaw
OK, great. We’ll focus on workflows quite a bit then. So, I’ll take you through what DocLink can do. So briefly explain what DocLink is. DocLink is a document management and workflow system that integrates to your ERP, that SWK services. And we connect, we streamline, and we deliver. So, we’re able to connect with your ERPs and also processes outside of ERP. So, things don’t have to be finance related to be stored within DocLink. We also have the ability to streamline the operations that documents may take.
7:26 – Caleb Castellaw
This doesn’t have to be an accounts payable. It could be a contract management workflow. It could be a service ticket, a work order. There’s all different types of opportunities here to streamline document workflows. And we also have a sophisticated delivery. So, being able to deliver documents externally automatically when you need them, right? Maybe an AR invoice going out with a supplemental documentation such as a signed delivery ticket or a spec sheet or an order confirmation going out to your clients, things of that nature.
8:03 – Caleb Castellaw
So how does DocLink work? I love this visual diagram that just gives us a conceptual view into DocLink. You see here at the middle where there’s our logo with the lock in the middle of the logo, that represents the DocLink repository. Think of that as your virtual filing cabinet where all documents and content within your organization can be stored. To get documents into DocLink, there’s a multitude of ways that we do that. Where it’s coming externally, so thinking of a document coming from one of your partners or vendors or customers, we can capture that via an email address, monitored email address, read the data through OCR, or if it’s coming in, maybe receiving document, we can scan it in and link it to the documents it needs to be linked to.
8:59 – Caleb Castellaw
Internal documents, such as AR invoices that you’re printing out of your ERP, such as purchase orders that you’re printing out of your ERP, checks that you’re printing out of your ERP, we can automatically capture those through a print capture. So, every document, whether it’s coming in externally or produced internally, can be stored within DocLink. After documents are within the repository, a lot of times there’s a process that happens, whether that’s a three-way matching process for PO-based invoices, a multi-step approval process, for non-PO invoices, whether a customer PO is reviewed by a salesperson before an order is created in the ERP.
9:44 – Caleb Castellaw
So, there’s all sorts of workflow processes we can help accommodate within the workflow module. At the end of the day, we are two-way sync with the ERP. So, any data that needs to be imported into an ERP form, we’re able to do that. And also, we’re able to look at all of the customer data in your ERP, vendor, and GL chart of accounts so that we’re in constant synchronization with your ERP system of choice. You’re able to either retrieve your documents from the ERP via some view documents links, and we’ll go over that later, or you’re also able to log into DocLink on a web client and retrieve your documents from there.
10:31 – Caleb Castellaw
Okay, we’ll go through the access to critical information first. So, the key here is having access to your data and therefore documents from anywhere, anytime you need it, right, with any department. So DocLink being a DocLink document and data repository allows you to store AP, AR, HR documents, for easy access for whoever needs to be able to review and see those documents. Being able to have a centrally located repository helps with delivering documents automatically.
11:17 – Caleb Castellaw
Think of I’m delivering an AR invoice and it always has to go out with a delivery receipt to say that the product has been delivered to minimize your customer service requests because we have those delivery receipts and air invoices centrally located. We’re able to leverage those relationships to send out automatically. We also have that two-way sync. So having access to doc documents inside your ERP and out of your ERP. DocLink also helps you minimize data entry. I cannot tell you how many calls I have with clients that have been able to free up hours and hours and hours of not only their days, but their team’s days with DocLink because they’re able to minimize data entry.
12:11 – Caleb Castellaw
So how do we do this? We automatically capture the fields that you’re typically doing data entry on, right? Think of your vendor information, your line item information, everything that comes on an invoice that you’re typically having to enter into your ERP with keystrokes. We’re also able to reduce the manual reconciliations and matching. So, when it comes to, you know, a P.O. Based invoice and you’re wanting to match against what was purchased, what was received and what was on the invoice, we’re able to do that reconciliation, leveraging technology rather than having someone review each and every document before it’s entered.
12:54 – Caleb Castellaw
Due to our deep integration as well, you’re also able to edit things in your ERP, and it flows over into DocLink. So, if you ever need to make changes to an invoice, purchase order, one of your customer orders, you’re able to make those edits, and those edits will flow into DocLink. So, there’s data sync there. I’ll talk a bit about Pinders Customs Brokerage. Luckily, Pioneer’s Custom Brokerage went live with DocLink just about a month before the pandemic. And they were a very heavy, paper-intensive company.
13:36 – Caleb Castellaw
They had, you know, tons of filing cabinets. They were able to, you know, really reduce those filing cabinets so folks could work remotely. So, they had of their paper eliminated. That there’s their customs and brokerage firm. So, because they needed to have some physical documents for customs, they were completely remote during COVID. So, they were able to still operate remotely and they were more effective with every task and they had a reduction of time before paying customs.
14:26 – Caleb Castellaw
You can see that quote right there speaks for themselves, Benjamin Pinder, their people can instantaneously have all the documents they need at their fingertips, whether they’re in the office or working remotely. Okay, we flew through that and I want to spend some more time on this, efficient workflows. So, what is, workflow and workflow can manifest in lots of different departments and processes, right? Uh, the, the benefit of doc link is we’re not beholden to just one process.
15:00 – Caleb Castellaw
So, we are not just an invoice to pay, um, system yet. That’s a great use case for doc link, right? It’s a great use case for DocLink, but there’s a multitude of use cases, whether that’s an AR invoice review before it’s sent out, whether that’s a purchase requisition workflow. Really, any document can be put through a workflow that it needs to go through, whether that’s for some sort of compliancy standards for your industry and so forth. But for now, let’s focus on the invoice to pay process with DocLink.
15:42 – Caleb Castellaw
So, what happens, right? AP team imports an invoice, DocLink, what it does is reads the data off of the document and can automatically route that invoice for approval. So based on the smart capture technology, we’re able to see maybe it’s from a particular vendor and the invoice is So then DocLink knows, hey, it has to be routed to these three people for approval. After it gets all the approvals needed dictated based off of the workflow, we can automatically import invoice to your ERP and your payment can be issued in your ERP.
16:26 – Caleb Castellaw
And finally, we capture a record of that payment so that not only do you have your invoice, you have your payment linked to your invoice, when your vendor comes calling and says, you know, I’m asking about When am I going to get my payment? You can quickly refer to either the check, the ACH or electronic payment that went out to pay that invoice to settle that issue with your vendor. Here are a few ways that our customers leverage our approvals. So, if you’re a high volume approver, say you get five or documents to approve each and every day, you may want to have something like this.
17:08 – Caleb Castellaw
This is a summary notification telling you how many documents are in your queue for approval, right? So, you can get that summary notification, and also managers can get this summary notification based off of their employees and how many documents are in their queues so that they can push, poke, and prod them to get their work done. We can also do these one-off email approvals as well. So, you can get an AP invoice in your inbox. You’re able to open that invoice up. We do a PDF attachment of that, review the invoice, and then click those approve or deny links.
17:54 – Caleb Castellaw
When you click those approve or deny links, it’ll automatically go into the next step of the workflow based off of that, right? So, if it’s approved, it may need to go to someone else. If it’s denied, it may go back to AP to figure out what to do with that invoice. And not only can you do approvals from an email, but also mobile device. We have a mobile app that’s good with iOS and Android. You’re able to access your workflows in the mobile app and do your approvals, denials, and do info notes as well within that mobile application.
18:37 – Caleb Castellaw
Last but not least, you can also log into DocLinks Web Client and see the documents that are in your queue for review and approval. So, there’s multitude of workflows, but you can only see the ones that land in your queue. And you can click on those documents, assign the GL coding of those documents, and do your approvals. Within DocLink. So, you may be asking, well, what happens when our CFO takes his annual trip to Scottsdale, Arizona to go golfing and he’s out of pocket and there’s no service on the golf course, what happens to all the documents that he’s supposed to review and approve?
19:30 – Caleb Castellaw
Well, you can delegate workflow authority while he’s away. So maybe those the invoices that typically went to your CFO now go to your COO or CEO so that invoices can still be processed and paid. We’ll review another case study. This is Herman Goldner company out of Pennsylvania and they were able to automatically route of their invoices to approvers, right? So, leveraging our automation, you can imagine how much time that saves to automatically route invoices to approvers rather than have you decide, okay, who does this have to go to and why?
20:23 – Caleb Castellaw
They were able to utilize email for receiving invoices from vendors. OCR was able to read and index the key fields on those documents. Documents are automatically routed based off of what was read on OCR. And unlike their basic file server digital archiving system, search and retrieval capabilities were much improved with DocLink because they had an easy to use interface that was simple to search up documents. So, they increased their accuracy of invoices, they were more effective with communication through all departments, and they had a significant time saving here.
21:09 – Caleb Castellaw
Okay, next we’ll dive into reducing the operational costs. And these operational costs sometimes are hard to quantify. When we are business in a silo and we don’t have the sort of financial analysts that we need to see what costs our business are incurring. Luckily, we have some great advisement firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers that has done some research based off of thousands of firms. And roughly this is what they found. Cost to file a document, to retrieve a document, and to recreate a document.
21:57 – Caleb Castellaw
Now, I’m not going to lie. A few years ago, when I saw this slide, it seemed a little bit outrageous. But as I talked with more and more customers and prospective customers, about their specific processes, such as doing a return. And whenever they had to process a return, this company I worked with, it would take them three to four hours to find all the documents they needed to find to then process that return. So, you can imagine three to four hours with their AP manager who is getting paid a pretty good amount.
22:38 – Caleb Castellaw
That’s costing them a lot of money for, you know, simple retrieving of a document. So why automate accounts payable? Really accounts payable is a really low hanging fruit for reducing those operational costs, right? AP is a cost center. So as much as we can automate AP, the better, right? So based off of Ardent Partners study, they found that with traditional processing, it was about to process a single invoice. With a sophisticated AP automation solution like DocLink, they brought it down to about here.
23:24 – Caleb Castellaw
Not only that cost, but the time to process a single invoice went down from days to about four days. I mean, I’ve talked with a lot of distribution companies and manufacturers that the faster they can pay their vendor, they can take advantage of discounts, right? So, you can take advantage of an early pay discount to save money there. So, lots of statistics here to prove that AP automation really does save you money, right? The Delta is about per $12 invoice. So, if you’re processing invoices a year, right?
24:06 – Caleb Castellaw
That’s in savings that could be a possible with an AP automation solution. So, we’ll talk about a few features and functionalities that help with AP automation within DocLink. So, we have a data capture engine that we call our smart capture module. And what this does is takes a look at each and every invoice that comes into your organization, whether that’s going to your dedicated email inbox, such as invoices at yourcompany.com, whether that’s being scanned from invoices coming in via mail, or any other way you’re receiving invoices.
24:54 – Caleb Castellaw
They can go into this smart capture module. We can automatically read the data off of this invoice. We use AI and machine learning. So, there’s no templates that have to be built in the background. The system gets smarter and smarter as it sees more and more of your invoices. We vendor validate against your ERP. So, we’re able to see that yes, this vendor is already set up in your SWK ERP of choice. And read all the data that typically someone would be typing in electronically. So, what happens after this, right?
25:31 – Caleb Castellaw
Well, if it’s a non-PO invoice, it doesn’t need to get matched up against a PO and receipt. Well, I can go straight into an approval cycle. So straight new approval cycle for approved and denials. And then after this, it can be imported straight into your ERP of choice automatically. So, I’m showing here an Acumatica integration. So, within Acumatica, we put these view documents buttons. You see I’m on a purchase order screen in Acumatica. I’m able to pull up a purchase order. The receipt and the bill for that particular PO.
26:11 – Caleb Castellaw
This will work the same with any SWK ERP that you have, right? Whether it’s, you know, any of the Sage products, we support the same functionality. We can dive into another case study and I really like this case study. Because it may represent, and it does represent a lot of the conversations I have with our customers, growth, right? If your company is growing and you are processing more invoices, you’re ordering more raw materials to make more products, or you’re just involved in more things, you have more expenditures and more invoices, and the invoice volume is getting a little bit too much for your staff to handle A lot of times it’s, Hey, either we’re going to hire, have to hire someone, or we can implement a technology to help us with this.
27:11 – Caleb Castellaw
So that’s what Thornburg, uh, investment management did. They were going to hire someone for about a year, but, but instead implemented doc link. They’re also able to save a seven and a half thousand on storage fees. And they were not only, um, able to help with Thornburg Investment Management, but also all their three subsidiaries as well. So DocLink’s very helpful for multi-company. If you have multiple companies set up within your ERP system, we mirror that setup and you can work with multiple companies there.
27:53 – Caleb Castellaw
Okay, last but not least, we’ll cover visibility, security, and compliance. So, knowing where documents are, being able to safeguard those vital records and produce documents instantly. So, you may be asking yourself, is everything in my business secure? Am I in compliance? Do I have all my documents saved when the auditor comes and needs to pull everything related to a certain account code, things of that nature. So, we’ll talk about visibility and reporting here. With DocLink, you’re able to monitor workflow statuses.
28:40 – Caleb Castellaw
And when I say monitor workflow statuses, I mean your administrator has the ability to have a 10,000-foot view of DocLink to see where each and every document is within the workflow. Not only that, but because we have the approval pane, on each document, we’re able to manage the audit trails as well. So, we’re able to see who touched each document, who approved it, and at what time. With DocLink, you have a living and breathing reporting system because you have all of your invoices in one place.
29:12 – Caleb Castellaw
So, you’re able to improve your financial reporting with that and streamline intercompany accounting, whether it’s multiple locations or multiple departments. So, let’s talk about security. So DocLink has the ability to lock down security based off of multiple factors. If you have multiple companies within your ERP system and you have separate folks that work at each company, you can lock down documents based off of the company. So, if I work at company A, I can only see the documents in company A Furthermore, you can even lock down based off of department.
29:57 – Caleb Castellaw
For example, I’m in sales, I can’t see anything that has to do with our accounts payable, you know, what we’re paying vendors. What I can see is I can see the contracts that I have with my particular accounts, right? And that’s all I’m locked down to see. You can also lock down document types. Based off of a certain document type, whether that’s a purchase requisition, invoice, maybe a sensitive contract that only a few people are allowed to see, you can lock that down. And also property values.
30:34 – Caleb Castellaw
So, you can restrict certain property values for people to see as well. So, one question you may want to ask yourself here is, are you in compliance? If an auditor, a surprise auditor came tomorrow, would you be able to give auditors access to all the documents they need to review and the sophisticated activity reports that go along with those documents, whether that has to do with some sort of industry compliance restrictions. Speaking of audits, we had, another case study talk about the Agoura companies.
31:18 – Caleb Castellaw
And the Agoura companies purchased DocLink for the sole reason that they failed a sales tax audit. Failed a sales tax audit and they had to pay penalty on top of the cost of having auditors in their office. After this, they said, hey, we have to get something in place. They got docking in place. Now they had a single repository for all their documents. So, they knew that they were able to produce invoice packets when auditors needed to see them. So that gave them direct access for auditors to review docs.
31:57 – Caleb Castellaw
The next time when their annual audit came around, they pass the flying colors. There were no additional penalties incurred and they were able to simplify that for their auditors. Not only did they get that benefit, savings, but also being able to have AP automation and all the benefits that go with our workflow approval and integration features. So, let’s talk about how DocLink can impact everyone in your organization. For those of you who may be familiar with DocLink, you know that we’re great in AP.
32:39 – Caleb Castellaw
But when you’re considering document management for your organization, it’s better to select a solution that can be used for far greater processes than AP automation. Because if you just select an AP automation solution, The next time a certain problem comes up and you’re looking for a software to solve, you’re going to have to go through the whole different buying process again, select different software, and then you have a multitude of softwares all integrating to your ERP.
33:08 – Caleb Castellaw
And with DocLink, one solution can do a lot more than just AP. So, what are some other examples besides AP automation, three-way matching and beyond? Accounts receivable. This is still a huge use case for us. The ability to manage the whole, we’ll call it quote to cash process and have all the documents for that in our system, be able to send out invoices alongside supplemental documentation, a human resource document management, being able to manage all of your HR documents in one place, your legal team.
33:52 – Caleb Castellaw
We have some specific functions just for legal, such as version control. So, when you’re working on different versions of documents, you can save those within DocLink, check those out, no one else can work on them, and then check them in, and they’re saved as a new version. Not only that, but if you’re looking into specific text on a contract, we’re able to search off of the text of the documents. This is very helpful as I’m looking through the contracts I have with different DocLink users, because I’m able to look up sales order automation.
34:28 – Caleb Castellaw
And I can pull up every contract that we’ve ever done with a client to do sales order automation. And that’s how I can do my research on different use cases there. Not only that, but we can monitor expiration and retention dates for legal documents. So, if a document expires on December 31st, I’m able to code in that I will be notified and days from that contract expiring so that I can do something about it. Field service, because we have mobility access, your field service employees are able to see documents in the field.
35:07 – Caleb Castellaw
Maybe they need to record service call details or upload images and sign receipts instantly. They’re able to do that. Or maybe you have a field technician that needs to take a picture of a broken part for a purchase requisition or a work order. They can do that as well. Facility management. So, think of maintenance service request work. The ability to have a dock like mobile out there in the field. So that folks can use that, take pictures, access documents when they need to, et cetera.
35:43 – Caleb Castellaw
And last but not least, sales order processing. So, you saw how our data capture module has the ability to extract data off of invoices. We use that same model to extract data off of incoming POs. So, you’re able to capture your incoming POs, we’re able to read all the data off of the document, make a translation, right? Maybe the order coming from your customer is not the same as the order that’s in your system or the item that’s in your system. We’re able to make that translation and seamlessly enter that information into your order entry screen.
36:30 – Caleb Castellaw
Okay, so some things to think about here is document management in workflow. This is important to business process optimization and cost savings. Also, document management workflow can be integral to your strategic planning initiatives, whether you’re going to do acquisitions, you’re going into new business sectors where you’re going to be growing, document management workflow can help here. A doc link can grow to fit your needs. So, with us, you can start small. You can start with a need that presents itself now, knowing that in the future, when you need to expand out into contract management, when you need a more robust HR document management system, we can grow to fit those needs.
37:22 – Caleb Castellaw
Hard and soft costs. So manual processes are expensive. Both in hard and soft dollar calculations, right? We went through a few studies, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ardent Partners that had those dollars associated with processing documents. So, think about processes and where DocLink can help fit in your strategy. And last but not least, I implore you to map out your processes. So, if you don’t have a schema already for how invoices are paid, how orders are completed, how different documents flow, I’d implore you to map that out.
38:07 – Caleb Castellaw
Do some internal research, see what the cost is, see how much time people are spending to review documents, to print, scan, send, all of the above, and then figure out what’s broken. Figure out where the real bottlenecks are and if DocLink or another solution can be a good solution to fix it. So, this can also be used to set your budget, right? And used when you’re talking with us or another solution provider to figure out if DocLink’s going to provide that ROI. I mean, we had some case studies.
38:46 – Caleb Castellaw
We’ve produced ROI within six to nine months with all those case studies. That we talked about today, but let’s see for yourself, right? See what the cost is for your manual intervention of documents and if DocLink can help. Okay, we have one more poll here. So, Courtney, maybe open up the poll here. What did you learn from today’s session? A, DocLink provides capabilities for in-office as well as remote workers. B, DocLink has a tight integration with your ERP. C, DocLink works across many departments.
39:30 – Caleb Castellaw
Or maybe D, you’re thrilled at what you saw, you really think that a solution like DocLink can help, and you want us to contact you.
39:42 – Courtney Pollock
Great. Thank you everyone who has answered the poll so far. We’ve got some answers across the board. So that’s great. You guys are obviously paying attention. We are, we’ve got a lot of questions that came in, Caleb, throughout the presentation. So, I hope you’re ready for a good Q&A.
40:03 – Caleb Castellaw
Absolutely. Yep.
40:06 – Courtney Pollock
Awesome. So, I think I’m just going to give a few more seconds. We’re going to close this pullout. And I think we’re about to dive into Q&A. Okay. So, the poll is closed. Thank you for everyone who answered. Uh, we were looking pretty much across the board, so that’s great.
40:29 – Caleb Castellaw
Okay. Yeah. Let’s, let’s dive into some of those questions.
40:34 – Courtney Pollock
Awesome. So, um, you know, I think the first question is, can DocLink be used outside of finance? I know we just touched on some of those points.
40:45 – Caleb Castellaw
Yes. Yeah. That must’ve come through earlier. Yes, absolutely. The beauty of DocLink is really we were born as a document management workflow system. And then we grew into the AP space and have been around for a long time. So, based off of the infrastructure of DocLink and the, I call it almost like a framework, right? It’s a framework for managing any document and content that you have. We’re not like your typical API automation solution where that’s all we do. It’s just a framework for that.
41:21 – Caleb Castellaw
Hopefully that answers your question.
41:25 – Courtney Pollock
Great. Our next question is, is this all web-based or is there an on-premise version available?
41:33 – Caleb Castellaw
Great question. We have a multitude of deployment options to fit every need. Our cloud option that a lot of our, say, Acumatica users go with. They have their ERP in the cloud. They have DocLink in the cloud. That’s great. We also have an on-premise version. So, you can install DocLink on-premise. If you have a restriction, that’s how it needs to be. Or you can host it with a third-party provider. So really, there’s every option for each need there.
42:13 – Courtney Pollock
Great. And Caleb, as we go through these questions, if you don’t mind moving the slides forward to our slide that has some information up in case anyone needs the reminder of, you know, how to reach out. Next question is, you know, we process a lot of orders. Can doc link be used to automate order entry?
42:32 – Caleb Castellaw
Yes, absolutely. We, you know, we touched on incoming AP invoices from your vendors, but the smart capture module works the same way with customer PO’s that come in. And we have integrations to those order entry screens. So, we have automatic imports that we can do into those order entry screens at whatever ERP you have.
42:59 – Courtney Pollock
And to build on that question, can this be used to allow attaching documents to different screens in for example, documents attached to an SO or PO or invoice?
43:14 – Caleb Castellaw
SOPO and invoice with Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, we integrate to all those screens. So, it’s a little bit different than attachments. That’s kind of the ERP way to do it, right? Is you have paperclips and there’s documents attached to each record. We link documents based off of association. So, let’s take a sales order, for example. Every document that we have an index property value for that sales order number, will be linked to that sales order screen with a view documents button.
43:46 – Caleb Castellaw
So, whether that is a customer PO that came in, the sales order, the picking ticket, the packing slip, the invoice going out, everything related to that sales order can be recalled based off of that association.
44:08 – Courtney Pollock
Awesome. And then also is DocLink able to upload credit and documents that will go through the approval process and import to ERP?
44:20 – Caleb Castellaw
Credit and documents. I may have to have some more context on that before I answer that. So maybe we can take that offline, Courtney, and we can get back to that person with an answer.
44:34 – Courtney Pollock
Definitely. Yes. If that was your question, um, we’ll definitely have one of your rep reach out to you. Um, and we can go deeper into that question. Another, another kind of, you know, specific ones is our invoices uploaded using OCR or is there a data entry team manually keying in the documents?
44:57 – Caleb Castellaw
You know, that’s a good question. Um, of our clients use OCR. So, and OCR is kind of the old word for it, optical character recognition. And we call it our data capture module. But if you use our OCR module, then you won’t have your AP team keying in the invoices to your ERP. That’s extracting all the data you need off of the invoice. With our forms capability, you’re able to assign the GL codes within DocLink, so there’s automatic import, and there’s no manual keying of invoices into your ERP.
45:42 – Caleb Castellaw
But we still do have some clients that use us without OCR, and they just use DocLink for the workflow and approval for maybe different documents outside of AP. But yeah, typically everyone, everyone wants OCR these days.
46:02 – Courtney Pollock
Okay. Sounds like there’s some options there. Um, you know, kind of wrapping up, I think we’ve got two more questions for you. So, um, this person would like to know how DocLink imports over to Sage by accounting periods, et cetera. So maybe something we need to dive deeper into, but if you’re able to touch on that.
46:21 – Caleb Castellaw
Yeah. Um, Really, we cache the data. So, what we do is based off of when documents import, they import just as if someone was entering those into your ERP. So once they go through the approval process, geocoding process, and end up in what I’ll call a ready for import status within DocLink at a regular interval, whether that’s once a day, twice a day, once an hour, DocLink will send everything in that ready for import status over to the AP side in your ERP. It goes in there as unposted transaction, right?
47:07 – Caleb Castellaw
So, it’s in there as an unposted transaction. And then from there, you know, you can allocate those transactions into different time periods if needed. Uh, but it’s essentially the exact same as if you’re doing your, your data entry manually. It’s just, we’re pouring that information over automatically. So, I don’t know if that fully answers your question. So maybe we can, uh, we can set up something to, to get back to you and, and, uh, and get some more info.
47:34 – Courtney Pollock
Yes, and I definitely want to reiterate, if you have any question that needs, you know, a deeper conversation, or you want to, you know, learn specifically, in the scope of your business, how DocLink can help, definitely let us know in the post webinar survey, or reach out to your SWK rep, and we’ll make sure to connect you with the right people. So, Caleb, the final question I have for you, which I think is probably a really good one to wrap things up is, how does DocLink handle duplicate documents that come into DocLink from vendors?
48:04 – Caleb Castellaw
It’s a great question. So, we have a duplicate flagging technology. So, we’re able to take a look at the vendor that’s validated against your ERP, the invoice number. That’s coming in and maybe a third variable such as total. And if there is a match that says, hey, this is from the same vendor, the same invoice number, and the same total, we’re going to flag that and we’re going to put it into a duplicate status of the workflow. Someone can be notified that, hey, there’s a possible duplicate here and you need to go in here and review it.
48:40 – Caleb Castellaw
At that point, it’s up to you what you do, right? You can keep it there as a duplicate. A lot of times you will purge it from the system. Um, but yeah, we can flag duplicates. We don’t automatically delete them. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll put them into a separate spot of the workflow, send an email notification to the person that needs to review that. Um, so that you’re not doing any, you know, entering duplicate invoices in your ERP.
49:08 – Courtney Pollock
Awesome. Well, that is all the questions we have for today. Really great Q&A, everyone. Thank you in the audience for submitting those questions throughout. And Caleb, thank you for a really informative and thorough presentation. So just want to say a quick thank you to everyone for taking some time out of your busy day to be with us. We hope you found it informative. Let us know if you’d like to be contacted by our SWK rep to get some more information and see how this fits into your software solution.
Learn More About Digital Transformation
Any time you have questions about your business technology options, all you have to do is reach out to our team of seasoned experts here at SWK Technologies.
Contact SWK today to get your questions answered or fill out the form below.