Speakers: Steve Smith, Chief Operating Officer, Esker to...

Integrating a ‘Quit Paper’ Platform to Automate Any Document Process

Sponsored by Esker

Speakers: Steve Smith, Chief Operating Officer, Esker

Moderator: Tim Winn

Integrating a “Quit Paper” Platform to Automate Any Document Process

Steve Smith | May 2010

Tim Winn: Hello, and welcome to a SearchSAP.com presentation, “Integrating a „Quit

Paper‟ Platform to Automate Any Document Process.” This presentation is being brought to

you by Esker. For more information on Esker, you can click on their logo, in the lower

portion of your screen. My name is Tim Winn, and I am the moderator for today‟s

presentation. Joining me today is Steve Smith, U.S. Chief Operating Officer at Esker.

Before we begin this presentation, I would like to review a few housekeeping items with you.

The slides for this presentation will be pushed to your screen automatically. If you have any

questions throughout the presentation, you can type them in the “Ask a Question” area,

located on the right side of the viewing console, and they will be addressed at the end of the

presentation. And, if you experience any difficulty reading or viewing the slides, there is an

“Enlarge Slide” button that you can click on, which is located just below the slides. And, with

that said, I am now going to turn things over to Steve to begin his presentation.


Steve Smith: Hello everybody, and thank you for joining us today. We‟re going to talk a lot

about how you can integrate a quit paper platform into any document automation process,

and I think what you‟ll see out of this is that while everybody has talked about quit paper, and

Esker certainly is all about quit paper, this is our theme of our company, we have a long ways

to go before we actually get to the paperless office.


Why it Matters

The facts– Worldwide paper

consumption has tripled in 30

years and will grow another

50% by year’s end

– Every year the USA uses 8M

tons of office paper (3.2B

reams) and each office

worker averages 10K pages

Yet paper is– Anti-sustainability

– Expensive to manage

– A source of errors

– A source of inefficiency in

business processes

– Everywhere

1 Ton of Paper

17 Trees

3 Cubic Yards of Landfill

2 Barrels of Oil

7,000 Gallons of Water

4,100 Kwh of Electricity

I think I‟ve been hearing about the paperless office now for around 20 years and the reality is

actually that paper has grown. The usage has paper has grown over the last 30 years, in fact

it‟s tripled. And, in the U.S. alone we still use about eight million tons of paper every single

year. So, paper is still a significant part of our business, significant part of many of the

business processes that we go through each and every day, yet it really also slows down our

ability to get processes done, because paper can easily be lost. It can be misplaced. You have

no idea where it is. You lose all visibility with it as well. So, while it does serve an important

part of what we do, unfortunately it can really slow down our business process altogether.


Business Runs on Documents

So, when you look at how a typical business will run, you generally have, and this is

obviously a very simplistic approach to it, but you look at the order-to-cash side, where you

have orders that come into your organization. Eventually, you fill those orders and then you

send an invoice out to your customer, and that generally both requires a lot of paper from

both the inbound process and the outbound process, and of course there are a number of other

documents in between that are generated because of the order coming in and the invoice

going out. And, certainly on the procure-to-pay side, where you‟re sending out orders now to

your suppliers, that too requires paper. Generally, they‟re going out in some sort of paper

format, and your vendors, then, are sending back to you the invoices. Those are coming in,

for the most part, through the mail, and again in a paper format that requires a number of

these processes to manage.


Reality

An organization's ability — or inability — to optimize document

processes directly impacts profitability

Ability to optimize produces financial gain for the entire organization

Sales order processing

Billing and cash collection

Inability to optimize limits potential for financial gain

Continued reliance on paper

Time-consuming manual processing

Most businesses still have manual touch points in document

processes

EDI, XML, IDoc, Web don’t cover everyone

Being able to treat all customers and suppliers as e-enabled brings

additional ROI to SAP solutions

More paper = slower process, higher error rates, less gain

So, the reality of all of this is that while it would be wonderful to go to a paperless process,

we still do have a lot of paper in our organizations, and our ability to really optimize these

processes is quite difficult to do. I mean, many customers have tried it before. They‟ve tried it

through EDI and XML, and while that has been successful in a number of companies, it

generally does not get rid of all of the paper. In fact, we a have a number of customers who

have been incredibly successful with EDI on certain business processes, but yet it only solved

70% to 80% of their problem. And, that remaining 20% to 30% still takes up so much time

that they‟ve had to look to automate that portion of it as well, because they simply cannot get

all of their customers to switch to EDI, or XML, or and IDoc, or whatever the format may be.

So, we have a lot of these manual touch points that are created because of this, and again the

more paper really slows down the overall workflow in any company.


Visibility

Productivity

Error rateCost per order

or invoice

ImplementationChallenge to

manage fluctuating

volumes

E-commerce and

customer adoption

challenges

Where is the order

or invoice?

IT and staffing

Do less with more

Impact on cash flow,

supply chain and

finance

Business

Document

Processing

Process Management Concerns

When we take a look at some of the concerns that come with paper as well, and what we hear

from our customers back, I think the number one concern I hear is that managers say they

simply do not have visibility into any process that is paper oriented, especially an inbound

process. So, if you take a look at a sales order or an inbound invoice, the manager really has

no idea how many orders or invoices that are sitting out there, what the value of those

invoices are, or orders, what the value of or what products are being ordered. Whatever the

case may be, the manager generally does not have visibility into it, until it gets inside of SAP.

So, that may take, in some cases, a day, two, even three days before especially an order or an

invoice is put into SAP, and you really lose a lot of visibility as to where that may be.

Certainly, productivity can go down because there are errors that are generated by manually

keying information in from a piece of paper. It certainly can reduce the amount of time that

IT has in actually setting up different types of products to products to automate these

processes.





Solution 1 Solution 2

Solution 3 Solution 4

So, when you take a look at these four steps again, when you look at the order-to-cash and the

procure-to-pay, generally what happens is there are four solutions that are required to actually

capture, again a solution for sales orders, a solution for purchase orders going out, a separate

solution for outbound accounts receivable or invoices, and of course inbound accounts, or

accounts payable invoices, so a lot of different solutions. And, this creates a lot of complexity

within your IT landscape.


Point-to-point solutions create

massive amounts of costs

(administration, knowledge,

maintenance, hardware,

upgrades)

Application modification is costly

and time-consuming

Ability to optimize processes is

strictly limited

Fax

Email

Print

EDI

Mail

IT Landscape Complexity Explodes

SAP

CRM

LEGACY

Supplier

Customer

Partner

So, if your IT people have to go out and then implement four different solutions to solve

these four problems, and again let‟s not forget about all of the documents that are also

required to complete those processes, you‟re talking about a lot of issues that IT needs to take

care of. And, I‟ve run into a number of situations where IT will sometimes be a year to two

years behind on getting projects implemented in their organization, and literally they hold on

getting anything, any additional solution, implemented at that point. So, you‟re looking at a

lot of time that you may have to wait before you can actually solve these problems and look

to get rid of the paper in the company.


A Paper Explosion

No visibility

No control

High cost, low productivity

So, what happens is that the paper continues to be a problem. You continue to have no

visibility or control, and you have a high cost of productivity that goes along with it. It‟s just

there doesn‟t seem to be an end to the entire process.


One Platform for Multiple Processes

IDoc

EDI/XML

Data Capture

ValidationFormatting

Archiving

Delivery

Fax and Email

So, with Esker, what we really are trying to do is we‟ve managed to put together a solution

that can automate any type of document process, in any format. So, whether you‟re receiving

inbound documents or sending outbound documents, and no matter what format you receive

them in or format you send them out, we have a solution that can automate the business

processes around those current paper intensive processes. So, that‟s what we‟re going to talk

a lot about today, is exactly how Esker can automate this and what we can do for your

organization.





Now, when we go back to our classic business and how it runs, when we take a look at this,

really what we‟re looking at is a set of four solutions. We‟re looking at Esker in the middle,

that can manage the documents that are associated with these four different business

processes.


Sales Orders

Confirmations

Proposals

Contracts

Account receivable

Purchase requisition

Invoices

…

Paper Documents (scan)

Emails

Print

Faxes

E-documents (XML, IDoc)

How it Works

Fax & Mail on Demand

Email

Fax

Print

Archive

XML

SMS

Web Publishing

Invoices

Purchase Order

Remittance Advice

Confirmations

Letters

Quotes

Reports

…

So, let‟s take a look, closer look at exactly how we do that. Well, again, when you‟re looking

at documents for both inbound and outbound, and let‟s focus first on the inbound side,

whether it‟s an inbound sales order or an inbound invoice, or any other type of document that

may be coming into your organization, it could come in through the mail, at which point to

get it automated you would need to scan that document in or have a third-party partner, that

we can actually set you up with, scan that document in for you. So, now it‟s in an electronic

format. So, when we‟re talking about mail, we have to get it scanned. But, any other format,

whether it‟s e-mail, fax, EDI, XML, it doesn‟t matter at that point. If it‟s in some type of

electronic format, Esker has the ability to capture that document coming in. We also can send

out documents in any format as well, and again that could be through the mail, through e-

mail, fax, EDI, XML. Again, whatever format your customer would like to receive, Esker has

the ability to send documents in that format.


Sales Orders

Confirmations

Proposals

Contracts

Account receivable


Invoices

…


Emails

Print

Faxes


How it Works

Capture


Email

Fax

Print

Archive

XML

SMS

Web Publishing

Invoices

Purchase Order

Remittance Advice

Confirmations

Letters

Quotes

Reports

…

How do we do it? Well, the first thing we do is we capture that information as it‟s coming in

or as it‟s going out, and we‟re reading the data on that document to determine what to do

next, and again we don‟t care what format it may be in.


Sales Orders

Confirmations

Proposals

Contracts

Account receivable


Invoices

…


Emails

Print

Faxes


How it Works

ReadCapture


Email

Fax

Print

Archive

XML

SMS

Web Publishing

Invoices

Purchase Order

Remittance Advice

Confirmations

Letters

Quotes

Reports

…


Sales Orders

Confirmations

Proposals

Contracts

Account receivable


Invoices

…


Emails

Print

Faxes


How it Works

RouteReadCapture


Email

Fax

Print

Archive

XML

SMS

Web Publishing

Invoices

Purchase Order

Remittance Advice

Confirmations

Letters

Quotes

Reports

…

So, as we read this data now, this when we‟re applying rules to that particular document, to

determine what we should do with it next, and in essence where we‟re going to eventually

route the document. So, we may be routing it to, if it‟s an inbound document, to a customer

service rep or to the AP department. If it‟s outbound, obviously it‟s going to a customer. Or,

we may be routing it into SAP directly as well. So, we determine immediately what we

should do with this document, where it needs to be routed at that point.


Sales Orders

Confirmations

Proposals

Contracts

Account receivable


Invoices

…


Emails

Print

Faxes


How it Works

FormatRouteReadCapture


Email

Fax

Print

Archive

XML

SMS

Web Publishing

Invoices

Purchase Order

Remittance Advice

Confirmations

Letters

Quotes

Reports

…

We can also, and this is common with an outbound document, is we can also format the

document. Now, if the information is coming out of SAP, in most situations you‟ve already

got the document in a format that you would like to receive. But, let‟s say we have to not

only pull an invoice out of SAP but perhaps we have to pull a subsequent, or another

document, maybe terms and conditions or something else that has to go along with that

invoice or purchase order that‟s going out, and that may not be in a format that‟s proper to

send out to your customer. So, we have tools inside of our solution that can automatically

format that document as well as bundle it all together and send it out to the customer.


Sales Orders

Confirmations

Proposals

Contracts

Account receivable


Invoices

…


Emails

Print

Faxes


How it Works

TransportFormatRouteReadCapture


Email

Fax

Print

Archive

XML

SMS

Web Publishing

Invoices

Purchase Order

Remittance Advice

Confirmations

Letters

Quotes

Reports

…


Sales Orders

Confirmations

Proposals

Contracts

Account receivable


Invoices

…


Emails

Print

Faxes


How it Works

TransportFormatRouteReadCapture


Email

Fax

Print

Archive

XML

SMS

Web Publishing

Invoices

Purchase Order

Remittance Advice

Confirmations

Letters

Quotes

Reports

…

SAP

Applications

And, of course, finally, the last thing we‟re doing is we‟re transporting it, and we‟re

transporting it again in the format that it needs to be sent out in. All of this then works in

accordance with SAP, so we‟ve got certified connectivity into SAP. So, whether we need to

route documents from the outside into SAP and create an order inside of SAP, or get the

invoice inside of SAP, or whether we‟re routing a print stream from SAP out to your

customers, it doesn‟t matter to us. We have the ability, through our certified connectivity with

SAP, to get that information in and out.


Manual Sales Order Process

Customers

POs manually gathered

and filed

Manager

CSRs

Your Company

EDI

IDoc

EDI

Fax Machines

Customer Service

One order can cost as much as:

$60 to process

$200 to reprocess

So, let‟s break down some very specific examples now of how we can solve each one of the

processes that we quickly talked about. So, when we look at sales orders, very traditional

view of sales orders is that most sales orders are coming into companies today through fax.

However, we do also have customers that receive orders through EDI and we have customers

that receive orders through e-mail. So, again, just in this particular scenario alone you‟ve got

three different types of platforms that you have to be able to capture information in. First, if

it‟s coming in fax, you may have a fax server or fax machines, which will then route that

information, probably to a customer service rep, where they‟ll key that information into SAP.

During that time, whether it‟s coming in through e-mail or through fax, your manager has

absolutely no visibility whatsoever into the number of orders that are sitting out, that are

waiting to be processed, what the value of those orders are, what customer the orders are

coming from, what products are being ordered. All of this information is really up in the air,

until those orders are entered into SAP.

Now, with EDI, you do get some of that visibility upfront, but you have yet another solution

that you‟ve set up for EDI, and you have to try to get your customers to conform with the

format that you would like to receive, or you have to conform to their format. Whatever the

case may be, you do get a little bit more visibility. There still is some workflow that generally

is required though, because just because your customer is sending it to you in EDI doesn‟t

mean that they‟re ordering the correct part number or the correct products itself. So, there

generally is some workflow that‟s still involved.

The other piece of the equation is that customer service as no visibility either into what‟s

coming in, no matter what form it‟s coming in, until it gets inside of SAP. But, even then, if

they have to go back to the original, they probably have to go to a file cabinet somewhere,

pull that original out, and answer any customer inquiries that come in. So, it really is a very

costly process, anywhere from $60 to really process an order and up to $200 to reprocess an

order, if there are any mistakes that are made.


Automated Sales Order Process

Customers Your Company

Now one order can cost as little as:

$1–3 to process

and the need to reprocess is eliminated

CSRs

Electronic

archive

Manager

Customer Service

EDI

So, when you‟re looking at the automated way that Esker handles it, we can capture the

information in any format again. So, whether it‟s coming in fax, EDI, e-mail, the most

common ways that orders are sent in, Esker will capture all of that. Because we‟re capturing

information off of those documents immediately, the manager has complete visibility into the

number of orders that are coming in, who they‟re coming from, and the value of those orders,

even what products may be ordered. So, if you need to prioritize orders based on the

customer that‟s sending it in or the price, or the product type, you have the ability to

prioritize, that those orders will be treated faster or go to the top of the queue. But, your

manager has completely visibility before the CSRs ever even touch the orders. So, now there

could be a validation step that takes place, just making sure that the OCR technology that

we‟ve applied to that has captured that information properly. And, then that order is

automatically created inside of SAP, and we do a simulation to make sure that everything is

100% accurate before it hits SAP.

Along with that, we‟re sending an image of that document as well into SAP. So, now if your

customer service needs to go back because of an inquiry they‟ve received from your

customers to actually see if the order has been processed, they can do so. But, with Esker,

because we have the ability to send outbound documents, we can also send notification to

your customer that their order has been received and processed in SAP so they don‟t have to

call back and inquire about their order. So, as you can see, we can take a $60 process and

really bring it down to about $1 to $3 to process every order, and we‟re, for the most part,

eliminating any types of errors that may take place. So, there are significant savings that

could be made through sales order processing. Sorry about that. There is a little bit of a delay

in each slide.


Manual AR Process


Invoice

printing

Copy for

archiving

Folding

and

inserting

Stamping

Post office

delivery

Collecting

supporting

documents

Mail Room

The second process that we‟ll talk about is accounts receivable, and with accounts receivable

generally what happens right now is you may have either once a week or once a month,

maybe every other week, invoices that are being sent out in a batch, usually either to your

mailroom or maybe to an offsite mail house facility, where that information is being folded,

stuffed, and then sent out through the post office to your customers, where they finally

receive their orders. Now, of course you have no visibility as to when they‟ve actually

received their orders. If you are doing a batch process, you‟re delaying, actually, the delivery

of that invoice, so you‟re really slowing down your accounts receivable process, because

every day it‟s sitting inside of your system and not being sent out to the customer it really is

slowing down the amount of time it will take for you to get your money back.


Automated AR Process


Archive

Supporting

documents

such as order

copy and Proof

of Delivery

Production FacilityPost office

delivery

Email with invoice

as an attachment

If customer accepts

e-invoice

If not, the

invoice is sent

by postal mail

So, with an automated process, really what we‟re looking at here is we want to be able to

deliver the invoice to the customer in the format that they would like to receive it in.

Generally, if they can get it in their format, they‟ll pay it faster. We also believe that as soon

as you can actually send an invoice out, whether it‟s one at a time or in a small batch, you

should get them out of SAP as quickly as possible and into your customers‟ hands so you can

begin that payable process. So, with our solution, we‟ll actually set up a website where your

customers can come in and actually tell you how they‟d like to receive their orders, and they

still may want to get it through the mail. So, in that scenario,

Esker will automatically look at that document and either send it to your mail facility or what

might be preferred is to send it through our mail facility. We have production facilities

around the world, for processing mail and we can save you not only a significant amount in

the actual processing of that piece of mail but we can get it out faster, because we can take a

single mail piece and send it the second it‟s ready. You don‟t have to send them in a batch, so

get the mail out that way. But, we‟re probably the only mail house out there that actually

wants you to stop using the mail, and we try to encourage our customers to really get your

customers to accept it in electronic format, whether that be in an e-mail, or maybe you set up

a web portal where they can go out to a web portal and download their invoice, which the

nice thing about that is you can still send them an e-mail, letting them know that their invoice

is ready, but you can actually see when they‟ve downloaded the invoice. So, you know that

they‟ve looked at it at this point and you know that they should be starting the payable

process as well. Some customers will even offer it in EDI or XML format. So, whatever you

want to do or however you‟d like to send it out, you can do that.

And, finally, or two other things real quickly, we can also attach other documents to the

invoice. So, if there is other data that needs to be batched or sent in along with your invoices,

to make sure they‟re paid properly or bundled in, we can automatically go out, and that can

be in a separate database, it can be anywhere, and pull that information in and bundle it. So,

we have customers that say, “Well, 30% of our customers require these special terms and

conditions to go along with an invoice,” or, “this proof of delivery,” or whatever the case

may be. We will automatically pull those documents in, send them in a bundle along with the

invoice, again getting you paid faster. And, then finally, we‟ll keep an electronic archive of

everything that‟s been delivered, so if anybody has any questions they can come back and

immediately look at it. We can even make that archive available on the web portal so that

your customers can view it as well.


Manual PO Process

SuppliersYour Company

Printing

Copy for

archivingFolding

and

inserting

StampingCollect

Mail Room

Post office

delivery

Procurement

PO Validation

Purchase

Requisition

Purchasing Manager

Accounting

??

With the manual PO process, obviously you‟re ordering goods and services from suppliers

that are out there, and this is very similar to sales orders coming into your company.

Generally, there is a piece of paper that eventually has to go out to your suppliers, and that‟s

usually handled by a procurement, where a purchase request will be issued and then

eventually maybe even a PO. All of the approvals will take place prior to it actually being

sent out. And, what I hear from Accounting all of the time, now this may not be true in your

company but I hear this all of the time, is they are completely clueless of everything that has

just taken place, because procurement has a tendency not to communicate necessarily with

AP, maybe special terms and conditions that were put into place, if you pay early, or even

what‟s been ordered necessarily. So, they may not have visibility or easy access to the

information, let‟s say of all of the products and goods that were ordered.


Automated PO Process


PO Validation

Purchasing Manager Accounting

Production Facility

Post office

delivery

So, with an automated process, again we have the ability to not only manage the purchase

requests and the PO process, which can also be handled through SAP, but we can help

automate some of that and even the approvals of that, but at the very least the delivery of that

document out to your suppliers. So, whether it needs to go through a mail facility, which

we‟ve talked about already, it can go through our mail facility or through your own, but the

preferred method is to start sending them out electronically, again in whatever format your

suppliers can accept them, whether it‟s fax, e-mail, EDI, whatever. We also could send an e-

mail at the same time, or some other form of documentation to Accounting so they‟re aware

this product has been ordered, you should be receiving an invoice on it soon, here are some

special terms and conditions that were accompanying with it, so if we pay within 10 days we

get a 2% discount. Whatever the case may be, whatever your rules may be in your company,

we can automate that and make sure that Accounting is kept up-to-date.


Manual AP Process


Mail Room

Accounting

Post office

deliveryManager

Procurement

Goods Receipt

And, then finally the last process, and again I haven‟t even touched on all of the various

documents that are associated with these processes, so certainly we can automate those as

well, but I‟m trying to keep this as simple as possible right now. When you‟re looking at

invoices coming into your company, and this is very similar to sales orders, except for one

thing. With sales orders, they have a tendency to primarily come either through fax or EDI,

still some e-mail as well. With invoices, they have a tendency to come more through the mail.

So, somebody has to take that mail, open it, distribute it to the right person in the company,

and then approvals need to be made, and then so there are stamps that are usually put on it,

and it‟s handed off to somebody to be approved. It could sit there for a day or two, or five or

10, and then you‟ve got to try to track it down. And, of course, what you‟re doing is you‟re

missing your early pay discounts. You‟re losing invoices at times. It really is a problem.

Management has very little visibility into what‟s going on because maybe the invoice hasn‟t

been entered into SAP yet. It‟s a real mess, lots of paper. So, all of that paper generally is

stored somewhere as well and it just creates a lot of confusion in the company.


Automated AP Process


Post office

delivery

Accounting

Manager

Procurement

Goods Receipt

Mail Room

Electronic

archive

So, with the automated process, generally what we‟re doing, if it‟s coming in through mail,

we are again scanning that document in, whether that‟s through somebody in your company

scanning that or through one of our partners who can provide the scanning services to you as

well, through a lockbox out there, and then we‟ll automatically capture that information.

Now, we still may have invoices coming in other formats, such as e-mail or some other

format, which Esker can automatically pick up and capture. From there, we can route it to the

appropriate people. So, it can go right into Accounts Payable right away. They can forward

the documents on to anybody that needs to approve it. Notes and comments can be tracked

throughout the entire process. If there are multiple people that need to approve it, we can set

up a workflow for multiple people to approve the documents. An electronic archive is kept of

all of this, and of course it‟s all sent back into SAP with a link back in the SAP for that

electronic copy of the invoice.

So, with all of the processes that I‟ve talked about as well, you have a complete audit trail of

everything that has taken place, with all of the capturing of the information, who has touched

it, when it was touched, everything that has happened with that particular document. And,

we‟ve been told by customers already, just from an audit standpoint, the amount of money

they‟ve saved by being able to automatically track all of this.


SAP Integration Options

And, of course, as I indicated in the beginning, everything that I‟ve talked about has tight

integration with SAP. We have certified connectivity into SAP, so whether we‟re pushing

data into SAP or pulling data out, we have certified connectivity. We work with them. In fact,

over 50% of our customers are SAP customers. It is our primary focus and we obviously can

do it extremely well, and then deliver, again, this content or accept this content in any format.


Deploy On Premise or On Demand

Software or Service

Esker DeliveryWare

Esker on Demand

Inbound documents

Outbound documents

What I haven‟t touched on too much yet, but is very important for you to know, is that this

can be delivered to you in two different ways. Esker can provide this to you in a traditional

on-premise platform, where we‟ll install our software on a server in your company and you‟ll

have complete access to all of the capabilities of Esker, and the functionality that we talked

about today. However, many of our customers are saying, “We don‟t want to deal with the

hardware anymore. We don‟t want to install more solutions. Our IT is already tied up with so

many other projects. We just don‟t have time.” So, everything that I‟ve shown you and talked

to you about today can also be delivered in the cloud, or software as a service, and we‟ve

been doing this now for over five years and we have over 3,000 clients using our software as

a service platform to actually deliver content in and out of their organization.


Worldwide Production Centers

Data centers monitored 24X7 in North

America, Europe and Australia

Least-cost routing to any center around

the world

Secure connectivity, including SAProuter

So, to drill a little bit more into the software as a service, if we‟re talking about fax or mail,

we actually have production facilities where we can handle your fax or mail for you

automatically. Now, the other processes in these production facilities, we have literally

hundreds of servers that are managing all of these processes. But, I talked a little bit before

about mail facilities, and when you look on the map there you can see we have mail facilities

all around the world, and we also have fax facilities there too. So, one advantage that we can

offer that no mail house can and many other fax providers cannot give you is that not only

can we least cost route your document to any one of those facilities, so that we can reduce the

actual cost associated with sending from them, but because of our certified connector with

SAP we can give you real-time status of when that document was actually generated and sent

out. So, you‟re not only getting all of the benefits that you would have if you had an on-

premise solution and managing all of this yourself, but you get it on-demand, where you‟re

getting that real-time connectivity back into SAP, knowing exactly what‟s going on with your

documents at all times, again a complete audit trail of everything that‟s happening to your

documents. And, I can‟t stress enough the amount of money that you can save by least cost

routing. When you look at the cost of sending just a simple letter from here overseas versus

being able to have that electronically sent to a mail facility overseas, and then delivered from

there, the savings can be significant, and you can get similar savings with fax as well.


Phased Implementation Approach

Outline document

processing steps

Identify manual touch

points in the process

Prioritize based on cost

and return

Automate your top

priorities first

Keep it simple

So, I talked about a lot of things today, four different processes, and these processes can

probably include up to 10 to 20 other types of documents as well that we may automate for

you. The one thing that I really would like to stress, though, is it would be very difficult to try

to look at this and do it all at one time. In fact, I wouldn‟t recommend that to anybody. Most

of our customers, what they do is they will take a look at what is causing them the most pain

today. What is the paper process that is really dragging down your organization? And, we‟ll

tackle that one first, and then we‟ll add on the other processes as we go along. As we get one

done, we move on to the next one. And, that‟s really a formula for success that all of our

customers seem to follow, and I highly recommend that you would do the same.


Process Efficiency

Process Consistency

Process Transparency

Customer Service

+99.5% Accuracy

Reduce document

processing time

by 40–90%

AUTOMATION

Cut document

processing costs

by 40–70%

Outcomes of Automation

When you look at some of the outcomes that people have actually experienced and what

we‟re hearing, and I‟ll show you some customer quotes right after this, but we‟ve been able

to cut the document processing costs by anywhere from 40% to 70% in many companies.

And, the actual time of processing an order, in other words if you look at the amount of time

it takes to process an inbound sales order, let‟s say, we can actually reduce that time by

anywhere from 40% to 90%. In fact, we have one customer that told us that we actually

reduced the amount of time it took them to process an order by over 95%, and the error rate

went from something that was quite significant to almost nothing after they automated. So,

the savings that you can get by automating, getting rid of the paper, turning everything into

electronic format, getting the information into SAP, can be very, very significant.


What Customers Say

“The technology is incredibly flexible. Esker, compared with the other

solutions we considered, provides a complete document workflow

platform for automation.”

– Steve Snyder, Director of Information Technology, National Office Furniture

“Beyond invoice processing, we would like to use Esker DeliveryWare

to automate and deliver other business documents from SAP, such as

customer reminders or even to manage documents entering SAP."

– Alain Thevenelle, Administrative and Finance Director, Samsung

“There is no need for paper at all anymore.”

– Roman Rozman, Senior Director of IT, Aearo Technologies

And, these are some of the things that what our customers have said, and I‟ll focus primarily

in on the second one, from Samsung, where he says, “Beyond invoice processing, we would

like to use Esker to automate and deliver other business documents from SAP, such as

customer reminders, or even managing documents entering into SAP.” So, again they started

with one process and then they started looking at other ways that they could automate. We

have one customer here, in Madison, Wisconsin, that has automated literally 10 to 30

different types of documents, and the reason I don‟t know is because they actually wrote their

own rules and will walk around and say, “Where did that document come from? Let‟s see

how we can automate it.” And, they truly are trying to become 100% paperless within their

company.


Key Takeaways

Core issues driving the need for automation are common to all

document process

IT resources are scarce and expensive, so finding a separate solution

for each document process is not cost-effective

The ability to receive and deliver documents in multiple formats, like

mail, fax, e-mail, Web, or EDI/XML, that match customer preferences,

is essential to success of automation projects

A single solution can automate and capture any inbound document

(e.g., AP invoices, sales orders), deliver any outbound document

(e.g., AR invoices, purchase orders, receipt acknowledgements), and

store the data inside of SAP applications

Having the option to implement the solution either as Software as a

Service (SaaS) or on-premise offers flexibility for project execution

So, when you take away–what I hope you got from this presentation is that there are a lot of

issues that drive the need for automation in a company. Having all of the manual touch points

that are involved with handling paper and distributing paper throughout an organization, and

the way you can lose track of where it may be, it really does slow down a business process. It

can cause considerable concern, also, with your customers and your suppliers, when you

can‟t find documents or can‟t get documents approved and pushed through fast enough. And,

that can hurt credit. That can hurt customer relations. It can hurt a lot of things within the

company.

The second big thing is that IT resources are scarce. I mean, we simply do not have the

number of IT personnel as we used to have. I mean, it‟s just everybody is running leaner

nowadays, and again it‟s not uncommon for me to hear about projects being delayed six

months to even up to 18 months because there just is nobody available to go ahead and get

this implemented. So, it takes a lot of time, a lot of resources to sit there and try to put in

different solutions for every single process that we‟ve talked about. Much better if you can go

with one solution. You‟ve got to make sure that one solution though, then, can handle all of

the different formats that people send content to you in and you need to deliver content out.

And, it should really be able to manage all of those processes and all of the associated

documents with those processes that we talked about today, whether it be AP, AR, SOP, or

POs going out, and all of that needs to integrate tightly with SAP. And, I would recommend

that you strongly look at a company that could either provide this in a software as a service or

an on-premise platform, and it‟s awfully nice when somebody can do both.


Sustainability with SaaS

Along with reducing paper use,

SaaS solutions can eliminate the

need for hardware to support

document processing

Spend less on power to run server

computers, fax machines, printers

and other equipment

As of February 2010, Esker on

Demand solutions had saved:

300 tons of paper

5,100 trees

335 tons of solid waste

900 barrels of oil

2.1 million gallons of water

So, just a little bit more on what we‟ve done with our SaaS solution so far, because we‟re not

just reducing the paper in this case but we actually are reducing the need for hardware and

support. We‟ve had a number of on-premise customers, that have been customers of ours for

years, that have come to us and switched to our SaaS solutions, not because that just our one

solution was too much for them to handle but they‟re looking at all of their applications and

they‟re really trying to reduce the number of pieces of hardware that they have to manage

overall. So, going with a SaaS solution or a cloud-based solution is just the way for them to

go. And, when we look at Esker overall, we‟ve really been able to reduce over 300 tons of

paper, 5,100 trees that adds up to, and you can see the other stats of materials that have been

saved by not having to produce paper and going green with your documents. So, it‟s been

quite significant, what we‟ve gained just through our on-demand services, but certainly you

can receive your own gains with an on-premise solution.


SAP-certified integration with SAP NetWeaver®

50% of Esker customers run SAP® solutions

Specific content mappings to sales order

management module of SAP ERP 6.0

Dedicated R&D team focused on SAP solutions

Patented DeliveryWare Rules technology

Software as a Service (SaaS) pioneer

They Quit Paper with Esker

Highlights Worldwide PresenceWorldwide Presence

Lyon, France –

Headquarters

Madison, WI USA

Derby, UK

Munich, Germany

Madrid, Spain

Milan, Italy

Sydney, NSW, Australia

Singapore

…and distributors in more than 50

countries

Esker Overview

So, I really haven‟t talked a lot about Esker, so one quick slide on just Esker. We‟ve been in

business now for 25 years. I‟ve told you that we are SAP focused, with over 50% of our

customers on SAP, and we dedicate a lot of our R&D resource to SAP solutions. So, it‟s

really where we‟re putting a lot of our emphasis in. we do have a patented rule engine, so all

of the technology, whether it be in our on-premise solution or on-demand, is all built around

our patented rule engine, and how we can take that information, capture it, and then also put

it through a converter to make sure that we convert it into the appropriate format that your

customer would like to receive it, or accept it in the format that they would like to send it.

And, again, we have our software as a service, as I‟ve talked about.


How We Do It

So, final slide, what we‟re trying to do is we‟re trying to help you quit paper, whether it be on

the order-to-cash or the procure-to-pay side, and we‟re doing that, of course, through our on-

premise or on-demand solution. So, whatever fits your organization the best and whatever is

best for your needs is the way we can do it.


Thank You!

Steve SmithVice President of SalesAmericas

Tel 608-828-6110Fax 608-828-0100

[email protected] Smith

U.S. Chief Operating Officer

Esker, Inc. 1212 Deming Way Suite 350 Madison, WI 53717

Tel 608.828.6000

Fax 608.828.6001

[email protected]

www.esker.com

So, I hope this presentation has been helpful. I know I had to go through all of the different

types of processes that we can manage with our Esker solution very quickly, but hopefully

this gives you a basic idea of what we can do with Esker and how we can help your company

quit paper. So, if we have not been able to answer all of your questions, certainly now we will

go ahead and take some questions from you, but if not, if we can‟t get them all answered here

today, I certainly would encourage you to go to www.esker.com. There is a lot of information

out there about our company, about our particular solutions, or you can send us an inquiry at

[email protected], and we will be more than happy to get back with you and answer any

questions you may have.

So, at this point, I‟m going to pass it back to Tim and I think we‟re going to go ahead and

start taking some of your questions.

Tim Winn: Great! Thank you for your presentation, Steve! I would like to take this time to

remind everybody that you are participating in a SearchSAP.com presentation, “Integrating a

„Quit Paper‟ Platform to Automate Any Document Process,” which is being brought to you

by Esker. If you would like more information on Esker, you can click on their logo, in the

lower portion of your screen.

Question and Answer Portion

http://www.esker.com/

mailto:[email protected]

We are now moving on to the live question and answer portion of today‟s presentation and

encourage you to enter your questions in the “Ask a Question” area that is located on the

right of your presentation screen. We will respond to as many as time allows.

Okay, Steve, it looks like our first question is, “Are your solutions template-based?”

Steve Smith: That‟s a very common question that we get from customers who have tried an

OCR solution for inbound documents, because so many of the solutions that are out there are

template-based, that require a lot of professional services behind them in order to build that

solution and get every single template down. Because, when you look at sales orders or you

look at invoices, obviously the information, for the most part, is similar in every single type

of sales order or invoice, but the format is different. So, some providers out there have to set

up a template for every single format. No, ours is not template-based. We have something

called teach technology that will–if we can‟t capture the information automatically, because

we do scan the entire document and look for key words of information so that we can

hopefully capture it all, but if we can‟t we have something that‟s the teach technology that

allows you to drag the area that we have not captured the information right, teach Esker

exactly where to find this information so the next time it comes in from this customer we‟ll

know exactly where to pull the data off of it.

Tim Winn: Great! Thank you! Our next question is, “OCR has several drawbacks, such as

high error rates. What does your solution offer beyond basic OCR capabilities that would

minimize errors?”

Steve Smith: Yeah, that certainly is true. Again, traditional OCR solutions that are just

capturing the information on the document, first of all, they can make mistakes. They may

convert an L into a 1, or an 8 into a 0, or whatever the case may be. If all its doing is just

trying to capture the information, you‟re right, errors can be made. But, with our solution, it‟s

an intelligent document capture. What do I mean by that? Well, we‟re doing several things.

Number one, first of all, we‟re cleaning up the document before it comes in and we‟re

actually enhancing the image itself, just to make sure that we have a better opportunity at

capturing that information. The second thing that we‟re doing is we are then doing some

syntax checking. So, in other words, if we know the material number, that it should be all

numbers or it should be all of your materials start with the letter L, not with the number 1, we

can actually teach our solution to always, if it thinks it sees a 1, always substitute it with an L,

or take a dash out, or put a dash in where it needs to be. There is a lot of intelligence that we

can put in this solution to help fix anything that your customer may do wrong. And, finally,

because of our integration with SAP, we can actually look up information inside of SAP,

even information that may not be, let‟s say, on an order. So, your customers are ordering

products from you. They don‟t know their customer number inside of SAP, but we do and we

can go inside of SAP after we‟ve looked up their information, and through this intelligent

document capture actually add that order number or change the material number to the right

one. Whatever the situation may be, the intelligence that we‟re adding to this will certainly

make it work far better than any OCR template-based solution that may be out there.

Tim Winn: Thank you! Our next question is, “When sending out documents, like POs and

AR invoices, can you bundle other documents with the purchase order or invoice of these

documents, then all link together in SAP?”

Steve Smith: Yes, they are, and I talked briefly about that in the presentation. We definitely

can bundle in other documents, and whether its terms and conditions–I‟ve seen some

customers where they may be sending out invoices to suppliers, but they may send out

multiple invoices in a given day. And, we have one customer where we‟re bundling all of

those invoices into one PDF with one set of terms and conditions at the backset. That‟s just

one example. We have others where supporting documentation needs to be added to the

documents going out and it actually resides outside of SAP. So, we‟re receiving say the

invoice or the PO from SAP and then from a separate database we‟re looking at that

particular customer, that say the invoice is for, and we‟re pulling in that additional

information and bundling it together. Now, all of that will be linked back in SAP so you have

a complete audit trail of everything that was delivered to that customer.

Tim Winn: Our next question is, “Do you integrate with SRM?”

Steve Smith: SRM? I don‟t know the–I believe we do, but I‟m not sure exactly what SRM is.

I believe that‟s one of the functions within SAP. We integrate with everything within SAP.

So, I‟m sorry I don‟t know the exact answer to that question. I would be more than happy to

get together with you and talk to you about it, or get you in touch with one of our sales

engineers, who certainly would know the answer to the question.

Tim Winn: Okay, thank you for your presentation, Steve! That concludes today‟s

presentation, “Integrating a „Quit Paper‟ Platform to Automate Any Document Process.” If

you would like to review today‟s material at some later date, an archive version of this event

will be made available on our SearchSAP.com webcast library. I would like to thank Steve

Smith for taking the time to be a part of today‟s presentation, and I would also like to thank

Esker for sponsoring this event. And, as always, I‟d like to thank you all for taking the time

out to join us today. Have a great day!

Speakers: Steve Smith, Chief Operating Officer, Esker to...

Documents

Transcript of Speakers: Steve Smith, Chief Operating Officer, Esker to...