AUTOMATED QUOTING PROCESS SOLUTION CREATED FOR PENNENGINEERING

Company: PennEngineering

Founded in 1942, PennEngineering is a multi-million dollar global leader in fastening solutions. The company provides fastener, fastener installation design and product solutions worldwide for many diverse industries including electronics, computer, data/telecom, medical, automotive, marine, aerospace/aircraft, and general manufacturing as well as others.

Challenge: Improve the quoting process efficiency

Ensuring that an accurate price is being quoted for each part is essential for business profitability and customer satisfaction. At PennEngineering the sales team in charge of quotes would depend entirely on binders full of paper quotes to do their job. Over the years the company had accumulated hundreds and hundreds of quote binders which filled two cubicles. Even though after two years’ quotes were no longer valid, regulations required that quotes be archived for the last seven (7) years.

Despite efforts to keep the quote binders intact, quotes would frequently be borrowed, then either not returned or put back in the wrong place. To exacerbate the problem, if anything should happen to the binders, it would become much more difficult and time consuming to accurately produce quotations.

The Solution: OnBase by Hyland

PennEngineering selected Paperless Solutions Inc. to design and implement an OnBase enterprise content management (ECM) system that included electronic forms, electronic search and electronic storage.

“We evaluated a few vendors, but Paperless Solution recommended a system that was a perfect fit for us,” stated Adam Phillipps, Director of Global Information Systems. ”They quickly understood our business and were very easy to work with during the implementation and after. What was also important is that they understood our culture, because we didn’t want a system that wouldn’t be adopted by its users.”

Paperless Solutions worked closely with the team responsible for quotes to streamline the quote process. The first step was to get the last twelve years of quotes scanned into the database –over 50,000 pages! Next, the team designed simple forms and routing workflows.

With the new system, part prices expire automatically after a year. Now the person responsible for quotes is automatically alerted if the price has changed, and is given the option to update to current prices.

“It took the quoting staff one year to agree to part with the physical binders,” said Phillipps. “Now we can’t imagine how we could have ever conducted our business the way we did before Paperless Solutions transformed our process. And now everybody wants more automation!”

The Return on Investment

Faster quotes: Before the quote team could only deliver quotes if they had the binder in hand. Now they are now able to handle requests for quotes from anywhere in the world.

Future Plans: Streamline Additional Processes

PennEngineering has already decided to streamline other processes, the next one being the Raw Materials Certification process. At present the system is extremely cumbersome as it requires employees in Quality to manually deliver documents across the plant to the Shipping department whenever a shipment requires raw material certificates.

About Paperless Solutions

Trusted experts in enterprise content management since 1999, Paperless Solutions specializes in industries with complex processes and stringent compliance requirements. State and local government, Prothonotary’s, manufacturers, laboratories and collections agencies rely on us to simplify their processes, decrease costs and keep their business compliant. We skillfully combine best-in-breed off-the-shelf ECM solutions from Hyland OnBase and FileBound with our own software to deliver the right workflows from finance to human resources, court case management, e-Filing, sample test reporting and collections correspondence. Recognized for our outstanding customer service, Paperless Solutions is a repeat winner of the Hyland OnBase Diamond Award. www.paperlessus.com

“What matters most in an ECM implementation is the consultative competency of the deployment team. This is exactly where Paperless Solutions excels. They are expert at asking the right questions to understand the business and get to the root of the problems, and remarkably savvy about what the technology can and can’t do.

But what is most impressive about Paperless Solutions is their ability to step back, see the big picture and then inventively design a solution that simply, creatively and efficiently solves the problem.”

Adam Phillipps
Director of Global Information Systems

Document management for manufacturing

Software provided by Paperless Solutions Inc.

  • OnBase Content Management System

Applications

  • Automate the Sales quote process

Results

  • Allow for storage and creation of Sales quotes
  • Allow for automated expiration of Sales Quotes through workflow

Benefits

  • Multi-user access to Sales Quotes
  • Centralized, easily accessible access to Sales Quotes for highly customized products
  • Global access to sales quotes and associated documents

Departments Using OnBase

  • Sales
  • Customer service
  • Shipping (see Raw Materials Certification case study)
  • Receiving
  • Accounting and Finance
  • Quality Assurance