Pearl

Digital invoice management in Germany’s largest catalog mail order company for software and PC accessories

With almost three million mail order customers in Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland, the PEARL group of companies is one of Europe’s largest software and computer accessories catalog mail order companies.

Under the motto “innovative, affordable, competent”, PEARL offers over 6,000 different products in the areas of hardware and software, PC peripherals, technology and communication. In Germany, PEARL Agency is the leading mail order company for software and IT accessories par excellence: the current mail order catalog alone lists more than 3,000 products on around 260 pages, all of which are described in detail and illustrated with accompanying images.

Without the use of an electronic document management system (DMS), effective administration of shipping and the associated invoicing would be almost inconceivable. Since December 2002, “PEARL Agency Allgemeine Vermittlungsgesellschaft mbH” – the official company name in Germany – has been using windream for the administration of all incoming and outgoing invoices.

Nothing works without DMS

At PEARL Agency in Buggingen, Germany, up to 8,000 invoices – mainly outgoing invoices – are stored in windream every day. Before the company decided to use windream, the incoming invoices were stored and archived in paper form.

The outgoing invoices were managed in the merchandise management system instead of in a DMS. After a period of two years, the data was stored on electronic media and outsourced. However, this created the problem that accessing outsourced data became increasingly difficult: Although the information was still available on the storage media, it was no longer available for immediate retrieval.

This serious circumstance led to the decision to invest in an electronic document management and archiving system. The prerequisite was that the new DMS had to enable both the quick retrieval of stored older data and the effective administration of all current invoices.

Before deciding on a specific DMS, the company first gathered comprehensive information on the various systems available on the market. Research on the Internet, visits to trade fairs and personal discussions with manufacturers served as a basis for information.

Key data

• Document management and financial accounting integrated in one system
• Efficient recording and management of incoming and outgoing invoices
• Quick and easy retrieval of archived documents

Why windream?

The decisive factor for the selection was that windream clearly differs from other systems in certain functional areas. PEARL Agency has been using the FibuNet financial accounting system since 1999.

FibuNet GmbH, a long-standing windream partner, and windream GmbH have jointly developed a software which connects the accounting system with the DMS via an interface. “The seamless integration into FibuNet,” emphasizes Christian Allinger, member of the PEARL management in Germany, “was certainly one of the decisive criteria.

In addition, we also wanted to invest in a system that would allow us to operate effective document management without a great deal of training. Due to the integration of the DMS-functions into the Windows Explorer, our employees in the accounting department were able to work with windream immediately, without having to familiarize themselves with a new program interface first.

The attractive price-performance ratio also played a major role.” Only those employees who are responsible for system administration at PEARL took part in specialist training.

After a short implementation phase of only six days, windream was ready for use at PEARL. The system went live immediately without any further test phases and is currently being used by the accounting and billing departments.

Administration of incoming invoices with FibuNet and windream

The employees responsible for accounting initially post incoming invoices in FibuNet. Each newly entered invoice is provided with a barcode label that contains a unique document identification number.

The captured vouchers are then scanned and transferred to windream as TIFF files. The scanning process is carried out via the scanning software Ascent Capture developed by Kofax, which also has an interface to windream and thus enables an automatic transfer of scanned invoices to the DMS. Currently, the monthly volume of documents captured by scanner is around 20,000 pages.

In addition, the booking data from FibuNet is also recorded automatically
and used as indices in windream. The barcode number assigned to each document enables the employees in the accounting department to clearly identify invoices in windream as well as in FibuNet.

Background: The PEARL Group

The PEARL Group is an association of international companies with a focus on retail, marketing and publishing. The activities of the subsidiaries in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Russia, the USA and China are primarily focused on the IT market. The PEARL group of companies is one of the leading international mail order companies for PC software and computer accessories.

PEARL Agency Germany is the European headquarters of the PEARL Group. As Germany’s largest PC software and accessories mail order company, PEARL Agency informs more than 15 million potential and existing customers with over 20 million catalogs every year. PEARL also presents current products in the well-known computer trade journals.

The broad product range appeals to many target groups: End customers, bulk consumers, public institutions as well as wholesalers and distributors. The product range comprises over 6,000 items in the areas of PC hardware, software and PC accessories, including many new products, exclusive products and items in bulk.

PEARL Agency was founded in 1989 and has grown over the past ten years.
has developed from a medium-sized company to a major player in the IT market through steady growth.

Automatic recording of outgoing invoices during the night

For the automated capture of outgoing invoices, the backend solutions PCL COLD and XML ImportManager, which have been especially developed for windream, are used.

These programs allow you to transfer electronically created outgoing invoices and the data contained in the invoices, such as invoice or customer numbers, to windream. The data read out is used by the system for automatic document indexing or keywording. The documents themselves are saved as PDF files in windream and stored in the long-term archive.

The entire recording and import process runs fully automatically during the night. Manual intervention – for example by a responsible system administrator – is not required. On average, the entire process from entering all newly created outgoing invoices to indexing and saving them in windream only takes about one hour per night. After the data transfer to windream, all documents can be efficiently managed, researched and permanently stored in the long-term archive.

Archiving in the long-term archive

For long-term archiving, PEARL Agency uses a powerful jukebox with more than 100 slots for recording storage media. Documents are saved in the archive on write-once WORM media (WORM = “Write once – read many”). The total storage capacity of the archive is just under 1,000 gigabytes. The windream jukebox control ensures that all archived documents can be retrieved easily and quickly with the usual windream DMS functions.