Matching and exceptions, Printing and e-Billing for Lafarge Aggregates
Lafarge Aggregates & Concrete UK is one of the largest producers of construction materials supplying essential raw materials for the construction industry such as concrete, asphalt, rock, sand and gravel.
The Challenge
The company was using an outsourced service to scan proof of delivery notes for Aggregates and Ready Mix divisions for online access by the customer services team. However, it wanted to upgrade the level of service provided and have a system better suited to their precise requirements. It also wanted to have direct control over who could access the data without incurring costly charges. Finally Lafarge wanted to eliminate manual sorting and significantly reduce the time it took for the information to be made available online – a process that was taking up to two weeks.
The Solution
Lafarge selected e-docs UK to provide a solution which would deliver major cost savings and would be delivered without the need to subcontract any of the services to a remote third party.
Over six months, we worked closely with Lafarge to develop OneView, a powerful and easy to use online repository that gives users secure, instant access to documents from any location, 24/7.
Phase one Benefits
The new system was much easier and faster to use by everyone in customer services
The next phase of the project was to review the way that Lafarge printed and distributed invoices, a time-consuming process using in-house impact printers and continuous stationery. e-docs were asked to provide a more efficient and cost effective alternative with the flexibility to allow the easy adoption of e-billing in the future.
Phase two benefits
Seamless transfer to the new system without additional technical work
Significant cost savings by eliminating the need to replace its existing aging fleet of legacy printers.
Improved productivity due to the elimination of manual document sorting and reduction in account enquiries
e-docs UK was able to reformat the data to have a clean and fresh new look without any changes to the way that it was received. This service was subsequently extended and e-docs UK now prints and distributes a wide range of additional material on behalf of Lafarge including quotations, annual price review letters and direct mail shots.
Documents are now sent direct to e-docs UK from different sites and plants across the UK where it is scanned and made available online within twelve hours, considerably faster than the previous service.
According to Chris Bates, facilities manager at Lafarge Aggregates & Concrete UK: “e-docs UK is very responsive to all our requests for assistance enabling us to complete urgent projects rapidly, whatever the deadline.”
Automating these business processes has helped Lafarge to create a new shared services centre. It has enabled customer service resources for individual brands to be consolidated in a single location with OneView enabling data to be centralised across the Group. Lafarge is also currently evaluating the adoption of e-billing which it expects will eliminate most of the costs associated with stationery, postage, handling and transport.
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