Desmedt
Desmedt supplies labels and shrink sleeves for packaging, mostly in the Benelux and France. The family business has a long history that goes back to 1889 and is known within the packaging industry for its expertise and continuous innovation within the field. For four generations, the company has been investing heavily in people and machinery to ensure that it is at the forefront of the next generation of labels. The company has many loyal customers, partly because the 35 employees of Desmedt like to think along with the customer, are flexible and consider good service to be very important.
The choice of a scanning solution
For the current CEO, Henri Köhler, automation is an important tool to make processes better and more efficient. In February 2019, Desmedt switched to CERM as its MIS solution. CERM is industry specific end-to-end software for the label & packaging industry. Desmedt had already been processing purchase invoices through an automated process since 2015. When switching to CERM, Scan Sys produced the link between ImageCapture and the CERM software, so that invoice processing could also be automated in the new environment. Roughly 2,700 invoices are now processed automatically via ImageCapture and CERM to full satisfaction.
Using the Lean Six Sigma approach, Desmedt constantly checks whether processes can be optimised even further. So, at the beginning of this year, it was investigated whether the automated processing of purchase orders could make a meaningful contribution to the company. Stephanie Van den hove, responsible for Marketing & Customer Service, and one of the initial approvers of ImageCapture for Invoices, was allowed to lead this project. Scan Sys’s Michel van Dijk and Maarten Terlingen, together with the CERM team, facilitated the processing of purchase orders with ImageCapture and the CERM software, and realised the current set-up at Desmedt.
experience with Scan Sys
The implementation went smoothly. Templates were created, a separate mail address was generated for the purchase orders. After reading the purchase order, the software automatically recognises the supplier, as well as several other fields such as the purchase amount and the VAT amount. As soon as the invoice comes in, the purchase order is automatically compared with the invoice, and when everything checks out, the invoice is automatically approved for payment. If there is a discrepancy between the purchase order and invoice, the user must check it manually.
In the beginning, Stephanie Van den hove says, this took some time getting used to for her colleagues. We felt a bit like we had lost control. But that soon changed. It saves us so much time, especially with large purchase orders with many order lines. We no longer have to check every invoice; most of them we no longer see. In addition, the system is much less prone to errors than humans. You’ve probably heard it before: you’re checking a large invoice when your phone rings, you’re distracted, and a mistake is easily made. With ImageCapture, you no longer accidentally enter the wrong number or misplace any commas.
