Preserving the traditional and being open to the new – this is a principle that the company hasn’t only applied to its frothy specialties. Riegele also relies on transparent processes with modern information technology for the company’s central administration. Since the beginning of 2008, they have been using the DocuWare document management system. Initially, they wanted to contain the immense paper flood and reduce their costs for tamper-proof archiving of about 80,000 delivery slips and 12,500 incoming invoices which accumulated every year. In selecting the DMS, they looked closely at the best price/performance ratio, says Peter Baier, Chief Financial Officer at Riegele. "DocuWare is very easy to handle, so we can customize and expand the system ourselves." Another factor was the expertise and close proximity of their Authorized DocuWare Partner, who helped guide them through the process, according to Baier.
The company first began deploying the DMS in their Purchasing and Accounting departments. Today, around 50 employees work with DocuWare throughout the company. Any department involved in approving invoices is tied in. Multi-site access is possible from their nearby logistics center, which is integrated into the internal network via radio link. Their entire outside sales team is equipped with notebooks and thus able to access the system via the internet.
Since 2016, the certified Connect to SAP interface has provided a seamless integration of the document management system and their ERP solution. All outgoing invoices, reminders and payroll statements created in SAP are automatically archived and tagged in the central document pool. It’s simple to respond to inquiries: employees can now access all documents belonging to a customer from the digital archive without having to leave their familiar SAP setting. In total, the central document pool comprises around 840,000 mostly multi-page documents (as of early October 2016). The SAP integration was put in place through a consulting company that specializes in DocuWare/SAP integrations.