(Case Study featured in TODAY Magazine's Advances in Imaging and Forms Processing Special Supplement)
You might not think that extracting and delivering highway construction materials is a
very technologically sophisticated business. In the case of Rogers Group, Inc., however,
you would be mistaken. Nearly a century old, Rogers Group provides crushed stone, sand, gravel, asphalt, concrete masonry, and highway construction and materials recycling services in five states throughout Southeastern United States. On an average day, Rogers Group delivers 7,400 loads of material totaling some 180,000 tons of stone, sand, gravel and asphalt. During the peak summer season, the asphalt delivered in one month would pave 390 miles of two-lane highway or 1,931 football-fieldsized parking lots.
An operation of this magnitude generates an immense volume of documentation – bills of
lading, purchase receipts, invoices, sales tax documentation, plant and equipment purchase
and warranty records, and more. With nearly 100 locations spread across five states,
the Rogers Group’s paperwork could create a tangle of inefficiency and confusion if not
managed smartly – which is where its technological edge comes in.
Rogers Group tames its flurry of documents and turns all that paperwork into an accessible
and easily managed asset by utilizing ProfitStars’ Synergy Document Management
solutions. Creating Companywide Efficiencies While many companies have recognized the value of digital document management, few have leveraged it so extensively or integrated it so completely to their core accounting systems. At Rogers Group, hundreds of managers have instant access to important documents. And when those documents are associated with an Oracle accounting entry, they’re no farther than a mouse click away. The company utilizes ProfitStars’ solutions in its: Accounts Payable/Receivable Department – where vendor and company invoices are imaged and made accessible as support to accounting managers.
Human Resources Department – where the extensive documentation associated with
compensation and benefits for thousands of employees is managed digitally.
Fixed Assets Accounting Department – where purchase records on every truck, pump,
machine and real estate asset are maintained – more than 9,000 discrete assets in all.
Tax Accounting Department – where in like fashion, all documentation necessary to
prepare and document tax returns and sales tax reports is maintained. Tapping the Power of Integration Managers across the board rave about the simple, intuitive integration of Synergy
Document Management to their Oracle accounting system. Roger Kenigson, information
systems project leader, reports that by utilizing Synergy API Integration Toolkit and tools
built into Oracle, integrating the two systems was “not at all complicated to do. Oracle
just needs to be able to tell Synergy API what it wants, and once it does, Synergy pulls it
and presents a PDF.” With just a little help from ProfitStars engineers, Kenigson himself
completed all the scripting necessary for integration. Users report myriad benefits from the integration. “In a report you can be ‘sitting’ on an item and want to see backup,” notes Nancy Moore, senior fixed assets accountant. “For instance, we just purchased a loader, and
you want to see the invoice. You go to ‘Get Image’ and in an instant you’re looking at the invoice. The time savings is huge.” And with ProfitStars’ powerful, intuitive database
technology, Moore can quickly pull up any other records for that particular item — warranty records, sales tax documents and associated items, for example. Other users report similar results in speed, productivity and accuracy. Accounting manager Mollie Bowman notes
that accountants manage relationships with more than 10,000 vendors. It’s common for problems or discrepancies to crop up – for instance, two invoices with the same
invoice number from two different vendors. Once again, it’s a click of a menu to pull up an image of the invoices in question to ensure that they are being processed and paid
correctly. “We’re always researching things,” says Bowman. “For instance, a contract hauler who says he didn’t get paid. We can quickly look up the ticket and see if the wrong hauler
got keyed in.” ProfitStars makes it simple to resolve issues quickly, accurately and completely.
Accounting managers have also used the application to save a lot of trees. Every week a report detailing every transaction in the entire company is generated. “That’s a four- to five-thousand-page report across the whole company,” Bowman says. “That’s four to five thousand
pages we don’t have to print every week.” And it’s four to five thousand pages easily accessible to any manager who needs it, on any desktop in the company. Opening Access, Improving Accuracy Rogers Group’s use of Synergy Document Management in its fixed assets accounting group is a great example of how intelligent document management can save time, increase
accuracy and enhance convenience in a high-demand work
environment of any type. “Fixed assets” refers to any and every depreciable asset the
company purchases – from land to crushers to “rolling stock” (pickups, dump trucks, loaders) and even pumps and motors. Records must be kept active for seven years,
and a permanent record must be maintained even after the
asset is disposed of. For Rogers Group, that means maintaining accurate
documentation for more than 9,000 discrete fixed asset items in 150 different categories. What was once a paperbased system of “asset cards” is now managed digitally – a database that includes records back to 1940. Perhaps most helpful is the way the system has distributed responsibility for keeping records accurate and current. “We’re strict
now on fixed asset reporting,” says Nancy Moore. “We generate a ‘fixed-asset-by-location report.’ Area managers and plant managers are required to sign off that they do
have these assets.” Synergy Document Management means that if a manager sees a questionable item on the report– a pump he doesn’t recognize, for instance – and wants
to investigate, it’s a simple matter to “drill right into the report to see what that item is.” With Synergy Document Management, any user anywhere in the company with the
appropriate permissions can access the data; as a result, “we’ve done a huge cleanup of our files and data.” Further, using the Document Retention Tool, users can establish
criteria by which outdated files are automatically purged from the system.
For record keepers across the company, one additional benefit is “you don’t lose files like you do with paper files,” comments Moore. “They don’t ever get up and walk out of
your office and the documents you need are never farther
than a right-click away.” With the improvements in productivity and efficiency so
far, Bowman is continuing to look for ways to leverage Synergy Document Management – such as considering the Synergy Workflow Management application to create
further efficiencies by enabling electronic movement of tasks throughout the organization.
About ProfitStars
ProfitStars, a division of Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.
(Nasdaq: JKHY), is a leading provider of best-of-breed
products and services that are designed to improve the
operating performance of financial institutions of all asset
sizes and charters, and diverse corporate entities. These
products and services include proven solutions for revenue
and growth, risk mitigation and control, and cost control;
and complement existing core information processing
platforms.
(Metavante release - March 28, 2007) 
