Forms Processing: Upgraded Technology, Upgraded Revenue

Mackin Imaging, a Metasource company, offers solutions and services focused on data entry, data capture, and image retrieval. In 2002, Pepperidge Farm sent out an RFP to outsource scanning of all of its driver delivery tickets. Mackin Imaging lost this particular battle to a competitor offering on-site scanning services, but its demonstration of AnyDoc software ultimately won the war. Impressed with the functionality of the AnyDoc application, Pepperidge Farm led the VAR into a cash application department struggling with outdated OCR (optical character recognition) technology instead. The relationship would prove to be a lucrative and lasting one, with the VAR performing not one upgrade, but two in the span of three short years.

Pepperidge Farm delivers baked goods across the country to both large retailers and small, local stores. The drivers of its extensive distribution network obtain signed delivery tickets, which are used to invoice the retailer for each individual shipment. "The challenge for Pepperidge Farm was that larger customers, such as Wal-Mart, do not pay invoices singularly. They typically lump hundreds of them together and make one big payment," says Mario Duckett, VP of sales at Mackin Imaging. "The staff in the cash application department averaged a 60-day backlog of unapplied payments." Unapplied payments are those payments that still need to be credited to the corresponding invoice, even though the remittance check has been deposited.

The VAR tackled the initial remittance-processing hurdle with a $95,000 sale including an updated OCR platform from AnyDoc, new scanning hardware, and related professional services. The installation of a Kodak DS-3520, 85 ppm (pages per minute) duplex document scanner improved Pepperidge Farm's physical scanning efficiency immediately. Additionally, OCR for AnyDoc brought automation to the manual aspects of the cash application process. Pepperidge Farm also elected to add a verification station in addition to the new scan station to better distribute workload and speed up the overall cash application process.