CASE STUDY FACTS:

CLIENT: Bigelow Tea

DIGITECH SYSTEMS RESELLER: SOURCECORP Boston, Norwood, MA

PROBLEM: Paper-based accounting practices slowed information retrieval and annual audits

SOLUTION: ImageSilo

RECOGNIZED BENEFIT:
“With a $25,000 annual labor savings and 813% ROI, ImageSilo has revolutionized information
management—not only in the accounting department, but across the entire company.”

- Melanie McElroy, Director
of Finance

R.C. Bigelow, Inc. is a $100 million family business, selling tea throughout North America. For decades, the Bigelow family has relied on automation in their factories, but most of the accounting operations were based on manual, paper processes. Without enterprise content management, finding information was a recipe for inefficiency and preparing for annual audits brewed frustration.

After implementing ImageSilo and coordinating imaging services with SOURCECORP Boston, Bigelow achieved 813% Return On Investment (ROI) and received project payback within two months!

The Situation

In 1945, Ruth Campbell Bigelow started making tea from an old colonial recipe. She focused on making a fresh-tasting, flavorful product she could share with friends and family. Her recipe became known as Bigelow Tea’s signature “Constant Comment” tea. Every year, Bigelow produces about 1.3 billion tea bags at three packaging plants in Fairfield, CT, Louisville, KY and Boise, ID. Today, Bigelow is still focused on producing innovative versions of traditional teas and offers a wide variety of specialty gourmet teas.

In order to meet federal and state requirements, the Bigelow accounts payable department saved five years of paper-based tax information at their headquarters in Fairfield, CT. Two years of tax information was kept in a half dozen 5-drawer filing cabinets, and employees across multiple departments frequently accessed the files. Documents were misfiled, lost and costly to copy, fax and mail. Labor increased costs. Employees spent eight hours every month filing and re-filing documents. At the end of each year, a temporary employee spent 40 hours preparing files for offsite storage, where documents were held for another two to three years and cost the company $1,580 annually. During annual audits, files were manually located, retrieved, photocopied and re-filed. When documents were archived at the Boise or Louisville plants, retrieval was more complicated, because a coordinated effort was required to access and share information.

To ease the burden of file management, Bigelow was looking for an electronic records system that would reduce human error, eliminate the paper chase and unify records across three locations into a single, efficient system.

The Solution

Bigelow’s IT department contacted SOURCECORP Boston, a Digitech Systems reseller and a consistent Circle of Excellence member. SOURCECORP demonstrated how ImageSilo securely stores digital images online, eliminating the need for Bigelow to maintain onsite storage hardware. Bigelow chose ImageSilo, because it satisfied the company’s concern for internal security controls and helped them avoid the software purchase and additional support costs typical of traditional applications. As a document and imaging service bureau, SOURCECORP provided document scanning and indexing services. Within four hours, the accounting department was trained and the system went live with its first users in 2002.

Recognized benefits

Nucleus Research, an independent analyst firm, performed an ROI study that calculated an 813% ROI and a two-month payback on Bigelow Tea’s ImageSilo project. The study stated, “Bigelow Tea was able to yield such significant returns, because many of the company’s manual and paper-based processes were eliminated by deploying ImageSilo. In addition, the on-demand model allowed Bigelow Tea to achieve an even greater ROI by not requiring the company to incur additional IT expenses.”

The accounts payable department immediately recognized the advantages of using ImageSilo. Because employees can manage any file from the convenience of their desktop, filing that previously took eight hours is completed in just seconds. With an electronic system, lost or misfiled documents are no longer an issue. Online search and retrieval capabilities allow employees to search, retrieve and email images in seconds. As a result, they have saved hundreds of dollars in printing, mailing and copying. Plus, the
department saves $1,580 each year in offsite storage costs and no longer needs to hire a temporary employee to prepare documents for the archives.

Annual audits were a huge headache, but with ImageSilo, the accounts payable department reduced document search and distribution time, streamlined accounting procedures and accelerated the auditing process. As a result, the department has seen a 5% increase in employee productivity that results in a $25,000 annual savings.

Solutions originally intended for the accounts payable department were leveraged across other departments, saving the company 170 hours of employee time each year. Today, there are 50 ImageSilo users across six departments, including accounts receivable, sales, customer service, purchasing and the tea division.

Substantial benefits for employees in those other departments include the total elimination of finance department meetings needed to close the fiscal year. Finance administrators spent months faxing and mailing seven salespeople stacks of paper for review and approval. ImageSilo makes those documents conveniently accessible online, tracks document and user activity and facilitates accountability with the fiscal year closing process. As a result, Bigelow has seen a 75% increase in sales administrator productivity.

The customer service department has also seen great improvements. Three hours of filing each week were completely eliminated. Since files are accessible from representatives’ desktops, average call processing time decreased from 15 minutes per call to less than five minutes per call.

Moving to ImageSilo has enabled Bigelow Tea to improve productivity, reduce costs and streamline business processes to support greater profitability.

About SOURCECORP Boston

SOURCECORP Boston is one of the largest document imaging, scanning, conversion and document management service organizations in New England. They provide document management services, including document scanning, data entry, OCR, vault storage and the installation and support of document management systems. They also help businesses reduce operating costs, improve efficiencies, gain fast access to critical business information, stay competitive in the marketplace, comply with regulatory requirements and save money while increasing profitability.

SOURCECORP has been an authorized reseller since March of 1998 and was recognized as a Circle of Excellence reseller for the seventh time at Digitech Systems’ annual reseller conference in January 2007.

To learn more about SOURCECORP Boston, visit their website at www.documentconversion.com or call 1-781-762-5800.

See how Digitech Systems products can help meet your business needs.