Printer Friendly Version

Wabash Technologies, a major manufacturer of OEM and aftermarket parts for automobiles and trucks and a longtime user of back office document systems from ACOM Solutions, needed to consolidate its records retention and document retrieval programs.

"An in-house committee has been working for about a year to develop a new document retention policy that would accommodate new government regulations as well as the company's own requirements for archiving and rapid retrieval of corporate documents," said Wabash IT Manager Mariano Vilches.

"In addition, we have been using a proprietary solution to manage documents such as invoices, accounts payable, and accounts receivable, but it was less efficient than we had hoped," Vilches said.

Wabash faced several challenges and hoped to accomplish many things, including:

Speed-up accounting document search and retrieval process.

Automate records retention to meet government compliance regulations.

Reduce postage costs by enabling electronic delivery of documents.

"When we found (ACOM's) EZContentManager, we realized that we could put both activities (compliance and archiving/retrieval) onto a single platform, and that our search and retrieval operations would be accelerated significantly," Vilches said.

The fact that Wabash Technologies already uses ACOM's EZeDocs/400 document output management solution and EZPayManager/400 payment management solution was critical to the decision, he added.

The company generates electronic documents using the BPCS data and can print them or send them anywhere in the world electronically, using ACOM's fax and email delivery capabilities.

ACOM's EZContentManager is a web-based document management solution that accepts any document or file from any source, whether internally or externally generated, and stores them in one central repository, eliminating silos of information. EZContent Manager works with ACOM’s EZeDocs document management solution and EZPayManager payment management to create a seamless, end-to-end corporate document and content management environment.

There are numerous benefits to the system, including: 1) Documents from ACOM's EZeDocs/400 and EZPayManager/400 are indexed and stored automatically as they are generated; and 2) paper documents can also be scanned, indexed and stored as electronic documents.

"EZContentManager's user interface is very friendly, and this will influence more (of our) people to use it," Vilches said. "Stored documents can be presented in PDF format, which is very easy to read and which can be transmitted instantly as email attachments if a vendor or customer needs to see a document.

"EZContentManager has excellent provisions for security," Vilches continued, "which is very important considering it's used for storing and protecting sensitive corporate information."

Implementation

Wabash Technologies employs a Model 720 computer running SSA's BPCS software under OS/400 Version 5.2. The consolidation involves moving the System i-resident record retention program from the System i platform to EZContentManager and at the same time, replacing an existing content management system with the ACOM solution.

Both the System i server and the EZContentManager server exist as nodes on the company's network.

Wabash expects significant savings to result from:

faster and more efficient retrieval;

the use of the electronically filed documents;

the ability to convert most of the document printing and associated tasks to electronic delivery.

Printer Friendly Version