Fortra Pumped Up Barnwell House of Tires Document Management Capabilities

Challenges Managing Documents with Rapid Growth

Barnwell House of Tires, Inc., provides commercial truck and auto services such as rims powder coating, refurbishing, and refinishing, 24-hour road service, after-hours service, industrial tires, farm tires, and other commercial auto services throughout 14 locations in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. When they recently doubled in size through an acquisition, they found their AP process unable to keep up with the increased paperwork rolling in the door.

With many manual AP touchpoints and a need for a centralized system that worked across their multiple locations, the company found they struggled to get invoices out in a timely fashion. The COVID-19 pandemic added yet another layer of concern, as the company had to initially lay people off from their already overwhelmed AP department.

More Documents Now Managed with Fewer People and Better Accuracy

After evaluating a number of vendors, HelpSystems’ Webdocs for AP, which consists of the Webdocs Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) and Artysl for capturing documents, offered the dual capabilities needed and was selected for ease-of-use, and more useful features. Barnwell Tire first implemented the two software solutions for their AP department but quicky rolled the new process out for the entire AP/AR process from start to finish once they realized the efficiencies gained.

Prior to the growth in business, the company processed about 50 invoices daily and is currently processing closer to 125 each day. Webdocs helps Barnwell Tires manage the increased volume by optimizing and centralizing document storage to make it easier to retrieve invoices, orders, and quotes.

In addition, access to documentation is now easier across the organization and its many locations, as well as for staff working from home to capture and retrieve all information needed for all AP and AR processing.

Measurable Results of Electronic Document Management Implementation

“When we had to lay off the entire AP department at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, I was doing document management myself for a few months,” said Daniel Beyer, CIO, Barnwell Tires. “Having Webdocs in place was a huge help as I was able to do all of the batch work. It also gave me good insight to teach everyone how to use the system when we were able to bring people back to work.”

Time and resources savings of note: Pulling an invoice used to average 10 minutes; now that time has shrunk to four minutes. “When you multiply that time savings by how many invoices we handle each day, we were able to easily manage workflow when we brought people back in after a few months, despite the huge increase in our paperwork coming in,” noted Beyer.

Now it’s easy for authorized individuals at any of the company’s locations to look at an invoice; a simple click pulls the needed invoice up instantly. “This is different than anything we had before – multiple file cabinets and a ‘hope’ that we could find what we were looking for,” said Beyer. “This has changed the way we touch everything, as far as paperwork goes.”

Beyer noted that the AP team was at first reluctant to change their established process, and there was some pushback due to the time for initial set up and scanning of documents. But they quickly realized how much time was truly being wasted on filing and searching for documents once the solution was in place. “The software’s recall ability saves a ton of time on the AP side, and AR is blown away at how easy it is to recall information they need quickly and easily,” noted Beyer. “We are more organized, and the solution alleviates a good hour each day on filing. We can provide much better service with this more rapid turn around and better accuracy on our information.”

ROI on Technology Investment Increased with HR and Fleet Rollout

Webdocs went so well with the AR/AP implementation it was rapidly rolled out to the human resources and fleet departments.

HR has now scanned all personnel paperwork for easy searchability, and the company’s fleet supervisor now uses Webdocs to ensure all registrations and truck details are incorporated into the system for easy accessibility and for audit purposes.

“In today’s economy and environment, you simply can’t stick with the old ways. With an EDMS like Webdocs, there is benefit in that you can clearly realize efficiencies once you start doing processes the right way,” added Beyer.