Hundreds of millions in revenue, hundreds of thousands of business operations, thousands of suppliers, hundreds of employees, all based on several hundred thousand documents processed annually. With an organization of this scale, effective document management sooner or later becomes crucial for maintaining a competitive advantage. Therefore, Spółdzielnia Mleczarska Rotr decided to implement the Rockawork system – supporting the circulation and archiving of electronic documents in integration with the SAP ERP system.
Spółdzielnia Mleczarska Rotr in Rypin has been using the SAP ERP system since 2009. Appreciating the business benefits and savings derived from the use of IT tools, the company is implementing further solutions supporting modern organizational management, including those from the Business Intelligence (SAP BW) family.
As Mariusz Trojakowski, President of the Management Board of ROTR, emphasizes: “The implementation of the ERP and Business Intelligence system brought enormous benefits to the cooperative and added significant value to the business. Many business operations have been streamlined, but over time, the business environment forced us to seek solutions that would allow us to deal with document management issues. These issues accompany most of the business processes we carry out.”
The growing number of internal operations and external transactions, market demands, and the desire to streamline back-office processes became the main motivations for seeking a tool that would optimize document-related processes, while simultaneously involving people from various company departments.
At the end of 2013, ROTR began searching for an electronic document workflow system that would allow for comprehensive document management across all organizational units, be user-friendly for employees, and easily integrate with the SAP ERP system already operating within the organization.
Initially, ROTR decided to implement the Rockawork solution, covering, among other things, the following areas:
Launching an ECM-class tool, which requires employees to adopt a completely new approach to task execution, is always a significant change for an organization. Therefore, work automation was decided to be introduced gradually, dividing the implementation into several stages, so as not to disrupt current operations and to gradually accustom users to handling workflow processes that replace traditional paper document circulation.
In the first stage of implementation, the electronic workflow for incoming correspondence was launched. The choice of this process was not accidental, as pre-implementation analysis showed it to be the optimal process for ‘paving the way’ for ECM and familiarizing all employees with the tool. The correspondence workflow process was optimized and then reflected in this form within the Rockawork system.
Currently, every incoming letter to ROTR is assigned an internal number (linked to a barcode automatically generated by the Rockawork system) and is scanned. Thus, each of approximately 2,000 documents (monthly) is classified into one of 18 types. This approach has achieved full transparency in the registration of incoming and outgoing mail, and the number of documents processed in individual departments (which directly translates to workload) is clearly visible. Duplication of documents in unnecessary copies has been eliminated, and originals are registered and do not circulate unnecessarily within the company. The entire organization operates on electronic documents.
The full-text search function allows for instant retrieval of any document. Simply enter the search phrase, and Rockawork – in accordance with the user’s permissions – will display the available electronic documents. Additionally, managers have full insight into the document workflow and employee decisions related to their handling.
Outgoing correspondence is also registered in the system.
Ewa Laskowska, Senior Controlling Specialist and Project Manager for the Rockawork implementation on behalf of Spółdzielnia Mleczarska Rotr, states: “In the area of correspondence workflow, we save money primarily on processing time. Routine but necessary tasks are no longer time-consuming, and mail reaches its recipients faster, both internal and external business partners. We have full insight into the document status, know who has it, and whether its processing involves any current or overdue tasks, who is the author and initiator of the dispatch. We quickly discovered that we don’t need so many internal copies, and since the system’s launch, employees find it easier to navigate the entire process. Additionally, we use less paper, which benefits not only us but also the environment.”
In the next stage of implementation, processes related to financial document processing were optimized. Two IT systems are used for their execution, namely Rockawork and SAP ERP, which is why the integration of both tools was so important. Given that cost invoice workflow processes naturally also involve orders, the Rockawork implementation covered both document types, i.e., orders and invoices.
Regarding orders, several types were distinguished, including orders for service purchase, materials, payment orders, technical orders, and standing orders. The genesis of this approach was the desire to capture all expenses (payments) across the entire cooperative and to ensure that every expense (at the moment a document generating a financial obligation is received) has its source, justification, and has been approved by authorized persons. Each order type has a dedicated handling method built into Rockawork, with dedicated form fields that are completed by different people at the appropriate stages of the document (process) workflow related to its approval. The result is that each order has a complete and auditable history, and comprehensive information about planned expenditure is available to supervisors.
The invoice workflow process is implemented in stages within the system, and its ‘driver’ in the Rockawork system, as with any other process, is a graphical map that defines the stages, decisions, tasks, and responsible persons for their execution. All business rules (approval schemes) governing the circulation of a given financial document are also defined in Rockawork. If the result of an order’s execution is a cost invoice (incoming), it is assigned to the order. This situation is implemented in the system such that a task appears on the active task list of the person creating the orders. Once the invoice is registered in the ECM system, it begins to form a kind of ‘pair’ with the order.
Furthermore, for incoming invoices, order data is retrieved from the SAP system, including order number, vendor number, date, orders, and cost center. The invoice, similar to any other document in Rockawork, has its dedicated form that describes it. This form is successively completed by employees at various stages of the workflow process.
For integration with the SAP ERP system, webservices have been made available, which are called by Rockawork as background tasks, executed at a selected frequency. Thanks to these ECM capabilities, the integration process does not disrupt users’ daily work with documents, as it is invisible and imperceptible to them.
After registering an invoice in the office, the appropriate employee receives the invoice for approval in the All for One ECM system. If such a task is assigned to a group of employees, once one of them takes it, it disappears from the list for the others. Starting the task displays the invoice document and requires entering data that could not be provided during the document registration stage, e.g., service execution date, order or SAP purchase order, PZ (the image of the PZ document is attached as an attachment to the invoice), cost center, status, description, comment.
The invoice is then sent to individuals in the finance and accounting department. After taking on the task, the All for One ECM system displays the invoice, and the employee verifies that all data and information are correct. If not, they withdraw the task (invoice) to the user from whom it was sent. Subsequently, the invoice is sent to the chief accountant, on whose active task list a task for action appears. At this stage, the invoice can either be finally rejected (All for One ECM currently handles the exception of an unapproved invoice) or accepted and forwarded for approval by the President of the Management Board. Upon final acceptance, an interface is launched that pre-posts the invoice in SAP ERP, and the invoice status changes to “pre-posted.”
The Rockawork interface prepared for SAP supports preliminary invoice posting in the SAP ECC system. Invoices with an assigned purchase order are posted using transaction MIR6, which allows for posting to a purchase order or internal order, as well as to general ledger accounts. If a purchase order has more than one item, all items appear in the pre-posted document. For invoices in Euro posted to a purchase order, the order items are converted at the appropriate exchange rate. Invoices without an assigned purchase order but with an assigned cost center (MPK) or internal order are posted using transaction FB60 (posting to a technical account); fixed assets (invoice type ZA) are posted using transaction F-90. Advances are finally posted using transaction F-02.
In addition to electronic document workflow functions, ROTR also uses the Rockawork Content Management module, which supports corporate content archiving. It is currently used in the HR area. All for One helped organize the archival resource scanning process (by supplying scanners and specialized scanning applications with OCR functions) and designed the electronic archive. In ECM, employee folders are created, containing data imported from SAP: surname and first name, employee number, and addresses. Scanned documents are automatically attached as attachments to folders in Rockawork, using an individual barcode affixed to the document.
As a result, finding any information for each of the 1,500 employees (current and those whose data is archived) takes a few seconds and involves several times fewer people than before. Employee files have been divided to mirror the traditional archive, meaning into parts A, B, and C. At the time of scanning the archival resource, each part was marked with an individual barcode. The code is generated from the Rockawork system and acts as a separator in the scanning process, also facilitating the retrieval of the document in the physical archive.
From the perspective of HR documents and their electronic management, ensuring an appropriate level of security, both technical and organizational, was crucial. Rockawork uses advanced data encryption mechanisms based on a 256-bit key and the AES mechanism. The physical separation of files from documents and metadata contributes to achieving very satisfactory performance parameters. Additionally, the hosting model used by ROTR, thanks to the All for One Data Centers infrastructure, guarantees professional system maintenance under required SLA regimes, including active administration, backups, and recovery procedures.
Undoubtedly, the greatest benefit of implementing the system is transparency. Every incoming document to the company is registered in Rockawork (additionally, this happens in a single department, which reduces the risk of losing the paper form of the document), enabling control and insight at any time. Document retrieval is very simple thanks to individual registration numbers for each type of document entered and created.
At the current stage of the entire organizational program, aimed at minimizing work on paper documents, ROTR is beginning to experience real benefits from using Rockawork. Processes are executed faster, and the ratio between the time needed to gather information essential for a given task (completing a stage in the process) and the time needed to perform the task itself now has an appropriate value.
The effects of combining various IT systems used in the same business process are noticeable; many tasks and activities (including very complex ones) have been automated, eliminating the need for employee involvement. Consequently, the risk of information distortion during circulation due to human error has become a controlled and manageable risk.
The system also contributed to the cooperative’s organizational streamlining, as the construction of process maps, which dictate the correct execution of workflow, inherently forces their optimization, for example, through clear assignment and accountability of responsibilities, defining document flow conditions, indicating paths for task parallelization, and saving valuable business time.
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