References

Baulderstone Hornibrook case study

Baulderstone Hornibrook is one of Australia's largest construction groups, delivering innovative, cost-effective solutions to clients in building, transport infrastructure and heavy industry.

Each project the company undertakes is accompanied by a multitude of administrative and legislative requirements, including hundreds, sometimes thousands, of paper invoices. As part of a project to implement changes to the financial accounting system, the company also reappraised its system for document distribution and approval

"Hundreds of invoices are part and parcel of a large-scale building or infrastructure project," says Julie Keldoulis, Baulderstone Hornibrook's Manager Financial Processes.

"The logistics of managing these can become a nightmare if the process isn't carefully monitored. The Accounts Department requires coding and approval by the project personnel, who might be located on site anywhere in Australia."

After evaluating various possibilities for managing these hard-copy invoices, including implementing its own scanning system in-house, Baulderstone Hornibrook decided to conduct a pilot using South Australian company Scan Conversion Services' document workflow management process.

"The cost of suitable equipment, resources and skills necessary to perform such a task efficiently in house far outweighed having a professional organisation like Scan Conversion Services doing it for us," Ms Keldoulis said.

"Their knowledge and experience of imaging technology combined with the time they took to understand our business processes at the outset have assisted us immensely. Our own accounts staff can now be utilised for more productive, core business activities."

Scan Conversion Services implemented a pilot study which identified that scanning and converting all hard copy invoices into electronic images would enable Baulderstone Hornibrook to electronically distribute these images to the appropriate site.

"This method eliminated the necessity to manually post the invoices and prevented loss or misplacement," Mr Hatibovich says. "It also ensured they reached the site quickly no matter where they were geographically located.

"The site can now code and authorise the invoice more quickly and immediately reflect the costs to the appropriate project. This in turn can also ensure the supplier is paid on a timely basis."

How it Works

Baulderstone Hornibrook accounting staff receive and register all incoming invoices into their accounting package attaching a bar code to each invoice at that same time. The bar code acts as a sequential register for all invoices, which are batched and sent to Scan Conversion Services at the end of each day.

Scan Conversion Services has custom-built a program that scans the invoices and saves them automatically by the bar code number. The invoices are converted to Adobe PDF format and burned to a CD.

The hard copy invoices and CD images are returned to Baulderstone Hornibrook the next day. The program also performs audit tracking of all invoices and verifies this against the bar code numbers.

Baulderstone Hornibrook imports the scanned images into their system with an association to the customers' files by the bar code number.

"This association allows us to distribute, track and pay the invoices," Ms Keldoulis says. "But more importantly, it makes it easy to retrieve the electronic images of all invoices in future, for instance if a customer has an enquiry.

"This ability to respond quickly and efficiently to any accounts enquiries underpins the development of good customer relationships. Also, we are expecting cost savings due to elimination of archiving hard copy documents, and improvement in retrieval capabilities."

The project has improved Baulderstone Hornibrook's accounts workflow and processing methods dramatically, eliminating double handling and re-keying of information, speeding up coding and approval and providing accurate, up-to-date costing information for all projects.

"We are proud at Baulderstone Hornibrook to say we aim to achieve best practice and that's a cornerstone of our success," Ms Keldoulis says. "That's why we consulted with Scan Conversion Services and the results have been excellent, exceeding our expectations."

Scan Conversion Services: (03) 943 9999

About Baulderstone Hornibrook

Baulderstone Hornibrook is one of Australia's largest construction groups, delivering innovative and cost-effective solutions to clients in building, transport infrastructure and heavy industry. Turnover in 2000 exceeded A$1.1 billion. Baulderstone Hornibrook employs about 1000 people throughout Australia and Indonesia. The Group is owned by one of the world's leading construction organisations, German-based Bilfinger Berger.
Web: www.bh.com.au