Case Study: Labatt Food Service

Labatt Food Service of San Antonio, Texas is the nations 15th largest distributor of food products with locations in San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Houston, and Harlingen.  In 1996 they installed their first WinOcular application in their Accounts Receivable Department. This solution receives invoice information from Labatt's IBM AS/400 and through scanning & bar code recognition, the scanned copies of their delivery invoices are automatically matched.  More than 96% of the 50,000+ monthly invoice pages are automatically matched. 

This application provides A/R personnel immediate access to signed copies of invoices and it's this type of efficiency that assisted Labatt in maintaining a 50% growth rate in 1997 -while reducing the overall expenses within the A/R department.

Many of CCR, Inc.'s customers use WinOcular imaging solutions in a "post" process – but Labatt wanted to use WinOcular imaging and workflow instead as a "pre" - process.  In October 1997 CCR, Inc, helped them re-engineer their Cost of Goods Accounts Payable processing by combining WinOcular Imaging & COLD with a newly developed Accounts Payable application on their AS/400.

The information maintained on the WinOcular system is continually updated via direct access to their AS/400 database. The WinOcular system provides information to the AS/400 at voucher data entry time so all A/P Invoices, Receiving Reports and Packing Documents are matched automatically using bar codes printed on the Receiving Report. 

In the WinOcular A/P pre-process/workflow system installed at Labatt, Gary Beadle, Systems Analyst, further explains that the documents are available during their reconciliation process to all seven of their buyers at two offices. Their reconciliation documents consist of receiving, reconciliation, check stub, internal debit memos, and an invoice set.

Gary further explained that CCR, Inc. also incorporated a worksheet that contains a barcode. The worksheet has a preprocessed invoice number that a buyer has to approve any discrepancies and then this worksheet is scanned.

By linking Labatt's two systems together, there is no manual keying. The worksheet barcode page is placed between each invoice with related documents and the invoice number is keyed into the AS/400 system just as it would be normally. The scanned documents are then viewed while the information is keyed into the AS/400 financial system. The barcode page is captured on the AS/400 system and the object ID for the invoice is continually traced throughout the A/P process.

Recently CCR delivered another application that Labatt uses to send CD-ROMs to their larger customers. The CDs contains the customer's own invoices, thus allowing them to access a copy of each & every invoice available. The CD is fully self-contained with everything the customer needs to view and search for invoices.

Mr. Beadle states that he is very pleased with the WinOcular imaging system in that it has added huge productivity gains in their A/R and A/P departments.