The Accounts Receivable Network - Esker: Software to Expedite Invoice Delivery Esker: Software to Expedite Invoice Delivery The process of sending out invoices has always been relatively routine but time-consuming. A company prints an invoice, assembles it with related documents and mails it to the customer, allowing a few days' mail float for customer receipt. Then a waiting period ensues while the customer processes the invoice and hopefully sends payment. If a problem arises with the invoice, however, payment is delayed, which affects cash receipts and, ultimately, the financial situation of the organization. What if a company could produce and assemble an invoice with related documents in seconds and deliver it to the customer in minutes, rather than hours and days? A variety of software providers today offer solutions to expedite the payment process by providing the means to deliver invoices more quickly. Esker is one such company, differentiating itself by providing automatic document assembly and various methods for document delivery. Esker is an established document automation company based in Lyon, France with offices located in Asia, North and South America and Europe. Its main goal is to assist organizations in automating information exchange through eliminating manual business document processes. With over 80,000 customers worldwide and revenues exceeding $50 million, Esker offers onpremise software and on-demand services for any size organization. Early in its history, Esker automated fax traffic produced by ERP systems. When customers expressed interest in expanding to other transmission methods, Esker responded to customer delivery preferences, not limiting itself to one technology. But Esker found that the ERP vendors lacked the capability to receive and transmit documents in a variety of ways. SAP was considered the most limited but had a strong market share, especially in the paper-intensive manufacturing industry. Today Esker focuses on integration with SAP though it interfaces with all ERP system software. Esker estimates that 85 percent of U.S. companies considering its DeliveryWare software still rely on U.S. mail for document delivery. The company explains to potential customers how they can realize significant cost savings in postage and staff resources during its selling process. Esker concentrates on helping customers expedite payments. Through the Esker solution, users specify how and where each of their customers wishes to receive invoices. The Esker solution
then delivers the invoices in real time, thereby helping to remove barriers that delay payment. Esker DeliveryWare is Esker's primary software solution. Just as a company's mailroom is a hub for incoming and outgoing paper-based communication, Esker DeliveryWare creates an automated hub for electronic document transmission. The Esker process of handling e-invoicing distribution, document formatting and archiving works as follows: A company produces invoices from an ERP, MS Word, Excel, CRM or customized application, perhaps along with proof of delivery documents (POD) such as packing slips and waybills. The company "prints" the invoices electronically with the POD to the Esker DeliveryWare application, and captures the POD and invoice package. In the next step, the application validates the data and reformats the documents through established and customized rules. Esker software can alter the layout of forms and documents through its use of Crystal Reports, which is part of the Esker solution. The company has assigned a delivery or transmission means and a destination to each package so Esker DeliveryWare can send the invoices and PODs via print, email or Web publishing to each customer-specified address. If Customer A chooses U.S. mail and fax as a delivery means, Esker incorporates its Mail-On-Demand and Fax-On-Demand products into the Esker DeliveryWare solution. The company can track the status of documents sent and will receive an automated confirmation of delivery through email. Once invoices are sent, Esker DeliveryWare archives the information to the company's servers and allows for document retrieval at any time. Simply put, Esker DeliveryWare focuses on customer preferences. The customers of an Esker DeliveryWare user are satisfied because they received their invoices as they prefer. The Esker user is satisfied because it can easily tailor its document transmissions to suit its customers' needs, removing an obstacle to smooth processing. So use of Esker DeliveryWare should minimize disputes and expedite payments. Esker DeliveryWare is also flexible and dynamic in accommodating features such as: Inclusion of signature images in POD documentation Customer information updating at any time Capability to reformat any type of form, be it sales order or report Delivery personnel frequently carry an electronic tablet or other electronic device to capture signatures for delivery confirmation of a package. For Esker customers, the delivery personnel can transmit these signatures instantaneously and securely to Esker DeliveryWare to be included as part of a package and sent to a customer.
The reformatting capability allows users to adapt the software for uses beyond merely data capture and transmission from their ERP system to customers. For example, Esker DeliveryWare can create a sales report in which it reformats data into individual reports by salesperson number and sends them to the company's intranet site for access by each salesperson to review monthly commissions. As an alternative to installed software, companies may prefer to purchase the Esker business document process-automation solution as an outsourced service whereby Esker manages and monitors the billing process and archives the invoice information within its own facilities. Currently, Esker is developing OEM relationships in which third-party vendors will embed Esker technology into their applications. There are ongoing partnerships with companies that use Esker for specific tasks, such as bank transfers of payments. Esker looks to develop similar partnerships from its hosting model offering in the near future. Competition: Many and None Esker does not consider any one company a direct competitor because it does not believe that any other company offers the number of document delivery options in one solution. Typically Esker finds prospective customers using one company for a fax solution, another for document management and another for optical character reading to handle document formatting. Esker believes its competitive advantages are: The ability to identify areas of an organization that are hampered by manually processing paper documents and demonstrate cost savings Inbound and outbound document management for bi-directional communication Dynamic document capture to handle any layout of a form by reading the form and scanning for key data, as necessary An intelligent rules engine to direct communication and manage the delivery of documents One solution with many choices to accommodate all means of communication with customers An optical character recognition (OCR) engine that captures data from image files (e.g. TIFF, BMP, or PDF) for processing. Esker DeliveryWare also can convert any one document type (e.g. TXT, EDI, XML, XLS, etc.) to any other as necessary. Greater integration with SAP Additional document automation offered through its service model Customer Experiences with Esker Software Evaluating customer satisfaction is critical to vendor success. Esker maintains an online library of case studies detailing customers' success with Esker DeliveryWare. Three of those customers
were interviewed to relate their experiences. Sam Moore Furniture LLC based in Bedford, Virginia is a manufacturer of stylish chair furniture. The company was looking for a way to save money. The tasks of folding papers, stuffing them in envelopes, stamping the envelopes and mailing them were too time consuming and costly of a process to be ignored. The Vice President of IT and Administration, Roger Gossler, had experience with Esker products at a previous furniture manufacturer and proposed Esker DeliveryWare. Sam Moore's implementation of Esker DeliveryWare permits its customers to view their invoices and update their organization's profiles online through self-service at any time. Sam Moore uses all transmission methods offered by Esker and its reformatting capability. One example that Gossler describes is production of a text file from the JD Edwards ERP product. The file can be reformatted by Esker DeliveryWare to produce documents such as invoices in different colors with the Sam Moore Furniture company logo prior to transmission by Esker to a client as a PDF. Users design and implement rules to handle their procedures through Esker DeliveryWare. For example, if an invoice fails to reach its destination through the distribution process, Esker DeliveryWare sends a notification via email to the appropriate Sam Moore employee, who contacts the customer, if necessary, to determine the problem. Gossler finds the Esker DeliveryWare solution easy to use and became a ready user just by reading the instruction guide. Gossler points out that his company's choice of Esker led to a costeffective solution, one in which Sam Moore Furniture received all the capabilities it wanted. MAN Roland, a manufacturer of commercial printing presses, was looking to expedite the transmission of its invoices electronically. Even some customers were asking for electronic invoices. The MIS Manager, Carl Zumstein, recounts the search for a vendor who could provide a product compatible with SAP, knew the operations of a mid-size company and could handle mailing additional pieces such as marketing collateral with the invoices. MAN Roland reviewed other vendors' offerings but chose Esker based on its meeting the above requirements as well as having a responsive support team, more reasonable pricing and a shorter implementation time compared to the competition. Zumstein says learning Esker software is easy enough at the basic level. More advanced features and more complicated customization may require IT involvement. MAN Roland has found Esker software flexible enough to accommodate MAN Roland's own creativity. As an example of the company's inventiveness, it issues customer statements that include shipping documents and marketing information as part of an entire business workflow, incorporating the FedEx link used to track the product shipments in the statements. Zumstein comments that Esker software comes close to an analytics tool.
Aearo Company is a manufacturer of personal protection equipment and energy-absorbing materials. The company worked with another third-party vendor to fax invoices but wanted a means to e-invoice and fax that the vendor could not provide. Jim Griggs, Systems Group Leader, explains that Aearo wanted a scalable product that would automate the receipt and delivery of documents to and from its user community with follow-up notification on delivery status. Griggs says that in his experience with third-party vendors, Esker is the best. He finds the product easy to understand and use. After attending training classes and seeking support when necessary, Griggs finds product customization straight forward. Aearo has gone even beyond faxing invoices with Esker Fax on Demand and Esker DeliveryWare products, and now uses the faxing capability for any document type when its regular fax line fails or Aearo is sending to a tollfree number, which its fax line cannot handle. Asked if there were improvements they would like to see in the Esker solution, customers suggested the following: Enable the general document recognition capability as a desktop feature rather than a function maintained from a system console Enhance the first version front-end document manager online user tool with more customization capabilities for reporting and database management Allow security settings to be set beyond group rights to individual user rights Integrate the archiving tool with a database management tool Provide regional training and user group associations Where to Go from Here Esker, never content to offer just one method to transmit business documents, continuously looks for alternative solutions to offer its customers. When fax was the way to communicate, Esker added print, email, XML, scanning and Web transmission. Esker has plans in place to offer more services through its hosted model. In turn, its customer base is learning to be creative with Esker software, thinking out of the box to find expeditious means to communicate, improve workflow, and ultimately enhance a company's cash management.
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