Beales Department Stores implements Electronic Invoicing with K3 Retail and Intelligent Capture

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Beales Department Stores implements Electronic Invoicing with K3 Retail and Intelligent Capture.

Department store Beales has almost tripled its trading base with the acquisition of the Anglia Co-op's 19 Westgate department stores. To support this growth, Beales recently entered into a multi-year e-invoicing agreement with K3 Retail and strategic partner Intelligent Capture with the solution having now been successfully implemented, seamlessly integrated with the existing Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution from K3 Retail.

With the growth of the organisation, has come an increase in product lines and purchase invoices into the head office function in Bournemouth. An e-invoicing solution from K3 Retail and Intelligent Capture will enable Beales to drive down back office costs and allow the Accounts Payable team to operate with greater operational efficiency.

An innovative, single solution for paper, PDF and XML purchase invoices has been provided to Beales, with paper invoices still being received and scanned by the Accounts Payable team. Once scanned, the invoice images are uploaded to the Intelligent Capture Managed Service where the relevant data is "intelligently" extracted and validated for accuracy, with clean, validated data being passed to the Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution. PDF invoices are received via email from suppliers and directly imported into the solution with XML also being processed through the single solution, in all instances the same error checking and resolution process takes place, irrespective of invoice type.

The solution will dramatically reduce the amount of manual keying for the Accounts Payable staff as well as resolving and driving out invoice exceptions, allowing them to focus time on more business-critical tasks, in addition the instant access to purchase invoices will help to drive operational efficiency right across the organisation. The solution will also provide the back-bone to further process automation across Beales with the scaleability of the solution allowing for further automation within other departments.

"We identified e-Invoicing as being pivotal to driving further back office process efficiency, we wanted a single solution to address all invoice formats, whilst also being scalable to drive further process efficiency across the organisation, the Intelligent Capture solution delivered on both fronts" says Subhash Sreedharan, Director of IT at Beales. "The retail pedigree of Intelligent Capture and the partnership they have with K3 Retail made them the obvious choice and I am delighted to say that we have seen the benefits of this working relationship in our delivery".