Supply Distribution: Building Materials

Distribution Company Finds Increased Productivity and Cost Reductions with Venali Internet Fax

The combined bene€ts of Venali Internet Fax Service and a Web Based Document Management System drive and scale company growth.

The Company

Venali’s client is a distributor of lumber, plywood and other building materials to the construction trade. Since opening their first warehouse in 1979, this company has grown to 14 “super centers” which serve the entire northeast corridor of the United States. The company employs more than 500 professionals in six states.

The Challenge

In concert with strong yearly fiscal growth, their daily fax volume and respective paperwork had increased exponentially. Hundreds of documents including vendor invoices, proofs of delivery, and completed credit applications were being faxed to and received from both suppliers and customers daily. Fax lines and machines would often be busy, fax documents were at risk of sitting idle or being misplaced, and because manpower was required to handle and file faxes, employee productivity was also hampered.

To accommodate this growing communications challenge, this company first opted to deploy an in-house fax server. The company soon realized however, the fax server was unable to support the tremendous fax volume. The main obstacle employees encountered was an inability to send or receive faxes at various times during the day. This was due primarily to frequent downtime and fax server bottlenecks. The IT staff had to perform maintenance and upgrades almost daily. These financial burdens and maintenance hassles were resulting in lost faxes and negating returns on investment.

The Venali Solution

At an impasse, the company could either overhaul the fax server to address capacity demands (requiring additional costly outlays in fax cards, phone lines, and other hardware) or devise an alternate solution.

They were certain that a new multifaceted paperwork solution was essential. With the eventual goal of creating a “paperless office,” this solution would need the capacity and capability to support both the workflow and bandwidth demands throughout the company’s 14 locations.

With the shortcomings of their previous fax system in mind, they conducted exhaustive research on alternative solutions. The company’s I.T. Department concluded that a combination of multiple technologies would create the highly effective, cost efficient “paperless” solution which they sought.

The new workflow solution combined the benefits of a document management system with Venali Internet Fax Service. The addition of a dedicated web domain further enhanced the solution. This new domain provided employees with a web based document managing system which from one portal could service all 14 locations.

Now, fax documents from customers and suppliers are received directly into the document managing system. Their document imaging system reads and stores the faxes on a hard drive. Faxes are then indexed and automatically organized for future use. If an employee wishes to read or review fax documents at a later date, they can use the retrieval tools made available in the document imaging system. Employees can now search, retrieve and view documents with a web browser from any desktop, at any location.

This company has experienced continuous and sustained growth by combining and implementing forward thinking technologies to support their business communications. By utilizing Venali, they were able to realize true investment returns, streamline employee workflow and site operations, and virtually eliminate downtime.

Their company’s 14 locations have realized 60% increased employee productivity. Employees now accomplish the faxing process from their workstations, which decreases the time required to complete the workflow process. IT department productivity has been optimized by 75% – the need to maintain and upgrade the fax server has been eliminated by using Venali’s fully scalable, secure, reliable and compliant network.

Benefits

• Fax server maintenance has been eliminated
• Reduced costs associated fax servers and fax machines: including dedicated phone lines, fax cards, toner, paper, and long distance charges
• Need for individual fax machines and numbers was reduced
• A savings of approximately 65% has been achieved monthly