Traditions And Modern Technology Meet At Berlingske

Berlingske is the dominating publishing group in Denmark. With publications such as the morning newspaper Berlingske Tidende and the tabloid B.T. they reach millions of Danish readers every day. Berlingske is also the oldest publishing house in Denmark with a history that traces all the way back to 1749. But these strong traditions do not prevent Berlingske from using modern, cutting-edge technology. One of the later additions is their invoice processing system put into place by ReadSoft and Consit.

Berlingske's shared financial service center gathers all the invoices from the Berlingske Group and transfers the data into the business system Oracle E-Business Suite. Indeed, this service center is so efficient that it helps other Danish newspapers with their invoices as well. Some 70,000 invoices pass through the Service Center every year.

The computers do all the hard work
Whenever Berlingske receives an invoice, it is placed into a scanner and ReadSoft's invoice processing software takes over. The software creates a digital image of the invoice from which data is extracted and classified. The patented self-learning ability enables the software to become "smarter" and extract information easier, the next time an invoice from the same supplier shows up. In other words, it reads invoices much in the same way as humans do.

Peter Persson at Berlingske's Financial Department explains: "We immediately realized the benefits of running all our processes electronically. There is a lot of time to be saved just by being able to search and retrieve the invoices in an electronic archive." And that's just one of the benefits of the system.

Automatic validation against Oracle data
After the correct information has been captured and interpreted, it is time to match and verify information against data in Oracle E-Business Suite. This process is also highly automated. The software InvoiceIT from Consit is able to compare and validate information on the invoices such as order numbers, addresses, total amounts etc and make sure that the data on the invoices corresponds to actual goods or services received.

It goes without saying that this high degree of automation is more cost-efficient than manual keying and verification of data. Peter Persson says: "With this system in place, we are able to process the same amount of invoices as before, but with fewer people."

Preparing the implementation
All staff who were going to work with the system were trained before the implementation. After that, there have been specialized training sessions for those who are more involved and also follow-up meetings to make sure that the system runs optimally. "There are always challenges when you implement new systems such as this," says Peter Persson. "New ways of working and new processes are bound to cause some turbulence in any organization, but the time we have spent on training has quickly paid back by the efficiency of the system."

Immediate access to information
In all, Berlingske is very satisfied with the invoice-processing system. "There is a lot of time and money to be saved by using this kind of system," says Peter Persson. "Not only is it faster and more cost efficient than manual handling, it is also a great way to reduce costs for overdue payments since we now minimize the risk of invoices being stranded on a cluttered desk for too long. Finally, it is a great relief not having to run to an archive when suppliers call – all the information about a particular invoice can now be presented with a few clicks of the mouse."