Welbeck Estates Saves Time, Money And Storage Through Implementation Of Invu Software

Invu, the leading provider of document management software, has been chosen by The Welbeck Estates Company Limited, owner of the 15,000 acre Welbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, to supply its Document Management System.

The new software was selected primarily to improve efficiency by automating the accounts payable process. The Invu system has shortened purchase-to-pay times by around 50% and resulted in a significant reduction in physical storage requirements.

In addition to almost halving the invoice processing time, Welbeck Estates has also simplified its document search and retrieval process – cutting document discovery times from approximately 10 minutes to a matter of seconds.

Implementing Invu at Welbeck has also resulted in a more robust process for invoice authorisation and it is no longer possible for paper documents to be processed without proper authorisation. Invu's automated workflow means that every document has to conform to the procedure contained within the workflow.

Welbeck is an historic estate in rural Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Its business has always been land-based, mostly farming but with substantial coal mining on its land prior to the industry's nationalisation in 1948. The compensation for loss of revenue received at that time was invested in a commercial property portfolio, ultimately managed and financially reported by the Welbeck Estates Company Limited. The Company owns and operates further rural estates in Northumberland and Caithness.

The Welbeck Project represents the vision of recreating a sustainable community within the historic Welbeck Estate. Built on the four pillars of rural development, creative industry, education and the arts, it has seen Welbeck play host to an increasing number of enterprises and businesses including the Welbeck Farm Shop, Welbeck Abbey Brewery, the Harley Gallery and Studios, the School of Artisan Food, and Stichelton Dairy. A number of new businesses have occupied new offices in the historic buildings at the heart of Welbeck Village.

Processing up to 100,000 invoicing documents a year through a manual process, Welbeck's accounting system was largely paper-based and documents were physically stored across multiple locations. Because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the progress of individual invoices and the risk of misplacing documents, the manual process was replaced with Invu's Document Management software.

Ian Goodwin, Finance Director at Welbeck Estates comments, "Initially we wanted a solution which could automate all of our accounting processes. Locating and retrieving documents was taking up to ten minutes per document and the storage and sheer volume of paper documents which we were handling was becoming an issue due to the costs and logistics of housing them. We were therefore looking for a solution which offered visibility across the entire accounting department, while allowing documents to be accessed quickly and easily. Through using the Invu software, files which had previously taken up to ten minutes to find can now be retrieved in a maximum two minutes, but usually a matter of seconds."

Goodwin continues, "The design of the software is very similar to Microsoft Outlook, which has meant that it has been easily adopted by users in the finance department – the whole product has clearly been designed with the user in mind and this has been shown by how quickly it has been picked up by our finance team and how it has added value so quickly to the estate."

The successful implementation of Invu Document Management has demonstrated solid benefits to Welbeck Estates and is now used as a firm part of daily operations. Goodwin concludes, "Currently the finance department is the core user of the Invu software, but the benefits that we have already seen mean that we are certain that the software can be used as a platform for future initiatives and provide benefits across the wider business."

About Invu
Invu develops software that incorporates document management, content management, workflow, automation and collaboration specialising in solutions for the mid-market and smaller businesses.

Also known as the paperless office, Invu typically gives a return on investment in under six months, allowing companies to see efficiency savings in terms of both money and time.

Over 4,500 organisations use Invu. From professional services (such as accountants, IFAs and insurers) to education; from housing associations to manufacturing and engineering; from transport & logistics to construction and charities.

Invu's Open Search integration allows SharePoint users to utilise fully the benefits of WSS/SharePoint Foundation or MOSS/SharePoint Server whilst retaining the functions of specialist document and content management.

Invu's solutions enable automated scan, capture and management, processing and output transformation.

Invu also integrates with all major accounting systems including IRIS and Sage, as well as ERP and CRM systems.

For more information, visit www.invu.net.

SOURCE: Invu