The Customer:
Our customer publishes one of the best known daily financial newspapers. It also prints on its premises third party newspapers. The company has its headquarters and its private press facilities in Athens and offices in two other Greek cities. They employ 110 people, journalists, press technicians and administration executives and staff.
What was the business challenge: The company was facing issues with the processes of Production Orders and Publication Orders mostly because it used two different applications for its commercial and its accounting needs that didn’t communicate or interface with each other so there was manual processing and interfacing at some stages and double entries at both systems. There was no connection between Orders, Production or Publishing, Pricing and Invoicing or any automatic update of the customer records and the accounting. Production Orders were received and managed manually. Pricing was calculated by the production officers that notified the accounting officers to manually issue invoices. Publication Orders were received and posted in the commercial system where pricing was calculated but invoicing was again manual. At certain peak times of incoming Publication Orders it took several people to work overtime and from 10 days to 2 months to issue the relative invoices. All invoices were entered at a later stage in the accounting system.
Another issue because of the two systems was the management of the more than 5000 Subscriptions for its financial newspaper. There was no automated process to follow up the whole subscription process (Knowledge of the subscribers’ base, expiry dates, billings and collections).
The company needed a business application that would receive all kinds of Orders with all their details and elements that would describe the requested job and would automate the pricing and the invoicing process. The system should have integrated financial and accounting functionality in order to update general ledger accounts and customer records.
How Ε-ΟΝ Integration approached the business challenge:
E-On Integration proposed its SaaS E-ON RIX Business Financials & CRM solution, a fully vertical business integration platform that streamlines and automates all processes and workflows. It performs a wide range of functions such as order management, sales and purchases, inventories, issuance of invoices and vouchers. All operations update automatically and simultaneously the general ledger and the financial statements. E-On RIX covers all of the company’s locations and is accessed through internet connections anytime.
Results: With the adoption of E-ON RIX the Group automated processes and greatly improved their times for billings and collections by improving its liquidity.
Production and Publication Orders are now posted in E-ON RIX with all their details that describe the required job. Pricing is calculated automatically through various tables embedded in the system and invoices are issued with the push of a button. E-ON RIX offers “to do” functionality that enables the company’s officers to follow processes and perform their tasks. They can also see the status of invoices and the payments. The time between receipt of Orders even at peak times and issuance of invoices has decreased to one day.
The company now has a fully automated system for subscriptions that produces maturity reports and all other managerial and informative reporting. On the expiration dates the system issues invoices with the push of a button and produces labels for posting. Upon payment of subscriptions accounting is updated automatically.
E-On RIX has also transformed another one of the company’s pains in the past, the management of their customers’ checks. Now the company has a system to track them and also follow the payments.
All Collections and payments are now processed directly through the system leading to on-line real time updates of cash availability.
E-ON RIX’s "workflow" functionality enables all officers involved in the collections’ processes to perform their tasks on time leading to increased productivity and increased ratio of success in receivables.
It produces at any time ad hoc or scheduled financial statements to support the management team with accurate and immediate knowledge on the progress and results of the company.
