Allen Lund Company (ALC) improves customer service and provides reductions in cost and processing time by implementing an automated document processing solution utilizing iKAN Software and ABBYY FlexiCapture.
Background
As the 17th largest transportation broker in the United States, Allen Lund Company, transportation brokers deal with a large number of documents in support of each load transaction. Dealing with thousands of independent and established trucking companies, factoring companies, along with shipper and receiver documents amounts to millions of pages of documents each year – and growing. With this high volume of documents, a lot of human effort was required to review them, check them for accuracy, match and sort, and correct for errors, before the transaction could be set for payment. ALC looked at the situation and determined that there was a need to create solutions to streamline this process.
Initial Need
ALC was looking for an OCR solution that could split combined PDF document files into separate document files, based on document type. Specifically, they were looking for a solution that could scan their index of invoice numbers, along with keywords to not only identify and categorize the document types contained in a single PDF, but also split the PDF and rename the newly split PDF files, according to document type, using both the invoice numbers and keywords.
One of ALC’s departments receives hundreds of thousands of emails containing invoices and invoice- related documents, but the invoice and its corresponding related documents are often combined into a single PDF file. This department’s employees had to then manually follow the process outlined above for each combined PDF files. Thus, ALC was looking for a document solution, moreover an automated document processing solution that could automate the process as much as possible, so employees could gain back valuable time that could be redirected to more important and useful tasks beneficial to the organization.
After conducting extensive research of the market for possible solutions, reviewing demos and proposals, ALC narrowed their initial search from eight to ten possible solutions to two to three. From there, ALC selected iKAN Software to implement a Cloud based solution based on OCR automation software from ABBYY USA. ABBYY’s product Flexicapture proved to be up to the task at a price point that was affordable for the organization. iKAN’s expertise, along with tying the ABBYY solution into its core Virtual Document Center product was enough to convince Allen Lund Company to implement an initial trail.
“We were looking for an automated document processing solution to help us streamline processing of
our Carrier Load Confirmation related documents. iKAN Software, with the help of ABBYY FlexiCapture
helped us substantially improve our document processing accuracy and turnaround time for processing
these critical documents.” – Chetan Tandon, CIO, Allen Lund Transportation Brokers
As a Cloud-based solution, it was easy to setup and test the solution against ALC documents. What would have taken months before was accomplished in a matter of days, with minimal obligation. ALC found a solution that was flexible and would allow them to process other document types in their organization, as the need arose.
From Test to Implementation to Production
As in most new projects that have substantial volumes of pages, there were some discoveries made in the first iteration that were not considered during the discovery phase. As with all automation projects, adjusting for exceptions as the numbers of documents flow through is a normal process that must be worked through over time. The ABBYY FlexiCapture solution actually “learns” from these exceptions, so the system gets more accurate over time. It took about three months from the start of the test phase, moving into production, for the system to achieve a solid recognition rate and the system continues to improve as it is used.
Results of Automated Document Processing
Allen Lund Company has been able to document a significant improvement in the overall processing efficiency of Carrier Load Confirmations and their related documents with one key metric. Prior to the system installation, their team had to review and upload over 6,000 Carrier Load Confirmation related documents MANUALLY each week. Since the system was installed and tuned, that number is now down to approximately 500 per week, a 90% reduction of the manual work it was taking to process documents. This rate will continue to improve as the system continues to learn from ALC documents. Allen Lund Company continues to look for new ways to leverage this technology in other areas of their business.