An effervescent relationship: Gerolsteiner Brunnen GmbH & Co. KG turns to ECM experts at SAPERION
Germany's largest exporter of mineral water selects Enterprise Content Management solution from SAPERION
Gerolsteiner uses Enterprise Content Management (ECM) from SAPERION to establish uniform document management processes throughout its organization. The solution they chose provides not only classical ECM functionality, but also tools for inbound mail, workflow management, and e-mail archiving.
The SAPERION software replaces the customer’s legacy archival system, which was incapable of handling a steadily growing volume of documents, currently at more than 350,000 documents per year. The new solution gives Gerolsteiner the ability to manage its documents in a much more cost-effective way that saves the company valuable time. As a result, it can again concentrate fully on its core business, the distribution of natural mineral water.
Early in the selection process, Gerolsteiner had well-formed ideas about the requirements for the new system. Their top priority was to provide more than 600 global employees with electronic archiving features while simultaneously giving them ready access to new data arriving each day in the form of mail and inbound invoices. They were also concerned with transferring approximately 5.5 million documents from the legacy system into the new system as quickly and smoothly as possible. SAPERION provided the customer with a transparent proposal that included conscientious migration of all documents without risk of revisions, thereby giving Gerolsteiner the peace of mind they sought.
"We had very high expectations for the new solution. We needed a high level of confidence that we could avoid many of the problems that had plagued us in the past," according to Werner Schwarz, CIO at Gerolsteiner. "From the very beginning, SAPERION inspired the confidence we needed with competent and personalized support, strong international references, and an unbeatable value for the money."
The new ECM solution has made it much easier for Gerolsteiner employees to do their jobs effectively. Now they can fully process an average of 2500 documents (about 4000 pages) every workday and forward them to a variety of business processes, such as SAP invoice inspection. The sales department is also currently testing electronic customer records. The system allows sales employees to retrieve important documents at any time directly from the CRM systems, edit those documents, and link them with each other.
"We have been fortunate to find a competent partner in SAPERION. Now we can launch and customize new processes with little difficulty. In fact, we are already planning the next step, implementation of electronic contract management," says Mr. Schwarz.
"As Germany's largest exporter of mineral water with global operations, Gerolsteiner always has large volumes of data that must be administered," explains Rudolf Gessinger, CEO of SAPERION. "In a global economy, it is difficult to overstate the importance of having an efficient document management system at international firms like Gerolsteiner. That is one of the reasons why SAPERION is so pleased to work together with such a major and highly respected company."
