Petroleum company streamlines A/P pipelines
International petroleum company Amerada Hess wanted to tighten its invoice processing procedures, lower costs and boost efficiency. A document management system integrated with an ERP system is achieving that goal.
Amerada Hess, an $8 billion international petroleum exploration and production company, has customers from Boston to Houston and beyond, including industrial partners and consumers, retail outlets and convenience stores. Field workers in Amerada's U.S. exploration and product division used to manually process and distribute invoices to the Houston headquarters where they were then electronically scanned and stored.
To more effectively process invoices and improve the retention and sharing of project related documents, Amerada is integrating in its A/P department FileNet's Panagon document warehouse with its SAP R/3 ERP system. Houston-based Align Solutions implemented the system, which became fully operational in July.
Workers in Amerada's field offices in west Texas, California, North Dakota and the Gulf Coast will now process invoices and retrieve images electronically instead of manually, saving time and reducing cost. In addition to A/P documents, Amerada also plans to integrate other additional R/3 document types, land records documents and joint venture contracts.
The new system "will enable us to consolidate our invoice processing procedures and lower costs, while at the same time increasing the efficiency in which information is stored and shared," said Brad Stafford, imaging workflow project manager at Amerada Hess.