Van Ru Credit Corporation

For more than 50 years, Van Ru Credit Corp. has been providing organizations in a wide range of industries with accounts receivable services. Using a combination of in-house skills and account management technology, the company addresses a broad range of accounting needs for customers in the fields of energy, education, government, healthcare, telecommunications, and financial services.

Van Ru was founded in the 1950s and built its business around paper documents. But decades’ worth of accumulated documentation eventually led to business issues that could no longer be ignored.

“The biggest issue was compliance,” says Maxine Kirchgessner, Manager of Information Security for Van Ru. “We have client requirements and agreements in place that detail the need to easily retrieve information upon request. It was getting harder and harder to comply with those requests with our huge stores of paper documents. We also had inefficient processes, such as printing invoices on special paper, then scanning the same invoices in order to store an electronic copy.”

The company wanted a technology solution that would enable easy scanning of documents and retrieval of information. “To update our standalone system was impractical as an enterprise solution,” says Kirchgessner. “In addition, we were hoping to leverage our IT expertise with a solution that would integrate with existing technology, including our Microsoft Server and Microsoft SharePoint.”

Van Ru decided to install a KnowledgeLake enterprise content management (ECM) solution that integrates tightly with the company’s IT platform. The company began first by installing KnowledgeLake Imaging for SharePoint, which is used for storing, searching and viewing documents on the Van Ru intranet. It subsequently began automating processes with KnowledgeLake Capture, which is used for indexing documents after they are scanned. Departmental workstations are used for entering information during the scanning process.

“Keeping up with day-to-day correspondence keeps our staff busily indexing scans,” says Kirchgessner. “We continue to assess automations, including the use of bar-coded separator pages to eliminate the manual indexing step. KnowledgeLake specialists also helped us address the problem of printing out invoices by creating an electronic form in which fields are automatically indexed based on position.”

The company has gradually rolled out the KnowledgeLake technology across various departments. “Our current effort revolves around digital certificates and automating our human resources records. Using the KnowledgeLake products in tandem with barcodes for indexing, these documents are easily stored, searched for, and retrieved on SharePoint,” says Kirchgessner. “The KnowledgeLake team works closely with us to ensure the success of this and other initiatives.”

The KnowledgeLake ECM solution running on Microsoft SharePoint has provided Van Ru with technology that is helping address key business issues. These include faster and easier compliance with customer agreements, the elimination of cumbersome and expensive paper forms, and creation of a more environmentally friendly, paperless workplace.

Faster, Easier Compliance

When customers ask for specific documents, it’s now much faster and easier than in the past for Van Ru employees to access the right documents. “All they need to do is conduct a quick search with the right keywords in the SharePoint library to pull up the appropriate documents,” says Kirchgessner. “With offsite storage, our process for retrieving records could take days. It’s a huge benefit to have the ability to retrieve documents in seconds.”

Elimination of Paper Forms

By eliminating the need to print out forms such as invoices, Van Ru is saving time and money. “The cost savings and efficiencies that we’ve achieved after installing the KnowledgeLake solution have been measurable,” says Kirchgessner. “One application alone saved us over 60 man-hours a month, and another saved $3,000 in paper costs alone. That doesn’t count the binders, shelving, and staff hours needed to manually store the information.”

A Greener Company

Kirchgessner credits the KnowledgeLake ECM solution—and the foresight of company employees who saw the potential benefits of the technology—for helping Van Ru become a greener company. “The ability to use electronic forms, have KnowledgeLake manage the documents, and send out email notifications when forms need to be processed really advanced our green, ‘paperless’ initiative,” says Kirchgessner.