Toon van Damme

Fully automated read-in process for incoming e-mails

65% of the 40 000 incoming invoices arrive by e-mail. The automated processing of these e-mails has resulted in a staff saving of more than 0.5 FTEs

vdab-foto-toon-van-damme

Toon van Damme, Manager Accounts Payable Financials

Radically Digital

VDAB is an organisation that helps people in Flanders develop their careers.

Staff in the supplier administration department process 40 000 incoming invoices each year. As part of the ‘Radically Digital’ strategy, their aim is ensure that incoming invoices are digitally and automatically processed as much as possible. The Arco Email Processor has been in use since 2014: in just a short period of time, the proportion of invoices arriving by e-mail increased to 65%.

 

The improved process generates many benefits, including the following:

  • No human intervention required for reading in e-mails.
  • The right attachments are extracted automatically from the e-mails, grouped together and sent on to OCR. The same process is applied to ‘difficult’ e-mails, with non-standard attachment formats.
  • Undesired senders are blocked.
  • E-mails do not get lost or misplaced.
  • Rejected e-mails (failing to meet certain criteria) are periodically checked in the department.

 

Advantages of a reliable, Arco-based electronic archive:

  • Central archive of e-mails. A parallel archive via a central e-mail inbox is no longer necessary.
  • The archive complies with all legal requirements. Original e-mails and their attachments are stored unchanged.
  • All e-mail processing steps are saved in audit records.
  • The ability to automatically click through to this archive from the ERP software means that the original e-mail and its attachments can be checked.