Alliance Foods Company LLC (Asmak) supplies a wide range of seafood products, providing end-to-end solutions to its customers from fresh and frozen seafood to value-added products and processing. Over the years ASMAK has developed relationships with key supermarket chains as well as high-end hypermarkets, hotels, restaurants, caterers, and institutions in the United Arab Emirates and abroad. ASMAK exports their products across the GCC, Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North American territories. Their daily business comprises extensive processing of food products, as well as trading and distribution, for which they’d traditionally used physical documents and a paper filing system.
Challenges
With over a million documents in their physical filing structure and storage, and more documents processed every day, Asmak urgently needed to transition to a digital solution to solve their document management needs. The warehouse was earlier located at Ajman UAE, and the new plant was moving to Dubai Industrial City which is on a remote location. Getting these documents on time for review and verification at their HO at the City Office was always a challenge and time consuming process.
With the advent of VAT in the UAE since 2018, their requirement to maintain invoices and delivery notes for a minimum of five years became a mandatory part of regulatory compliance. Trying to meet this additional requirement resulted in backlogs, and papers were beginning to pile up. Available office space was shrinking, and the expanding cost investment was clearly a huge concern. Additionally, organizing the physical documents had become an even greater burden; due to human error, this sometimes resulted in missing documentation or misplaced files.
ASMAK wanted to address the issues and side effects emerging from their physical storage systems, archiving the files and folders efficiently so that searching and retrieving necessary documents wasn’t a hassle.
Why Contentverse Enterprise Content Management System?
Computhink’s UAE local partner, Cube Innovators Technologies LLC, helped Asmak find a solution which matched their needs. Due to Contentverse’s High compression options, the OCR capture and DB Lookup features within EasyIndex, search capabilities, collaboration, and workflow management, the company decided to go with Computhink’s ECM.
The familiar user interface, 500+ supported file formats, custom workflow features, version/revision, notifications, and audit trail all contributed both to the ease of use and to the compliance benefits for Asmak. Contentverse was the ideal choice for the company; complemented by Cube’s expertise deploying the Contentverse ECM in a similar vertical, implementation was quick and painless for Asmak.
Solution and Benefits
Configuration: To support the various roles within the organization, Asmak implemented both desktop and browser-based client versions of Contentverse. The ECM’s bulk scanning module Easy Index was also incorporated, reducing the time to digitize their flood of documents.
Automated Input, Processing & Management: EasyIndex auto-files and indexes documents before submitting them to Asmak’s workflow processes. The comprehensive search and retrieval capabilities – with extensive index value combinations – has saved Asmak valuable time and operational resources. The resulting optimization enables Asmak to index and upload to Contentverse up to three thousand documents weekly, making the tracking and locating of documents easy.
Tracking & Access to Physical Documents: In support of mandatory requirements to keep some original documents, the physical location is recorded as an index value with each document. Instead of using large numbers of box files, eating up warehouse space, Asmak now stores physical documents in space-saving bags and cartons, eliminating the cost from box files. With the physical tracking number included in Contentverse metadata, these paper copies can be found and retrieved on the rare occasions when compliance demands.
Search, Retention & Audit: Based on the ability to track documents both digital and physical via multiple methods and redundancy, searches can be triangulated and documents, regardless of type, can be found quickly and easily. With Contentverse, Asmak can set parameters for regulatory requirements, securely maintaining files for years and purging data when the time comes. This is especially helpful for tracking key files and retrieving documentation for audit.
Integration: Utilizing Oracle as the Contentverse database, Cube integrated Contentverse with their Orion ERP system for database lookups. MS Office and Outlook email integration are provided as standard.
The Results Speak for Themselves
With the assistance from Computhink's UAE local distributor and implementation partner Cube Innovators’ team, Contentverse has relieved Asmak of unwieldy paper filing, management, and archiving. The seafood production and distribution leader is able to streamline operations through workflow capabilities, removing now unnecessary tasks and automating crucial business processes. Mission critical integrations and regulatory features enable easy compliance and secure accounting for all data assets. With the help of Computhink’s ECM, Alliance Foods Company LLC is taking their business to new heights.
