Cenfarte has entrusted DocPath‘s Business Suite Pro solution with its electronic invoicing and automating its invoice generation and distribution processes. With this initiative, Cenfarte has not only sped up its processes, it has also reduced costs and improved its corporate image.
Centro Farmacéutico del Norte (Cenfarte) was founded in 1942 with the purpose of distributing health and specialized pharmaceutical products to pharmacy offices and providing all kinds of related services. Cenfarte currently operates in the northern regions of Spain: Asturias, Palencia, Vizcaya and Cantabria.
After consolidating the performance of the company, Cenfarte knew that new technology would be essential for its business development. For this reason, it organized the creation of a Systems department and computerized the company in 1984, resulting in a significant improvement in productivity and speeding up processing of the voluminous documentation it was generating.
Objective: a paperless office
The company has taken on many technology projects since then. However, there were some aspects related to logistic processes that until very recently had not been tackled.
Monthly, Cenfarte generated about 5.000 invoices. Every one of the invoices had to be printed and sent by messenger to the pharmaceutical customers, which generated an excessive amount of paper consumption.
“Management is very committed to the environment and believed it was necessary to implement some type of solution that would support generating and emailing electronic invoices. This is the only way we could automate the process and meet one of the most important objectives of the company: do away with printing and implement a genuine paperless office environment”,said Daniel de la Peña, Cenfarte´s Systems Manager.
As a first step, the organization considered different electronic invoicing options. Finally, it chose DocPath Business Pro Suite, as Daniel de la Peña explained:
“We chose this solution because it was more complete than the rest of the products of this type in the market. Being based on standards, it was easy to integrate with our applications and best of all, not only did it allow us to generate and distribute electronic invoices, it also offered us the possibility of designing and putting on the Internet any kind of document, which will open a way for us in the future to expand our ecological policy regarding the elimination of paper”.
Ecological solutions that generate savings
The implementation process began in January, 2010 and only two months later, the solution was already operating at full capacity. In order to communicate this new service to their customers, Cenfarte organized an awareness campaign where it explained the benefits of the new form of invoicing.
“In a little over two months, we’ve gotten 10 percent of our customers to accept receiving their invoices by email, and by the end of the year we hope that one out of every two will follow this procedure”,indicated Daniel de la Peña.
Although it is still early to make a detailed assessment , Cenfarte has already begun to obtain the first returns on its investment, as Daniel de la Peña explained:
“Customers that are receiving their invoices by email are perceiving greater immediacy in our service. Before, an invoice could take a couple of days to reach its destination. Now, in a matter of seconds customers can have them on theircomputers, which supposes an authentic innovation in the pharmaceutical sector”.
Pharmacies are not the only beneficiaries of this system. In only two months, the company has been able to save 3.000 euros on paper and ink, savings that will increase as the rest of its customers accept the new system. According to the company’s own calculations, in one year, it will do away with issuing 120.000 sheets of paper.
The future
Invoices were the first documents that Cenfarte wanted to be able to email its customers. However, they won’t be the last.
“We process a serious volume of information, not only invoices, but also bank statements, quarterly reports, etc. Our intention is to stop printing all this documentation and to be able to email it. With DocPath Business Pro Suite, we’re prepared to do it”,concluded Daniel de la Peña.