Emerging from the joint venture between Danone and Christian Salvesen in 1996, and now part of the group Norbert Dentressangle, Salvesen Logistica has become, in a little more than a decade, a point of reference in the field of the storage and distribution of food commodities.
As a specialist in temperature controlled logistics, Salvesen Logistica now has 15 logistics bases located throughout the country and Portugal.
The growth experienced in recent years has been so spectacular that the company is already responsible for more than 1,000 employees and has achieved, in its last fiscal year, a turnover exceeding 145 million Euro.
The fact that some of its clients are companies as significant as Kraft, Nestle, Orangina-Schweppes, Bel or Carrefour, Auchan and Dia% , is the result of a firm commitment towards quality and a job well done. An additional factor, is the heavy investment in high-tech solutions. The radio frequency systems, the presence of automatic cameras and the existence of all types of security tools, are just some of the applications that help Salvesen Logistica provide a better service for their customers.
“By implementing the solution; Remote Office Printing from DocPath, it has helped us to improve our internal control processes, which has had a direct impact on the reliability and the guarantee of the services we offer to our customers”,Jorge Luque, Director of Projects in Salvesen Logistica
The management of Invoices, a critical aspect
Perhaps one of the most critical processes that this company has been facing is invoice management, this has been assured by Jorge Luque, Director of Projects at Salvesen Logistica:
“The focus of our business consists in moving the products that are demanded by our customers and with them the invoices to justify the conduct of service. Invoice management is critical to us and the only way we carry it out successfully is digitizing these documents and controlling their storage”
Reaching this conclusion was simple, as indicated by Jorge Luque:
“By 2005 Salvesen Logistica had already experienced significant growth. The volume of invoices that had to be managed was too high and to do it manually was unsustainable”
Since then, the company began to explore the different solutions within the market. Stress tests were produced to see which application was best suited to their needs.
Salvesen has many different offices, but the data processing centers are centralized in Madrid and Barcelona. The chosen solution should respect the distributed environment and allow local work, minimizing the consumption of bandwidth.
“Salvesen has many different offices, but the data processing centers are centralized in Madrid and Barcelona. The chosen solution should respect the distributed environment and allow local work, minimizing the consumption of bandwidth”. says the Project Manager.
Project phases
After selecting the solution, the project was divided into two phases. The first included the digitization of the invoices from Danone, which represents a substantial proportion of the logistics operator. According to Jorge Luque, this was the most critical part of the implementation:
“To ensure the success of the project, we made a pilot in the center of Sant Cugat del Valles, which lasted for six months. During this time, we made developments, detected faults and made the necessary corrections. After that, the pilot was extended to our other offices, a process that was rapid and without complications”
At the end of the second phase, the appropriate modifications were made on the forms to adapt and extend the solution to other customers. At the same time, a series of internal developments were carried out, in order to standardize the entire process of managing invoices. According to the Project Director:
“Now the process is much more clear and simple, ensuring that adequate information reaches the customer”
Improved productivity
Currently, Salvesen Logistica prints about eight million documents a year.
“Thanks to DocPath Remote Office Printing we can make all the processes related to the management of invoices automatically, allowing us to improve monitoring our procedures and offer our customers a guarantee with more reliability in the services we provide” Jorge Luque
With this solution, Salvesen Logistica not only provides quality physical logistics, but also provides a document management service that handles the increasing demand in customers needs.