Kern
Leading provider of mailroom equipment
Company Overview
Established in Switzerland in 1947, the Kern Group has gained a unique place in the document management sector. Driven by innovation and a continual commitment to customers, the company continues to thrive and prosper. In 1983, Kern Limited was set up to meet the needs of customers across the United Kingdom and this business continues to go from strength to strength.
With a long history of technical innovation, Kern was founded by Marc Kern who set up a small workshop in Huningenstrasse, Konolfingen, Switzerland and began the design of a folding and inserting machine. Since then, Kern has headed a series of industry firsts, including the first ‘online’ system with cutting, folding and inserting as a single process (1968) and the first computer-controlled document inserting system, developed for Swiss Bank Corporation (1975). More recently, the K3000 mailing machine was launched, cycling at 26,000 mailpieces per hour.
Kern Ltd has grown and diversified to supply technology across the mailroom and packaging market. It currently employs over 115 staff at its headquarters in Fareham, Hampshire, and across the country as field engineers.
The Challenge
Kern has been using Access Dimensions since 2002, and from an accounting viewpoint, the solution met the company needs. However, as Kern continued to grow, the burden of manual timesheet submission and input caused issues with the accuracy of timelines of project data.
Complex Needs
Like many manufacturing and service companies, the majority of Kern’s costs are in labour.Over 90 per cent of Kern’s staff are field engineers, who manually log time to each project, which is then translated into a cost and allocated to its relevant database within the financial system. Sandra Richardson, Finance Manager comments, “Accurate and timely processing of labour hours into the costing ledgers is of key importance to us. Furthermore, reporting needs are complex due to the differing contractual arrangements, covering for example, overtime and callout costs.” A dedicated staff member spent much of their time entering and re-entering an incredible 22,000 manual timesheet entries each year, a job that needed to be done meticulously to avoid errors.
Time Consuming
As well as the need to improve overall efficiency, Sandra was aware of the postal and filing costs associated with paper timesheets.And as well as being time consuming, the information within the system was always out of date since the data could never be updated quickly enough. By insisting on an electronic system that would update in real-time, Sandra knew that greater visibility into the processing cycle would be achieved, speeding up approvals and payment – and in turn, providing a better service to the staff by giving the company much more up-to-date information. Sandra saw Dimensions’ web-enabled modules demonstrated at her Access Specialist Centre’s user day and realised this was the solution she had been looking for.
The Solution
After a period of consultation, Sandra chose Dimensions’ Timesheets and Expenses modules. Being web-enabled, Kern engineers would be able to enter data through a browser while off-site, and automated alerts could be set up for approvals, before being sent directly to the costing ledgers for efficient processing.
Company-wide Acceptance
The system has dramatically changed company working practices and attitudes, something Sandra attributes to its ease of use.“We have been delighted with the acceptance the system has received from our engineering staff, some of whom had limited experience of computer technology. They found it so easy to use that within two weeks of the training, they had fully accepted the new way of working.”
Customisable
A key strength of the solution is its ability to be customised to fit specific working practices. Sandra cites this as another key factor in the system’s acceptance, commenting,“Our Access solution has delivered preconfigured, easy-to-use timesheet and expenses entry screens.” In addition, the system is based around logical workflows to speed up business processes, something that Sandra finds of prime importance, “The approval workflow is prompted by the software, meaning that approvers are proactively notified so that they can process quickly, typically within 2-3 hours.”
Meeting the Requirements
The solution has met all Sandra’s requirements – and the figures speak for themselves. The number of manual data entries has reduced from 22,000 to 3,000, a 90 per cent reduction in labour hours as a direct result of integration between the core ledgers and the timesheet and expense entries.“We’re ‘greener’ too,” Sandra comments.“There have been significant savings in stationery expenditure as well as elimination of the cost of mailing paper copies to the office and filing them.”
Further Benefits
The solution has also provided excellent return on investment. Being web-enabled, the cost per user licence makes it financially viable to roll the timesheet functionality out across the entire organisation. Sandra comments,“Our investment has proved very good value for money, paying for itself in 12 months based just on labour cost savings.” In addition, bringing web enablement to the desktops of many more users has changed working practices positively – and has, in turn, “contributed to a big culture change within the workforce and opened up the opportunity for continued growth.”
Benefits
- Time savings – a 90 per cent decrease in manual timesheet entries gives the finance department greater capacity for other jobs Increased accuracy – the reduction in manual data entry has decreased the number of errors reaching the core ledgers
- Faster processing – alerts have been set up so that timesheet and expenses entries are sent to an approver and processed, typically within 2-3 hours
- Cost benefits – by replacing paper-based timesheets with an electronic system, the need for postal and filing costs is eliminated
- Improved company ethos – staff take responsibility for entering the correct information in a timely manner, confident that it will be processed quickly
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