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Morristown Utilities Commission

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Company Facts

Overview

  • Location: Tennessee, USA
  • Specialist Industry: Electric and Other Services
  • Website: www.musfiber.net

Success Highlights

Challenges

  • Reliance on manual workflows, paper-based documentation, and interoffice mail
  • Heavy time and resource-consuming processes, including storage, filing and disposition
  • Lack of companywide visibility of invoice approvals and payment dates

Solutions

  • Utilities
  • Docstar ECM AP Automation
  • Docstar ECM Intelligent Data Capture

Benefits

  • Streamlined implementation and user adoption
  • Faster and more efficient workflows, document access and retrieval
  • Greater productivity resulting in 50 percent reduction in AP personnel

Powering Accounts Payable Processing with Docstar ECM

Providing Quintessential Essential Services

The Morristown Utilities Commission (MUC) is a broad-based utility service company, MUC provides power, water, wastewater, and broadband services to approximately 25,500 customers in the city of Morristown, Tennessee, and surrounding utility districts that spread into Hamblen, Grainger, and Jefferson Counties.

MUC was looking to streamline its Accounts Payable processes and partnered with Docstar ECM partner Mosaic Corporation in early 2019. The firm specializes in helping organizations transition from paper-based, manual workflow processes to more efficient automated paperless workflows that drive efficiency, lower costs, and scale infinitely. Since then, Mosaic Corporation has worked with MUC to re-envision its AP processes with Docstar ECM AP Automation.

The software enables organizations to capture, route, approve, and integrate their AP operations, and work smarter with real-time access to invoices—from anywhere on any device— realizing significant productivity and cycle time improvements.

Modernizing Accounts Payable Operations

The move to Docstar ECM AP Automation has modernized MUC’s AP operations, which had been heavily paper-based and manual in nature. Previously, PO and non-PO invoices were shuffled among the organization’s 150 employees and 7 different worksites for approval via interoffice mail. Many of these invoices involved manually orchestrating a 3-way match process, where the receiving ticket was matched up with documentation from three separate stacks of paper.

Once the paper chase and the dust had settled, the information was then manually keyed into MUC’s Microsoft Dynamics GP system. As a final step, the hard copy paperwork was laid to rest in the appropriate file cabinet.

Today, the complete AP process at MUC has been digitized. With nonPO invoices, vendors email invoices to an AP email address; Docstar ECM Intelligent Document Capture automates the capture of invoice content, eliminating this labor-intensive and time-consuming process. An email is then automatically sent to the individual(s) responsible for approval. Once the invoice is approved, the AP group pushes the approval into Dynamics GP for payment.

With a PO invoice, the process is similar, however, Docstar ECM AP Automation also completes the three-way match process based on the record of what has been received in Dynamics. Invoices are safely and securely electronically stored, indexed and available for easy reference after the fact.

“What do I love about Epicor [now Docstar] ECM? No paper. As a municipal entity, we have to abide by specified retention requirements for documents. In the past we to manually find documents stored in bankers’ boxes with ‘destroy by’ dates. We can now dispose of documents quickly and easily, without digging through dusty boxes.”

— Brandon Stubblefield, Controller at Morristown Utilities Commission

morrison group

MUC, Docstar ECM, and Mosaic: A Partnership for Progress

MUC selected the Docstar ECM AP Automation solution and next looked for a proven partner that was experienced with using the technology to support digital transformation in the utilities sector. Mosaic Corporation satisfied all these criteria. An Docstar ECM Gold Partner, Mosaic works to implement and improve paperless processes via its expert consulting services, tools, and training.

“Mosaic was fantastic. They hit the ground running and within a month we were ready to do testing,” said Brandon Stubblefield, Controller at the Morristown Utilities Commission. The Mosaic team worked with the MUC AP clerks to understand various nuances and make tweaks to the system to align workflows. Mosaic developed this workflow to feature 30-40 different logic steps around Microsoft Dynamics using eConnect, the set of integration tools and APIs that allow for seamless third-party integration into Dynamics GP.

AP Automation Drives Myriad Benefits

With Docstar ECM AP Automation, MUC is now processing 200 invoices a month. Productivity improvements enabled MUC to reduce the number of employees tasked with handling AP operations by 50 percent – from 2 to 1 Full-Time Employee.

Many invoices now flow through the AP approval process via straight-through processing with very little human intervention required, and the time needed to process invoices has been significantly reduced.

“We had five or six lateral file drawers originally allocated for storage of invoices and documentation. Since we started using Epicor [now Docstar] ECM AP Automation, those file drawers have remained empty.”

— Brandon Stubblefield, Controller at Morristown Utilities Commission

During the Covid-19 pandemic transition to remote work, electronic document access and workflows were key. “We were so fortunate to have Docstar ECM AP Automation in place during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns,” recalled Stubblefield. “When everyone had to work from home, all the bills were paid.” Additionally, Stubblefield says digitization has had another key benefit; auditors haven’t had to come on site in over two years, as MUC can package all its Docstar ECM AP Automation records up to send to auditors electronically.

“What do I love about Epicor [now Docstar] ECM AP Automation? No paper,” he said. “As a municipal entity, we have to abide by specified retention requirements for documents. In the past we had to manually find documents stored in bankers’ boxes with ‘destroy by’ dates. We can now dispose of documents quickly and easily, without digging through dusty boxes.

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