Tavern in the green

Punch Taverns

It may be easier than you think to run your own pub. Apply to Punch Taverns and one of their over 7,800 pubs across the UK could be yours to lease, manage and run in your own individual style. Punch’s strategy is simple: to help these new pub managers run their businesses as successfully as possible; by providing them with help in many areas including training, business planning and marketing.

The problem
Punch Taverns has been growing at an extraordinary rate. In 1997 they had 1,400 pubs and today have almost six times that amount. Because of the rapid growth, the manual process of handling documents, now up to 15,000 per week, had become time consuming and inefficient. Punch Taverns made the decision to implement a document management system to automate the process - FormScape’s Document Process Automation solution was chosen. DWS were tasked with integrating the FormScape solution with Punch’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP solution.

The work
The document management system enabled the capture of images of all inbound documents including supplier invoices and cheques.

The interface designed and built by DWS between the document management system and EnterpriseOne had 5 key objectives:

1) Ensure that the numerous different document types and formats were transferred securely to the appropriate EnterpriseOne location in the correct format
2) Minimise any performance related issues to provide employees with instant access to relevant documents to deal with telephone enquiries
3) Enable employees that were geographically dispersed to access these documents via a browser interface
4) Create a user interface that enabled the employees to be able to view all the relevant documents for a customer enquiry through a single-screen logon. Avoiding the need to have multiple logins or the need to “toggle” between screens and
5) Present the relevant documents across two physical screens for ease of viewing, speed and cross-referencing

DWS utilised standard tables and screens from the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne toolkit where possible to minimise bespoke development in order to meet the aggressive timescale of the project. All the end-user testing was completed via the web with DWS and FormScape providing recommendations on the approach.

The result
The automation of document processing at Punch Taverns has delivered significant benefits. Managers can view documents online, anytime, anywhere to quickly resolve supplier issues and improve customer service. Manual entry and the need for paper have been eliminated where possible thereby reducing errors and improving performance. The new solution allows Punch to continue to grow without having to worry about operational efficiency.

Technical configuration
Environment
Software JD Edwards EnterpriseOne B7334
Database DB2
Hardware AS400
Runtime HTML

Modules impacted
Accounts Receivable
Accounts Payable
Purchase Order Management
General Accounting
Property Management
Sales Order Management
Asset Management