Transforming to Paperless process @Wakefern Food Corp

Wakefern Food Corp., established in 1946, is the largest retailer-owned supermarket cooperative in the United States. Wakefern comprises nearly 50 member companies, operating 365  supermarkets under the ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, The Fresh Grocer, Dearborn Market, Fairway Market, Gourmet Garage, and Fairway Market banners. These supermarkets are located in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. 

Business Challenges/Objectives:

Wakefern wanted to implement a paperless and seamless environment within its accounting department to reduce costs and eliminate the need for printed invoices and paper processes. 

• Accounts Payable (AP) wanted to handle increased invoice volume with less associated paper tasks
• Wakefern needed a centralized repository to store all invoices and allow for the ability to view invoices seamlessly from within E-Business Suite

Solution :

WebCenter Imaging

WebCenter Enterprise Capture

WebCenter Applications Adapter

WebCenter Forms Recognition

Oracle Database

EBS R12

The Oracle Solution provided an end-to-end, out-of-the-box, certified, integrated, automated invoice processing solution with Oracle E-Business Suite.   

Oracle WebCenter Enterprise Capture helped Wakefern with invoice ingestion and automatically sends the invoices to WebCenter Forms Recognition for data extraction and validation.  The data is extracted, the invoices are stored in WebCenter Imaging, and a workflow is automatically initiated. The workflow routes the invoices to the required team members and then is inserted into E-Business Suite as an invoice record.

Outcomes:

• 80% paperless process
• Associates can focus more on important tasks and less on paper tasks
• Estimated annual savings of 240K
• WebCenter enabled Wakefern to improve interdepartmental communication. 
• Leadership improved transparency in the system
• Tracking improved with associates and leadership now able to see an invoice's workflow through the system, which has been helpful  for pre- or post-payment research
• Centralized Repository – Store documents once and view them from within E-Business without requiring any customizations to E-Business Suite
• Ability for more robust searching of invoices from within the WebCenter end user interface

Customer (Wakefern) Quote –

“We are, I would say, 80% paperless on the AP side and it has made a big difference for our team and all our stakeholders. Going electronic using OCR streamlined the process and offers more transparency while freeing up our team to effectively handle more business  for our cooperative Members.”