The Economist Group owns, manages and develops intelligent media brands across the world, aimed at an audience of international business people and decision-makers.  It is the leading source of analysis on international business and world affairs, delivered in newspapers and magazines – including its flagship publication, The Economist – and through conferences and meetings.  The Group employs over 1,000 staff throughout the world, with offices in London, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, New York, Boston, Washington DC, Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore, Tokyo and India.

When it comes to purchase invoice processing, steady business growth means that 3,000 documents are now received monthly into London, with volumes at 1,000 and 600 for the New York and Hong Kong operations respectively.

To address these volumes without the requirement for further recruitment, The Economist Group evaluated a number of suppliers offering solutions of varying complexity.  Image Integrators evaluated the company’s requirements and proposed a solution based upon inhouse scanning and storage, integrated with The Economist Group’s existing Peoplesoft system.

Explains Nick Shippin, Group Financial Controller at The Economist Group: “We chose Image Integrators because of its industry expertise and its honest approach.  Most importantly, its solution allows us to leverage our investment in Peoplesoft.”

The company has opted for an integrated and distributed PROCURA solution to support local document scanning in the New York and Hong Kong offices, with images sent via The Economist Group’s network to London for central storage.  Head office documents are scanned and stored on-site. 

The solution includes Onbase7 from Hyland Software, Inc., Ascent Capture software from Kofax plc and a Kodak i1140 scanner.

The Economist Group will be using two of Image Integrators’ integration modules to ensure that the PROCURA and Peoplesoft systems are accessing the same data, and to embed the images captured by PROCURA within the existing Peoplesoft workflow. 

The hub of the new approval process will be the images viewable from within the Peoplesoft workflow.  Some 250 approvers across the business, located in London, New York and Hong Kong, will access these images.

Concludes Gerrard Kennedy, Managing Director of Image Integrators: “Wherever possible, we advocate that our clients use systems that they’ve already invested in.  We specified precisely what The Economist Group needed, rather than persuading it to acquire something it didn’t.”

Installation is currently taking place, with implementation expected to be completed by the summer. 

The Economist Group was referred to Image Integrators by Emap Media, an existing PROCURA user.