Fruity Vimto saves 50,000

The Nichols Group, best known for their Vimto branded drinks, has made savings of well over 50,000 in the first year of implementing powerful new document management and imaging software from channel supplier, Version One.

The 60 million turnover company employs over 230 staff, exports to more than 60 countries and operates from 7 locations around the UK. Due to acquisitions, Nichols plc has changed substantially over recent years, and now has centralised Finance and IT divisions providing shared services for four Group companies and the plc. As the companys mountain of paper also grew, Group IT Manger, Allan Doyle, realised the huge benefits to be had from implementing Version Ones totally integrated, enterprise-wide document management system.

Nichols central electronic archive, with remote look-up facility, now gives instant access to hundreds of thousands of accounting documents for some 120 authorised staff Group-wide. All budget holders use the archive extensively to access their individual accounts. Accounting documents can now be sent electronically between all depots, eliminating postage costs and dramatically improving processing times, whilst removing the manual handling of thousands of documents every month. The Group has also achieved far tighter control of its entire purchasing function, with a dramatic increase in the speed of authorising invoices. Other potential financial benefits for Nichols include vastly reduced debtor days and dramatically improved cash flow.

Version Ones paperless office software has totally transformed our daily working environment and we estimate weve achieved around 50,000 savings across the Group in the first year of using Version Ones software, said Simon Nichols, Director and Company Secretary.

Thousands of documents each month - including invoices, statements, remittances, payslips and purchase orders - are now automatically archived as they are generated from Nichols accounting system. They can then be sent electronically to customers and suppliers.

The only missing link for us now in having complete end-to-end paperless procedures, is our manual inputting of Purchase Invoices. We plan to rectify this by implementing Version Ones revolutionary new automated document capture solution, which uses the very latest OCR technology. We realise this software will dramatically enhance our accounting processes even further, Allan Doyle concluded.