Document Processing as a Service in the Hospitality Industry: A Case Study

Why am I writing about Document Processing?

Back in 2017, I was hand-picked to assist a Dex Imaging acquisition (Sagamore - rebranded as DEXDOX) with sales adoption across the company footprint. The founder was on an earn-out and wanted me to join his 2-man band to educate the Dex Imaging sales force (300 sales reps across 36 branches) about his products and services.

During my time on his team, I led the DEXDOX sales process, built and delivered sales demos, pricing and proposal strategy, product marketing, sales rep education across 36 branches (including major markets Nashville, Memphis, Baltimore, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Raleigh, and Charlotte), developed case studies and literature to support sales enablement, and served as the liaison between the customer and our technical member. As the team grew, I led training for additional specialized DEXDOX reps in outlying markets. By the time I departed the company, our team more than doubled in size from just the 3 of us to include 7 full-time employees.

This was one of my first forays into the start-up world and sparked my interest in diving deeper. In many ways, this role was a turning point that led my career to where I am today. In the articles that follow, I share case studies I wrote in 2017 based on real customers I sold and supported throughout the deployment of their contracted services.

THE CHALLENGE

A restaurant group with multiple locations and three distinct concepts/brands manages all of their invoicing through the accounts payable department in their corporate headquarters. As invoices are received, the accounting team must scan each invoice and manually code pertinent information into their accounting software. In order to keep revenue streams and financials in order across the different concepts represented under the larger hospitality group, invoices must also be approved and then assigned to an expense category (such as liquor, maintenance and upkeep, linens) by the direct manager of each respective location.

The manual process for entry into their software, distribution to management teams, and approval creates considerable delays, backlogs, errors, and eats up resources like corporate real estate (for paper file storage) and time for busy key employees (management and accounting team). Often times an invoice will bounce through the hands of several managers before arriving at the correct location for approval, and sometimes as approvals are communicated back to the accounting team invoices are inadvertently duplicated. This process is frustrating and inefficient for everyone involved.?

THE SOLUTION

After a process consultation, the restaurant group accounting team opted to roll out DEXDOX Pro in two phases. In phase one, the DEXDOX Pro cloud solution captures the same index fields the accounting team manually enters into their accounting software as searchable fields with document distribution functionality. In phase two the accounting team will add full integration into their accounting software in order to automate their data entry.

THE BENEFITS

In phase one, DEXDOX Pro in the cloud offers seamless search functionality, which saves time previously spent hunting for paper invoices. Phase one in the cloud also eliminates confusion in the approval process via easy and clear communication and document distribution features, getting the right invoice to the correct manager quickly. Management across all brands has access to relevant invoices immediately, eliminating delays. As invoices are scanned, physical record storage is eliminated relieving valuable office space. Over time, the DEXDOX Pro service will scale to the restaurant group’s needs offering additional benefits as phase 2 automates data entry into their software, conserving time and labor burden.