Sperian’s Bob Varney,Cheryl Duprey and Bill

Button turned a protectiveeye toward efficiency. P

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This article is posted with permission from IBM Systems Magazine, Business Systems edition.

Safeand Sound

Sperian Protection moves from

an office-paper whirlwind to a streamlined

electronic environment

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M y wife works in the accounts-receivabledepartment of a book manufacturer inAnn Arbor, Mich. For the most part, she

likes the job—although the mounds of paperwork shehas to deal with are an issue. So is the fact that Ihave to hear about it when she gets home. (I hopeshe doesn’t read this article.)

Not that I blame her for getting annoyed. Afterall, she’s often running from her cubicle to the filing cabinets to get the paperwork she needs toresolve this or that accounting issue. And when sherecently broke her ankle—well, forget about it. Shereluctantly had to ask other people to do it for her,which, given her I’ll-do-it-myself ethos, wasn’tsomething she was eager to do.

Of course, I throw my two cents in when shebrings the topic up, noting all of the successfultransitions from paper to paperless I’ve covered inthe past. “Your company should modernize,” I tellher, knowing that there are products on the marketthat can essentially rid her workplace of paperworkof nearly every kind—and then I’ll point out a real-world example of a company that’s done it.

BY JIM UTSLER

Most recently, that example involved SperianProtection Americas Inc.,designer, manufacturer andseller of personal-protectionequipment. Like my wife’scompany, it was saddledwith an accounting work-flow that included a lot ofpaper, despite its use of theJD Edwards World ERP suiteof business applications.

Wanting to reduce its useof paper—primarily faxedorders and some accounts-payable documents—itdecided to find a paper-bypass solution that wouldeasily integrate both intoits existing workflow andwith JD Edwards World.That solution, after a relatively short search, came in theform of Quadrant Software’s collection of paperless process-management solutions, including IntelliChief, FastFax andFormtastic. With those applications now up and running,Sperian has a filing-cabinet-free customer-care department—something my wife only dreams of.

Missing in ActionSperian Protection, whose Americas headquarters are inSmithfield, R.I., has a long history beginning in 1957, whenChristian Dalloz established a France-based company toproduce industrial components using injection-moldedplastics. (Its world headquarters are in Roissy, France.) By1980, it had become a leader in producing injection-moldedeyewear. When it entered the U.S. market in 1986, the company began a series of acquisitions and mergers,including with the Bacou Group, which was established in1974 as a manufacturer of safety footwear. Together, theycatapulted to a leadership position in personal safety protection equipment of all varieties.

Formerly known as Bacou-Dalloz, this combined companybecame Sperian Protection in 2007. It now designs, producesand sells several safety-related product lines, featuring eye,hearing and respiratory protection; protective clothing andgloves; safety footwear; and fall protection including safetyharnesses and the like. Its brands include Uvex, Miller,Howard Leight and Sperian.

A few of its primary markets are commercial and governmentconstruction, and the petrochemical and public-safety industries. The company also offers some equipment via

retail outlets, such as hard-ware stores, and throughdrug store chains, especiallywith its hearing-protectionproducts, according to BobVarney, Sperian’s director ofcustomer care, marketingbusiness unit of America. Ithas a presence throughoutmuch of the world, including in Europe, theMiddle East and Russia, aswell as North America.

The company’s Smithfieldoffice runs most of itsAmericas operations, includ-ing Sperian RespiratoryGroup in Santa Ana, Calif.,Sperian InstrumentationGroup in Middletown,Conn., and a distribution

center in Grove City, Ohio. The former two have their owncustomer-care centers, as does the Smithfield office. Also atSmithfield is the company’s datacenter, which houses an IBM*System i* 550 platform. The 550 is mirrored using MIMIXfrom Vision Solutions to a similarly configured off-site hotsite. Bill Button, Sperian’s IT applications manager, says ituses IBM WebSphere* technology to run some Web sites andLotus* Notes* for its global e-mail facility.

Prior to deploying the Quadrant solutions, Sperian had, asother companies do, a paper problem. For example, althoughlarger customers use EDI to conduct transactions with thecompany, it receives 80 percent of its orders (about 300 a day)via fax. Depending on which region the orders had come fromor were going to, they arrived on one of several fax machinesloaded with colored papers. Those orders would be distributedto the appropriate customer-care representatives for entry intoJD Edwards, then copied and filed. Orders meant for its otherlocations, in Santa Ana or Middletown, would have to berefaxed after being initially received in Smithfield.

A colorful solution to be sure, but it wasn’t always foolproof.A pink order, for example, might be stacked with the blueones, delaying the order processing until it found its way tothe correct customer-care person. Additionally, the copiedorders sometimes wouldn’t make it into the filing cabinetsuntil long after the data had been entered into JD Edwards.As a result, says Varney, “sometimes an invoice would becompleted before an order had been filed. So if a customercalled requesting a copy of the purchase order to match to aninvoice, the purchase order might be missing in action, sittingon someone’s desk.”

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Up CloseCUSTOMER: Sperian Protection

HEADQUARTERS: Smithfield, R.I.

BUSINESS: Designer, manufacturer and seller of personal

protection equipment

HARDWARE: An IBM System i 550

SOFTWARE: Quadrant Software’s IntelliChief, FastFax and

Formtastic; WebSphere and Lotus Notes

CHALLENGE: Improving its accounting workflow

SOLUTION: Using the Quadrant software to more efficiently

distribute documents and merge them with account and

customer information

Of course, this meant people were going to the filing cabinetsonly to come up empty-handed. From an accounts-receivablepoint of view, this sometimes caused delays in getting paymentfrom customers. And even if the copies were filed as theyshould have been, it was time consuming and inefficient tohave the customer-care representatives walk over to the cabinets and then riffle through the files to find what theyneeded to help their customers. “It was a pretty cumbersomeprocess,” Varney says.

So, too, was the accounts-payable workflow. As it worked,clerks manually sorted faxes and mailed invoices based onvendor name, then distributed them to whomever was incharge of those customers. Invoices then had to be forwardedto an area manager, via either interoffice mail or hand delivery.Once the invoice was approved, it was entered into theaccounts-payable system and a check was generated. This slow,laborious process (involving some 1,000 to 1,500 invoicesmonthly) meant Sperian couldn’t always take advantage ofvendor discounts or might be socked with late fees.

Another issue involved advance shipment notifications.Because Sperian had a paper-based workflow, those notifications sometimes didn’t go out in a timely manner,especially if they were mailed. In some cases, the order wouldbe received before the notification. “If you can’t get the notification there right away, there’s no sense in putting it inan envelope,” Varney says.

Beyond the BoundariesOf course, there had to be a process that would speed customerdeliveries, incoming customer payments and outgoing vendorpayments. After creating an exploratory team in early 2006that consisted of customer-care, finance and supply-chain personnel, Sperian began looking for possible solutions to itspaper-based workflow.

Although it had had experience with Quadrant’s FastFax,it decided to interview other solution vendors as well. Sothe team embarked on a journey that involved on-sitedemonstrations and site visits to some of the vendors’ othercustomers. It also asked for additional references. After anexhaustive review of all of the options, the company foundan answer. “Quadrant was the best solution for us, based inpart on the past history we had with them,” Button recalls.

So in mid-2006, Sperian began deploying the combinedIntelliChief, FastFax and Formtastic solution. On Oct. 15,

2006, the company went live at its Smithfield location. Itcontinued to make some desired enhancements, which culminated in rolling the solution out to its Santa Ana location in May 2007.

Thanks to the Quadrant paperless process-managementsolutions, Sperian has dramatically changed how it deals withpurchase orders, invoices, advance shipment notifications andother formerly paper documents. For example, when ordersare faxed to Sperian, they’re now picked up by FastFax ratherthan fax machines, which sorts them based on their originusing Transmitting Subscriber Identification or AutomaticNumber Identification and by destination using Direct InwardDial or Dialed Number Identification Service. The orders arethen routed using IntelliChief to electronic inboxes of theappropriate regional customer-care representatives.

At this point, using dual screens, the representatives bringup the digitized fax in a window next to JD Edwards andenter the order information into the ERP suite. That digitizedfax is then attached to the order and account, after which,according to Varney, “an acknowledgement is electronicallysent back to the account that indicates that their order hasbeen processed and when the order will ship. When the orderactually ships, an invoice is then electronically sent to theaccount, which helps speed up our time of collection andimprove our cash flow.”

These electronic documents are processed through Formtastic,letting Sperian create digital forms, which, according to the typeof form, are preconfigured with the appropriate fields, as well asthe company’s name, logo and other identifiers. Once theseforms have been populated, FastFax sends them out either viafax or e-mail, depending on customer specifications. Notably, allof these documents are archived and merged in the Quadrantpaperless process-management system along with the order andaccount information.

Because all of this documentation is contained in oneplace, electronically, anyone who needs and has access to theinformation can now get it, regardless of which departmentthey’re in or which region or account the information is tiedto. So instead of going to a filing cabinet in the hopes offinding a purchase order a customer is calling about, theSperian customer-care representative can simply bring it upon a screen and address the issue, with the correspondingdigitized invoice, if needed, while the customer is on the phone.

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“This [paperless solution] has really expanded our business beyond the boundaries of our office walls.”

—Bob Varney, director of customer care, Sperian Protection

In the accounts-payable department,invoices are automatically sent to theappropriate personnel. As with theiraccounts-receivable counterparts, theysimply enter that information into JDEdwards in dual-screen mode. Thedigitized invoices are then electroni-cally forwarded for payment approval,after which checks are cut to pay onthose invoices. Because of this new,streamlined process, Sperian can takeadvantage of vendor discounts andavoid late fees.

One unexpected but useful benefitto this new paperless workflow is thatafter-hours purchase orders can beforwarded to the company’s SantaAna office, which can process them onPacific time, giving the company anadditional three hours to respond tothe documents. “We have it set up sothere’s a pass-off between the offices,”Varney explains. “And at any time ofthe day, we all have visibility into oneanother’s inboxes, so if there’s a rashof orders at either office, we can passthem off to another to assist in processing them. Before, we had to dothat with phone calls and faxes. This has really expanded our business beyond the boundaries of ouroffice walls.”

The Simpler the BetterMy wife might not read this article—and I hope she doesn’t, given mycomplaining about having to listen toher complaining—but I will mentionSperian the next time she brings upher company’s filing cabinets. AsSperian proved, solutions from companies such as Quadrant can dramatically change the way work isdone—and help users save money atthe same time.

With changes such as this, long-termemployees sometimes balk at learninga new way of working. At Sperian,however, that wasn’t the case, in largepart because the system is so easy touse. And as Varney plainly puts it, “We

kept the process simple so it’s intuitive.The customer-care representatives canunderstand very easily how the systemworks.” He then quickly adds, “Withintwo days, people didn’t want us to takethis away from them. They quicklyunderstood how it improved the qualityof their workday.”

Jim Utsler, IBM SystemsMagazine senior writer, hasbeen covering technologyfor more than a decade.

Jim can be reached at jutsler@msptechmedia.com.

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