"Because Informer is ERP-agnostic, we can use the same solution for multiple platforms."
Overview
Southern Supply is a group of distribution and manufacturing companies headquartered in Springfield, Missouri. The various business units distribute automation and ancillary products to commercial, utility, governmental, and industrial customers throughout the region and manufacture commercial aluminum doors and windows used around the world.
Challenge
Jesse Owsley is the Software Project Manager at Southern Supply. Through some unfortunate experiences, Owsley and his team identified the need to prevent their checks sent to vendors from being stolen through fraudulent data editing. The first step to secure their business would be to implement positive pay with their banks – matching checks issued by a company with those presented for payment throughout their various business units.
There was no practical manual strategy for activating positive pay, which also contributed to delayed payment processing. Southern Supply needed a solution to streamline this process and protect their business from fraudulent activity.
Solution
Owsley had the idea to utilize Informer to automate the process of submitting required check information to banks which took less than a couple of hours to set up for multiple business units running different ERPs. Owsley said,
Informer is the only tool we have which is capable of doing this. The other solution would be to have separate custom programs, which are expensive and not timely, written for multiple ERPs. Because Informer is ERP-agnostic, we can use the same solution for multiple platforms, and we can do this ourselves.
Owsley accomplished automation of positive pay by utilizing various features of Informer. One of these features is the ability to schedule Jobs to send emails or FTPs to any address. “Other tools can only send to email addresses associated with seat holders. This is a huge competitive advantage for Informer,” mentioned Owsley. The ability for a Job to send output only if the query returns required data was also helpful in setting up this process.
The aggregate feature was also used to accomplish automation of positive pay. Some ERPs have a record for each invoice and credit associated with the check and do not have the check total. Informer can aggregate the payment amount by the check number. “This is the only reporting tool we have which does this,” explained Owsley. Another major benefit for Southern Supply was the ease with which Informer connects to various Databases. “This is the first production task I’ve done with Syteline, our manufacturing ERP, in Informer 5 and I’ll do the same report from Infor Distribution SX.e even though the Databases are completely different,” said Owsley.
Results
With the implementation of positive pay, Southern Supply can feel far more secure in sending checks to vendors and can avoid the hassle, expense, and danger of dealing with fraudulent transactions. “We send check numbers and amounts to the bank and they don’t pay the checks unless they match the information that we send them,” commented Owsley. Informer has helped the company save time, money, and resources through the facilitation of an efficient, automated process that only requires one software solution. This has also assisted in speeding up payment processing times to vendors.
Owsley stated,
One result for me personally is that I was able to complete my director’s request the same day she told me about it and keeping the boss happy is ALWAYS a GREAT result!
Owsley’s use of Informer has also helped him and others on the team to focus their energy on their responsibilities and projects that they need to complete without the worry of check fraud.
