Monday, May 5, 2008
Merkur Group Helps Polycom Improve Order-to-Cash Effectiveness
Polycom Automates Inbound Purchase Orders and Outbound PO Acknowledgements Using Merkur's PeopleSoft Order Management Integration
DAYTON, Ohio, Monday May 5, 2008 -- Advant-e Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: AVEE), through its wholly owned operating subsidiary Merkur Group, Inc. announced today that Polycom Inc. has implemented the Merkur PeopleSoft Order Management Integration to automate inbound faxed and e-mailed orders to reduce manual data entry, reduce data entry errors, speed order entry, and automate document storage.
Ron Coble, Director, Information Technology at Polycom, Inc. commented: "Merkur Group's PeopleSoft Order Management Integration has greatly reduced the amount of work our Customer Service Representatives (CSR) must perform and has automated how we process paper-based orders."
Instead of requiring Polycom CSR's to manually key in a purchase order data from a paper document, Merkur's solution converts the inbound faxed image to text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. The OCR data is validated against the PeopleSoft Order Management tables to check part numbers, pricing, discounts, etc. and the data is then presented to the CSR for review in a web based application. Once the CSR verifies the order, they can accept it and Merkur's PeopleSoft Order Management Integration creates a new order in the PeopleSoft system similar to how Polycom processes Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) orders. The document is automatically indexed and stored in Polycom's imagin application and an order confirmation is faxed or e-mailed to the customer.
Bob Kroger, Director of Industry Sales, commented: "The Polycom implementation is a great example of how companies can automate paper-based processes using Merkur Group's technology. With the ability to integrate data from fxed and e-mailed transactions, they can capture information from inbound customer purchase orders and supplier invoices and import the data into their ERP system similar to an EDI process. This solution dramatically reduces the effort and errors associated with manual processing of these documents."
Jason Wadzinski, CEO of Advant-e Corporation, added: "Polycom's use of Merkur's PeopleSoft Order Management Integration is a perfect example of how we can provide document automation solutions that extend beyond our strength in Electronic Data Interchange. Inbound purchase order automation has traditionally been difficult to achieve with EDI alone. Due to the nature of the supplier-to-customer relationship, EDI can be offered as one way to automate business transactions, but additional methods are necessary to extend the options available to the customer."
The information in this news release includes certain forward looking statements that are based upon assumptions that in the future may prove not to have been accurate and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including statements to the future financial performance of the company. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected on its forward looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations or any or its forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Factors that could cause results to differ include, but are not limited to, successful performance of internal plans, product development and acceptance, the impact of competitive services and pricing, or general economic risks and uncertainties.
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