West-Side-Beer-v1-1.indd version: 1.1 10/11

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NATIONALPRESENCE - LOCALTOUCH

Success Story: West Side Beer Distributing

COMPANY: West Side Beer DistributingBUSINESS: Beverage Distribution

FINANCIAL SOFTWARE: Sage ERP MAS 500SAGE PARTNER: Blytheco, LLC

As the exclusive Anheuser-Busch wholesaler for seven counties, West Side Beer Distributing of Romulus, Mich., distributes to 1,500+ retail customers. Armed with a delivery fleet of more than 40 trucks, the company uses a segmented sales and delivery system to offer highly customized service to those customers, and has been fulfilling that commitment since 1933.

West Side Beer has consistently grown in size to become Michigan’s largest wholesaler of Anheuser-Busch products. As part of the firm’s commitment to providing the highest quality and freshest beer products in the industry, it stands as the only beverage company in West Michigan to utilize refrigerated warehousing and draft delivery vehicles.

BACKGROUND

BACKGROUND West Side Beer recently completed two major

territory acquisitions, including the 2009 purchase of Kalamazoo Beer Distributing. This move propelled West Side Beer to the #1 spot on the Anheuser-Busch distributor list, but it also created business challenges. “We really needed to centralize and synergize,” says Kurt Gail, VP of finance, “by bringing finance, HR, payroll and IT into one corporate services location.”

With all of those functions under one roof, West Side Beer would be free to acquire even more territories and/or firms, without having to worry about increasing administrative costs. As part of this initiative – which was launched in late-2010 – Gail and his team sought out a document management system that would integrate easily with the company’s existing Sage MAS 500 solution.

“We wanted to be able to transfer all of our vendor invoices from one department to the next in a seamless manner,” says Gail, “and that would allow us to easily scan invoices into our system, and then route them to approvers prior to the release of any final payments.”

CHALLENGE

“As a long as a document has been scanned, we have multiple ways to search through invoices and find exactly what we’re looking for.” -- Kurt Gail

QUOTE

NATIONALPRESENCE LOCALTOUCH

Working with Sage partner Blytheco, LLC, of Atlanta, Gail and his team looked at several document management product demos, including doc-link™ from Altec. “We looked at doc-link demos several times because we liked it,” says Gail, “and because we wanted to be absolutely sure about our choice before getting the system up and running internally.”

Gail says his team’s top criteria for a document management system included the ability to collect all invoices in a single repository, and then disseminate them (to approvers, for example) electronically to the intended recipients. “doc-link fit our needs perfectly,” says Gail, “and allowed us to scan and route the invoices just like we wanted to, instead of trying to manage the process manually across multiple locations.”

Installation of the doc-link system was fast and painless, according to Gail, who says it only took about two weeks for his team to get familiar with and start using the document management system. Today, about 700 incoming invoices per month are scanned and routed immediately (based on dollar amount) to the respective approver(s). After confirming that the invoice is coded and stamped appropriately, the approver makes notes on the document and drops it into MAS 500.

Stephen Blythe, Blytheco’s founder and CEO, says West Side Beer is just one of many companies that are turning to document management systems to better manage their accounting functions. “Our clients continue to automate their business processes and streamline their operational workflows,” says Blythe. “Document management is critical to achieving these goals.”

SOLUTIO

N West Side Beer’s decision to integrate a document management solution has produced good results for the distributor. Accounting personnel who spent much of their time shuffling invoices between the company’s physical locations can now focus on more important tasks. And the backlog of paid invoices that were waiting to be filed has been reduced to zero, according to Gail. “The fact that we no longer have to file our accounts payable is a huge benefit.”

Searching through the company’s MAS 500 system has also gotten easier, thanks to doc-link’s sorting and indexing capabilities, according to Gail, who has also eliminated the “private files” that were previously used to secure legal documents. “We’re now utilizing a confidential vendor,” says Gail, “for managing those invoices that can only be viewed by me and the company owners.”

West Side Beer’s document management system also incorporates all of the MAS 500 GL and reference codes, thus allowing accounts payment personnel to “hit the launch key,” to obtain all information related to a specific vendor. “It happens so fast, right at their fingertips,” says Gail, “and really saves us time and effort.”

With its eye on more growth in the future, West Side Beer will continue to add more locations to its MAS 500-doc-link setup in a simple, painless fashion. “Our current goals have been met,” says Gail, “and now we have a system in place that will scale up as we grow.”

BENEFITS

COMPANY: West Side Beer DistributingBUSINESS: Beverage Distribution

FINANCIAL SOFTWARE: Sage ERP MAS 500SAGE PARTNER: Blytheco, LLC

“After much research and after watching many demos, we ultimately decided that doc-link would be best for our situation.” -- Kurt Gail