Forgital Goes Paperless (
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The distributor of industrial rings hires solution provider Stargel to implement an automated Questys document management system.Forgital USA, a distributor of components for jet engines and steam turbines, realized in 2004 that it was buried in paper. More than a century old, the company knew all about change, but it still hadn't rid itself of the dozens of file cabinets where it kept documentation for just about everything related to the business.
The company's management knew it needed a better paper management process, so it contracted solution provider Stargel Office Solutions to replace the labor-intensive, space-hogging file cabinets with a fully automated paperless environment, using a document management system from vendor Questys Solutions.
Forgital USA, of Houston, is the North American distribution arm of Forgital Group, which designs, engineers and manufactures custom-rolled rings that are used as components in a wide variety of applications, such as aircraft engines, steam turbines, excavator bearings, ring gears, and pipeline valves and wellheads.
The company serves about 100 customer accounts in five major industries—aerospace, construction and mining, gears, oil and gas, and power generation. Customers include Caterpillar, GE Transportation, Chevron and Smith West.
"When we met Forgital, they were feeling overburdened by paper processes. They had too many paper-based filing cabinets in their offices and had trouble pulling purchase orders, sales orders and sale confirmations, bills of lading, packing slips, and other business documentation," said Tyson Stargel, software solutions manager at Houston-based Stargel Office Solutions, one of the largest authorized dealers for Toshiba copier, fax and printing products in the Southwest.
Adding to the document storage and management complexity was the fact that Forgital is required to comply with various industry documentation and storage regulations, including ISO 9000 quality standards, in its day-to-day operations.
It's no wonder then that what began as a reseller sales call for a copier ended up as the implementation of the Questys document management system, which is designed to ease the process of storing and retrieving customer files. A Toshiba reseller and Questys channel partner, Stargel worked with Questys over the course of a year or so to configure, integrate and install a solution to address Forgital's day-to-day business needs.
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"Our goal is to have the client see us not as two separate organizations, but as partners with a common goal of making sure we provide the client with the right solution to ensure customer satisfaction," said Andre Pavlovic, president and CEO at Questys, in Mission Viejo, Calif.
Mission accomplished.
"Today, we're paperless. All documents are electronically stored and are accessible right from a computer screen," said John Fisher, controller at Forgital. "Employees are more productive, and our customers get an immediate response to a document inquiry."
Buried under
With revenue increasing about 10 to 15 percent annually over the past six years, company growth demanded that Forgital do something about what was quickly becoming an out-of-control manual process for handling important business paperwork, according to Fisher.
"It had gotten to the point where folders or documents couldn't be found, or multiple folders were started for the same order. We had cabinets full of files," Fisher said. In fact, at its peak, the 26-person office had at least 40 maxed-out, four-drawer file cabinets.
Not only did it sometimes take days for employees to locate documents, but often papers couldn't be found at all. The paper disorganization often required the company to request duplicate paperwork from the freight companies it did business with or from its European manufacturing facilities. Forgital Group has more than 1,000 employees worldwide and has locations in six countries.
A Toshiba channel partner since 1990, Stargel, founded in 1987, had the ideal solution for Forgital in its product suite. However, the first sales call to the manufacturer was to discuss replacing an aging printer. "Our rep talked to [Fisher] about copiers, but the discussion exposed the company's need for scanning and document management as well," Stargel said.
That's when the rep suggested scheduling a second meeting with Forgital to talk about automated document management. "We quickly brought in Questys to help us do an assessment of the customer's business and document management needs," Stargel said.
Together, Stargel, Pavlovic and Forgital dug deeper into the types of documents that needed to be brought into the new system, scanning requirements and the need to integrate with Forgital's existing NxTrend Sx.Enterprise ERP (enterprise resource planning) software.
The presentation on Questys' Enterprise software and Toshiba's e-Studio 3511 color copier was "super," Fisher said. "It met all of our solution criteria," he added, citing ease of operation; reliability; cost; integration with ERP software; and the ability to take company sales, accounting and inventory data directly to Questys.
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