Suffolk Construction Streamlines Financial Processes with Oracle & MarkView Financial Suite

• ROI study by Nucleus Research available for this case study. Click here to download.
  

Suffolk Construction Company, Inc., the New England area’s largest general contractor, has a strong reputation for constructing quality buildings, reinforcing strong relationships and exceeding client expectations. Maintaining accurate and timely documents and streamlining company business processes are important factors when managing complex construction projects. To help maintain its competitive industry edge, Suffolk decided to re-engineer its manual business processes by implementing the MarkView Financial Suite from Kofax and integrating that technology with its Oracle E-Business Suite’s Financial applications.

The Challenge: Manual Systems & Inefficient Reporting

Before the Oracle and MarkView integration process began, Suffolk was facing several challenges with its financial reporting and accounts payable systems:

• Suffolk’s project costing and Accounts Payable approval processes were inefficient, resulting in long paper trails and misplaced receipts.
• Suffolk field employees did not have immediate, real-time access to critical project costing information, which sometimes made gathering important project information challenging.
• Suffolk’s incredible growth over a five-year period taxed the company’s existing legacy system—the company was simply outgrowing its existing technology infrastructure.
• Suffolk’s most sophisticated clients were demanding enhanced project-specific reporting to improve their own data sharing and collaboration systems.
• Suffolk’s rebilling process was managed manually. The company needed a more efficient solution that could streamline the process while easily integrating with its existing invoice processes and technologies.
• Suffolk’s Human Resources employee documentation was stored in large file cabinets and was often difficult to retrieve on short notice.

The Solution: Online Technology Replaces Manual Processes

The implementation of the MarkView suite allowed Suffolk to integrate and automate its financial business processes by replacing paper documents with online imaging, thereby streamlining the existing manual invoice and re-billing processes.

In 2005, Suffolk went “live” with both the Oracle E-Business Suite applications and the MarkView Financial Suite. The new technology immediately made financial reporting quicker, easier and more reliable for Suffolk employees. The integrated solution also enabled teams to track, research and review vendor and subcontractor invoices online.

Accounts Payable — Suffolk’s Accounts Payable department is able to automate manual transactions, apply best practice workflows and automatically create an audit history trail, eliminating issues with lost invoices and missing information. The results? Lower operating costs, increased visibility into Accounts Payable processing and strengthened controls.

Expense Management — Suffolk leverages MarkView for Expense Management to optimize its expense management process. Standardized expense reports are now scanned and flowed into databases, eliminating the need for paper records. Expense reports are immediately routed to managers for their approval and reimbursement checks are delivered to employees faster and more efficiently.

Project Re-Billing — MarkView for Project Re-Billing integrates seamlessly with the Oracle Accounts Payable, Expense Management and Projects applications. Project costing information and billing backup is easily accessible online by Suffolk’s field employees at all times.

The Results: Streamlining Accounts Payable & Expense Management Systems

Suffolk’s Accounts Payable and Expense Management systems are more efficient since the implementation of Oracle ERP and MarkView:

• Suffolk’s financial reporting capabilities are now online, integrated and automated.
• Employees have immediate, real-time access to critical project costing information.
• Suffolk’s robust Oracle ERP system has strengthened Suffolk’s existing construction technologies and applications.
• Suffolk clients have access to more project-specific reporting and data sharing opportunities, allowing for more cross-team collaboration.
• The implementation of the MarkView suite has streamlined Suffolk’s Accounts Payable, Expense Management and Project Re-Billing processes.

“The MarkView suite has played an important role in streamlining Suffolk’s Accounts Payable and Expense Management systems. Our online approval and workflow processes are more efficient, allowing for easier access to critical information and quicker delivery of client and employee payments.”
— Corren Collura, Vice President of Business Systems, Suffolk Construction Company, Inc.

• ROI study by Nucleus Research available for this case study. Click here to download.