The Alamitos Group

When The Alamitos Group hired CFO Marty Barrett, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work—evaluating the systems and processes of the 31 retail locations in Southern California. Barrett quickly discovered that, for workers, “business as usual” meant tossing critical business documents—work reports, estimates, sales invoices, credit card receipts, all kinds of valuable information—into boxes. Trucks came by monthly to haul the boxes away. And the information was gone, out of reach, stored remotely.

While the pickup and storage fees for these boxes were fixed, the cost for the occasional retrieval of information was high. And it took a very long time to track anything down. Someone had to wade through stacks of paper, at times, in search of a single piece of paper needed for discovery or litigation.

There was also an issue around the end-of-day reports. Overnighted to corporate headquarters daily, the price tag was fairly hefty. So, at the end of his assessment, Barrett identified two very solvable issues: 1) the combined high cost of storing, retrieving, and overnighting documents; and 2) the inaccessibility of valuable information—both to the business and the customer.

To help him address the issues, Barrett turned to the Business Process Automation Company. Led by their president, Larry Cohn, BPAC is a long-time digital transformation solution provider, specializing in fi-Series scanners and Digitech Systems software.

BPAC deployed fi-7300NX scanners to six locations. In each store, they connected the scanner to the store's Wi-Fi and then to the included PaperStream NX Manager software hosted in a private cloud. Next, they set up user profiles—for invoices and end-of-day reports—using the job-profile buttons on the scanner's touchscreen display. The effect was exactly what they'd hoped for: When the fi-7300NX scanner scans a piece of paper, the image is enhanced for superior image quality with PaperStream IP , encrypted for maximum security, and then transmitted to the cloud. Critical data points are extracted—for store number, date, customer name, car model, and more—using Digitech Systems PaperVision Software.

If the executive team ever harbored concerns about employee adoption, they quickly overcame them. With the easy-to-use PaperStream NX platform, employees are able to scan straight to the cloud from the touchscreen display—no PC needed. Workers like that they can just turn on a scanner in the morning and when they need to scan something, they simply load the document, choose their job profile, and the scanner does the rest.

Barrett even heard an employee say, "Finally, I don't have to hunt down that stapler 20 times a day. And I don't need to work around a storage box sitting on the ground. We don't need one!"

The fi Series scanners also have a direct benefit for Barrett, too. He likes that he can review the 40-page end-of-day reports with his morning coffee. No more waiting around for them to show up in the mail. Barrett plans to roll out the scanners to other locations in his franchise group. He admits, "I knew fi Series scanners were known for high-quality, but the PaperStream NX Platform offers a whole new level of performance. And, according to Barrett, BPAC did a great job implementing the solution and getting his employees trained on the new workflow.

The Alamitos Group crunched the numbers and found that, using the fi-7300NX scanner combined with Digitech Systems PaperVision software, they have a really effective way to manage their paper. They'll be saving thousands per month on paper storage charges, with an added ROI of 20%. The way they see it, they're getting an entire system essentially for free!

Workers at The Alamitos Group were thrilled with the fi-7300NX scanners right off the bat. Learning how to use them was easy, they said, and they feel confident scanning directly into the cloud.