Beverage Distributor Uses AP Automation to Increase Efficiency and Reduce CostsThe 10th largest beverage distributor in the United States, Crescent Crown Distributing sells and delivers over 26 million 
cases annually. This multi-award winning company was established in 1982 and currently employs over 1,100 workers in two states.
Processing invoices across seven locations and two states, it was very challenging to manually track down invoices. Crescent Crown lacked a good record of incoming invoices and late fees resulted from limited visibility into invoice due dates. They had worked with AP outsourcing in the past but prefer to do things internally whenever possible. The DocStar ECM AP Automation system had everything they wanted. In 2014, Crescent Crown implemented DocStar AP Automation with Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Prior to the implementation, everything was processed manually. The company scanned and entered tens of thousands of invoices and checks into Microsoft Dynamics GP per year. By fully integrating DocStar AP Automation with MS Dynamics GP, they now have insight into every invoice and check in the system and have improved productivity through workflow automation in MS Dynamics GP.
“There are hundreds of miles between our facilities, and we require a VP at each location to approve the invoices. Now that it’s all electronic, we’ve streamlined our approval process and reduced errors, documents are no longer misplaced, and our late fees have gone down to almost zero. And we save at least a few thousand dollars each year just by paying our invoices on time.” Neil Baier, VP of Finance said.
Combining intelligent data capture with the powerful workflow engine in DocStar AP Automation, Crescent Crown imports and automatically routes invoices so each VP has immediate access to unpaid invoices that require his/her approval. “We’re much more proactive in paying our invoices on time, and we can be because of the great reporting and insight DocStar ECM provides,” Neil shared.
Hear Neil’s testimony (along with 4 others) in this 2-minute customer testimonial video.
Eliminating late fees was just the beginning of cost savings for Crescent Crown. The company has also increased productivity, saving at least four to five hours per week of work that included manual entry of invoices. “That’s about 250 hours of labor a year we can use on something more productive,” Neil explained.
With a quick return on its investment of under a year, the AP team at Crescent Crown has been impressed with how easy DocStar AP Automation is to use and how responsive the DocStar team has been. This made for a smooth implementation. “DocStar ECM has worked the way it should from the very beginning, and to this day, there hasn’t been a problem DocStar couldn’t solve,” commented Neil.
“We had a very positive experience. In a land of software vendors over-promising and under-delivering, DocStar delivered everything they promised and more,” Neil concludes.
