1. Goodyears Road To AP Automation Highlights from the article inIntegrated Solutions Magazine

2. Introduction This document highlights the contents of a cover Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company article that appeared in Integrated Solutions magazine, December 2008. Read the article here:Headquartered in Akron, Ohio www.datacap.com/news/itn/goodyearstoryv2.pdfLargest tire manufacturer in the United States Background60 manufacturing facilities in 23 countries In 2006, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, one of4.1 million invoices annuallythe worlds largest tire manufacturers, centralized allLess than 20% of vendors on EDINorth American accounts payable operations to its Akron, Ohio headquarters. The move nearly doubledMore than half keyed manually from paper the number of invoices to be processed in Akron andBusiness systems in place: highlighted a need for a process improvement. o IBM FileNet P8 content repository Goodyear AP clerks were manually keying invoice o IBM Lotus Notes data into SAP, and manually indexing invoice images for storage into an IBM repository. Human error was o SAP causing all kinds of headaches. AP clerks would sometimes transpose an invoice number or key in the wrong date or vendor code when manually entering invoice data, recalled Jami Dunphy, Goodyears accounts payable manager.We need to ensure that we pay our vendors invoices in aGoodyears invoice approval process was similarlytimely fashion. If we miss getting critical payments processed labor-intensive. AP clerks manually typed e-mailby the check-run date, we have to issue special quick pqyrequests for approval and attached the invoice. Withchecks to these vendors, which requires added labor andinvoices being touched so many times by so manyoperational costs.different people, the process was just too slow and - Jami Dunphy, Goodyear labor intensive. With centralization, Goodyear AP decided that it was time for AP automation. 1 3. Selling Internal Management Making The Business Case While the Goodyear AP department was well aware of the benefits of AP automation, in order to get funding approved for the project, they needed to justify the investment in new software and services to Goodyear upper management. First, Dunphy and her team began to build a business case for the project by referencing studies on AP best practices worldwide by The Accounts Payable Network (TAPN), an organization for AP management that offers access to AP metrics, benchmarking data, compliance guidelines and Q & A forums among members. Then the AP team did a detailed benchmarking of performance metrics, including how many invoices each clerk processed manually, how many errors were made in data entry, invoice approval time, and the average turnaround time from receipt of invoice to payment. Using industry standards developed around APWe benchmarked the capabilities of our AP department with automation, the team built a Return on Investment andthose deemed best-in-class by The Accounts Payable Network made a clear pitch to Goodyear management: Invoiceand identified key areas for improvement through automated automation with a capture and workflow system wouldinvoice processing. We presented this data to our senior lower overhead, speed the payment process andmanagement and they approved the project. reduce errors, all benefitting Goodyears bottom line.- Jami Dunphy, Goodyear2 4. Selecting the Solution Doing Due Diligence The RFQ Check ListOnce the project had the green light and a budget, the AP team developed a request for quote (RFQ) andCapture solution developed a list of vendors to approach. They o Highly accurate location rules - A clearidentified 12 vendors and solution providers, most ofmethod for capturing data from thousands ofwhich ultimately responded.different invoice layouts o High recognition rate Goodyear wanted toIn stage two of the process, Goodyear invited sixminimize vendors to make live presentations in Akron. o Flexible confidence threshold Goodyear looked at these demonstrations as a way to see who responded with the essential requirementsWorkflow solutionthey had emphasized in the RFQ: o Easy to manage Data locationSolution to work with Canon scanners, IBM FileNetHigh recognition rateP8 document management repositoryFlexibility on what is verified In the end, Goodyear selected Datacap and EKI Consulting, a Chicago-based IBM integrator and Datacap partner, because they delivered on all the items in the RFQ and offered more flexible choices. Our initial RFQ asked vendors for an automatedDatacap and EKI Consulting offered three options to us, eachworkflow component, said Dunphy. Datacap andwith a specific set of software and cost and described EKI alerted us to the fact that we could develop anbusiness benefit. This approach gave us a sense of flexibility automated workflow component using Lotus Notesin the way we approached the project. It opened our eyes tosoftware we already owned. This saved us asolution possibilities that we wouldnt have thought of on our significant amount of money during the projectown.rollout.- Jami Dunphy, Goodyear3 5. Solution: Taskmaster APTHow Taskmaster Manages the AP ProcessToday, the Datacap AP automation solution at Goodyearbegins with the arrival of invoices in Akron. Invoices andattachments are batched and scanned using two Canonscanners, driven by Taskmaster APT.Rulerunner Service, running on the Datacap captureplatform, begins applying the procedural rules that drivecapture with image processing to de-skew, de-speckleand otherwise optimize the image for recognition. Next,full page optical character recognition (OCR) is appliedfor data extraction.Then invoices go through the fingerprint process,which identifies each individual vendor by the layout ofthe invoice and the remit-to zip code. Each fingerprintmaintains the data locations on each invoice for fast dataextraction.Goodyear verify operators evaluate the image and dataside by side in the Taskmaster Verify screen. They cancorrect any OCR errors or fields that have failed businessBy automating the data capture and validation process, werules, to make sure that the data passed along to thewere able to absorb the additional invoice volumes we SAP system is absolutely accurate.received as a result of the centralization initiative withoutadding headcount. Finally, the images are indexed with the invoice header- Jami Dunphy, Goodyear data for efficient search and retrieval in the FileNet P8system. Non-PO invoices that require approvals arerouted through IBM Lotus Notes AP workflow.4 6. Exceeding ExpectationsEvaluating The Project ResultsOnce Goodyear went into production with the APcapture system in 2007, the benefits of automation Each invoice handled only once instead of multiple began to emerge, beginning with increased timesproductivity per person. They found that they were Doubled invoice volume with no addition to able to handle double the invoice volume without headcountadding personnel. In fact, they shifted someprevious data entry clerks to other more valuable Reduced data entry errors means less exceptiontasks. handling required Streamlined workflow process with AP workflow in The reduction in how many times an invoice is Lotus Notestouched has had far reaching implications. For onething, data entry errors dropped, which saved the o Reduced invoice approval turnaround timetime and labor of supervisors tracking down from 5-7 days down to a single daycorrecting mistakes. Redeploy data entry staff to other AP projectsIn addition, for those non-PO invoice exceptionsthat require sign-off by a department head, theapproval process became much more efficient.Our automated workflow solution has helped ustake a process that used to require 14 steps andWe were able to redeploy many employees formerly five to seven days to complete, and reduce it to adedicated to manual invoice processing to work on other APprocess that can be completed in a single day withprojects. In addition, automated data extraction has helped 9 primarily automated steps, said Dunphy.to reduce the number of data entry errors we experience. - Jami Dunphy, Goodyear 5 7. About Taskmaster APTInvoice Scan and CaptureDatacap Taskmaster APT automates invoice dataentry from scanned paper invoices as well as thosedelivered electronically. All invoice fields arecaptured, including line items even on multiplepage invoices - with automated validations andmath-checks to assure data accuracy. Once verified,data is passed to your Accounts Payable system orERP and images are routed to a document reposi-tory for rapid storage and retrieval. TaskmasterAPT helps reduce data entry and retrieval costs,payment cycle times and invoice entry errors.About Datacap Inc., an IBM CompanySince 1988, Datacap Inc. has provided award-winning document capture and forms processingsoftware solutions to organizations worldwide.Datacap Taskmaster software accurately transformspaper into information, increasing efficiency whilereducing costs and document cycle time. Aclient/server, rules-based capture workflowplatform, Taskmaster provides the industrys mostadaptable solutions for document image indexingand forms processing. Taskmaster also enablesscanning and indexing from a browser andintegrates with all leading document managementsolutions, databases and ERP systems. Foradditional information, visit www.datacap.com6