At Dobeles dzirnavnieks, we provide flour, pasta, cereal flakes and many more food products to millions of consumers across more than 70 countries. Based in Latvia, we operate production facilities that cover over 21 hectares.
Dobeles dzirnavnieks is already the largest pasta producer in Northern Europe—and we continue to grow. Driving one of the largest food production businesses in Baltics is no simple task. As well as satisfying a wide range of stringent regulatory requirements, we must demonstrate that we are adhering to best practices during regular audits. At the same time, we need to orchestrate a complex set of supply chain and logistics processes to ensure that we can keep our production lines moving smoothly day after day.
Heading for an efficiency crunch
In the past, we relied on paper to support our operations. But, as the business continued to grow, it was becoming more and more difficult to maintain high levels of operational efficiency using manual processes.
For example, we had regular audits that required several full-time employees to sift through our records and find the required documents – financial audits, quality and certification audits, and those organized by clients. Regulatory requirements are evolving and tightening all the time, and we knew that preparing for audits was only going to become more complex and time-consuming in the future.
Another big challenge was our accounts payable (AP) process. Previously, our AP team spent a significant amount of their time chasing up management teams for paper invoice approvals. Once an invoice was approved, the AP team spent more time still re-keying the data into our ERP system.
As we put more investment into company operations and business growth, we realized we needed a new approach–manual processes required a significant increase in headcount.
Searching for a new approach
We launched a comprehensive digital transformation initiative. Our goals were ambitious: implement a brand-new ERP, business intelligence suite and warehouse management system, all at the same time. Replacing our paper processes was a key property, so we also aimed to deploy a content management platform.
As soon as we started exploring the capabilities of OpenText™ Extended ECM, we realized we had found the ideal solution. With security and data governance built in, we were confident that the OpenText solution satisfied all our core requirements. Crucially, OpenText content management offers powerful workflow capabilities—enabling us to build new digital processes around our content.
Selecting a trusted partner
To deploy OpenText content management, we worked with our trusted technology partner, Digital Mind. Working with Digital Mind was an excellent experience from start to finish. The team helped us to map out our existing paper processes and plan how best to bring them into the OpenText solution. Digital Mind was always challenging us with new ways of thinking about our processes and technology, and we knew we could count on their support and guidance whenever we needed it.
Thanks to our partnership with Digital Mind, we now have a central, secure platform to process and store digital documents—including invoices, supplier contracts, external correspondence, and many others. This content is easily accessible and searchable, which means there’s no need for our people to trawl through paper records to find information.
Boosting efficiency with digital workflows
One of the biggest benefits of the OpenText content management platform is that it allows us to work much more efficiently than before—for example, we are saving 3.5 full-time equivalents in AP alone. As a result, we will be able to grow our business without significantly increasing our back-office headcount.
Our transformation is also helping us to improve our environmental sustainability. Today, 73% of our supplier contracts, 88% of our correspondence and 100% of our quality management documents are digital. Overall, we’ve cut our paper consumption by 80%, which saves the equivalent of 65 kg of paper every year.
Through our work with Digital Mind and OpenText, we are able to do more with the same resources. We’re by no means finished with our digital transformation project; we plan to keep working with Digital Mind to bring more of our paper processes into OpenText.
To learn more about how OpenText content management is helping us to facilitate business growth, read our case study.
Read the case study
