New Horizons Franchise Takes It Higher with
doc-link™ Integrated Document Management

Company Background

Looking for a seminar on Microsoft Excel for your office in Kuala Lumpur? How about advanced technical training on network connectivity for your staff in Paris, Edinburgh, or Athens? New Horizons, the world’s largest independent computer training network, will almost certainly have a class to fit your needs.

New Horizons offers businesses and individuals more choices for learning than any other company, with instructor-led, Web-based, and client-site training options. More than 1,400 customized courseware titles are available in 15 languages, with cutting-edge curriculum and a PC for each student. New Horizons is one of Fortune magazine’s 100 fastest growing companies, and named on Forbes’ list of 200 best companies under $500 million.

The Challenge

As the new millennium approached, New Horizons faced several problems. Each corporate-owned center used a different accounting package, and handled its own accounts payable separately. This created “islands of data” and inefficient AP processing. Manual consolidation of financial statements had become an impossible burden as New Horizons pursued its strategy of buying back selected franchises. Leesa Dupree, financial analyst, was named project manager to search for a new solution.

Dupree evaluated six different mid-market and tier one solutions, looking for an intuitive, very scalable system, flexible enough to meet the tough demands of a fast growing technology firm. In finally determining the best financial software accounting system, Dupree then set her sights on selecting a vendor integrated to her new accounting package that would enable her to reduce the paper bottlenecks in processing the thousands of vendor invoices coming in from the various company owned locations around the country.

The Solution

“We selected Altec’s doc-link because of its integration to our new financial software accounting application and because of their experience with Altec as a print provider to all of their company owned and franchise locations” explains Dupree.

Altec’s integration meant that Dupree and her staff could drill down to specific accounting documents from within the financial business application and documents and supporting documentation could be ‘linked’ through automatic and retro-indexing saving on re-keying information.

All invoices now coming to corporate AP are scanned and forwarded electronically to the learning centers for review. The controller in each center can approve, annotate, and return the invoice in a totally paperless process. The approved invoice image is booked into the accounting application and indexed into doc-link for permanent filing.