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With ELOprofessional, HATLAPA has achieved comprehensive information management. ELO currently manages over 3,000,000 documents in the HATLAPA archive. Staff can access the information from wherever they are around the world, via a secure VPN connection. Digitalised order documents can be traced back to the year 1974, helping to solve queries on machines supplied over the years quickly and easily. That means faster and optimum service for HATLAPA’s customers.
HATLAPA Uetersener Maschinenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG offers worldwide service and high availability for its products. The longstanding company has been a leading partner in shipbuilding for over 85 years, making winches, compressors and rudder systems. It employs some 300 people at its headquarters, and operates distribution and construction sites in Schwerin, England and Cyprus, along with several international representations and holdings. With a turnover of around 90 million euro (2007), the company has gained a leading position on the market. The continuous turnover increases are also generated by the worldwide renowned service quality, certified according to DIN-ISO.
HATLAPA works in the ERP area with INFOR. Using a scan service-provider, the order files were digitalised and archived in the system. But this archive solution didn’t meet all the requirements of flexible information management, and the company started looking around for a document management system (DMS) in 2004. "We wanted the complete order files to be available digitally in the DMS with all the allocated documents. That meant our service staff would have direct access via search terms such as 'order', 'customer', 'ship', 'shipping company', 'machine number', etc.", says the Head of IT & Organisation, Lars Becker. "They needed access to different versions of technical drawings and to the past paper and email correspondence." Alongside ELO Digital Office GmbH, two other competitors made it onto the DMS shortlist. In the end, HATLAPA decided on ELO. The key factors were the open system architecture and the ELO-API (application programming interface), which enables HATLAPA to integrate its own applications, such as its specially developed claims procedure.
All old files were converted from the existing archive system to ELO. Staff in all the departments at the headquarters in Uetersen now have access to ELO. The subsidiaries HATLAPA Hamworthy Marine Compressors Ltd., Poole/UK, HATLAPA EastMed Ltd., Limassol/Cyprus and KGW Marine GmbH Schwerin/Germany are directly connected via terminal servers. Employees have worldwide access to information from wherever they are via a secure VPN connection. Due to the increased storage needs for the digital documents, the company also decided on an ELO-certified storage solution from NetApp. The migration of the archived documents went entirely according to plan.
The IT department prefers to work independently, and so particularly values the "open system architecture" of the ELO product. As well as connecting the DMS to the ERP system (INFOR), the company has also connected its own specially developed claims management system with ELO. "ELO Digital Office GmbH provides its clients with a detailed API description, and our ELO Business Partners are extremely competent", says Markus Blohm, who is in charge of the project at HATLAPA. "Of course," he continues, "the success of a company-wide solution like this depends on staff acceptance. The ELO Business Partner carried out an in-house training programme with almost 150 staff, providing tips and tricks for the daily use of their application program."
HATLAPA builds machines that run for 30-40 years, so the documents from these periods have to be instantly accessible for service purposes. At the same time, the company wanted to get rid of the mountains of paper files it had. Its accountancy firm spent over a year negotiating with the local tax office; now, the company can do without almost all its original documents thanks to process documentation and the auditable archiving in ELO.
"Naturally, our requirements are continually increasing. We’re planning to link up the accounts system (Varial). And we’ll be able to optimise things like checking incoming invoices with the ELO workflow system." Lars Becker has enough positive experience with ELO to be 100% confident.
The HATLAPA archive currently contains over 3,000,000 documents. Digitalised order documents can be traced back to the year 1974, helping process replacement parts enquiries for machines supplied in these years quickly and easily. The company successfully uses the ELO full-text search function for initially not completely tagged documents.
"A strong company needs a strong back office. And for that, you don’t just need well-trained staff, but also professional tools like ELOprofessional." Lars Becker, Head of IT & Organisation, HATLAPA
"We want to maintain the high service level for our customers around the world. The back office has to have fast access to all order documents. ELOprofessional achieves that." Lars Becker, Head of IT & Organisation, HATLAPA
