Ball Horticultural Company Expands Its Use of Esker to Automate Accounts Payable in SAP®

Esker, a worldwide leader in document process automation solutions and SAP^® software solution and technology partner, today announced it has been selected by Ball Horticultural Company (Ball), one of the nation’s largest sellers of commercial seed for flowers and ornamental crops, to extend its use of Esker DeliveryWare to automate the processing of inbound Accounts Payable (AP) documents within its SAP application.

This latest initiative equips Ball with intelligent data capture and touchless processing capabilities to streamline its AP process, and positions the company to achieve its goals of reducing outstanding sales, improving company cash flow and effectively managing resources during peak business season (the majority of Ball’s business is done in the winter months). Ball’s seasonal peaks were previously mitigated by hiring temps to manually sort and enter thousands of invoices.

"Because we’re a B2B company, cash flow issues can arise during the process of receiving an invoice from suppliers and getting a payment from customers,” said Mark Morris, Director of Information Technology at Ball Horticultural Company. "It’s not uncommon to bring in many temps during our busy season to help manage all of the paper. With Esker, we’re hoping to significantly reduce the amount of time and labor needed, with the overall goal of getting suppliers with the most complex invoices live and touchless with Esker.”

Expanding its Esker solution

Ball first began using Esker DeliveryWare in 2008 as a basic "quit paper” solution to address the challenges of subscription management, eventually helping the company eliminate the need to print and file paper documents and enable customers and suppliers to go paperless. The option to expand to multiple business processes was a key selling point for Ball, knowing it would eventually want to leverage OCR and link documentation into SAP to achieve a fully automated operation.

"The option to expand was a very appealing feature when we first began with Esker. Down the road, we knew the kind of value we’d be getting from a solution like this,” said Morris. "Certain suppliers can’t do EDI, so OCR was a very attractive alternative. With Esker’s flexibility, we now have 20 vendors turned on for touchless processing and are excited to see what kind of value that brings.”

"Esker has our back”

During implementation, Ball was thoroughly impressed by how quickly Esker stepped in, identified the issues the company was facing and developed a strategic plan of action. "In a process like this, you find out pretty quickly if your vendor has your back — Esker has our back,” said Morris. "They got the job done the way we wanted. If I could do it all over again with Esker, I absolutely would.”

About Ball Horticultural Company

Founded in 1905 as a wholesale fresh cut flower operation, Ball Horticultural Company is a family-owned company that became a leader in every facet of floriculture. Ball is an internationally renowned breeder, producer and wholesale distributor of ornamental plants and horticultural products, as well as a supplier of seeds, cuttings, plugs and other horticultural supplies for professional growers worldwide, and has introduced many innovative and award-winning varieties to the world of horticulture. Ball’s global family of breeders, seed and vegetative producers, distribution companies, and research & development teams has a strong presence internationally.

About Esker

Esker is the worldwide leader in document process automation solutions. Addressing all types of business processes from accounts payable and accounts receivable to sales order processing and procurement, Esker cloud computing solutions enable companies to automate the reception, processing and sending of any business document with one platform. Esker helps over 80,000 companies across the world to reduce the use of paper and eliminate manual processes while improving their productivity, efficiency and environmental impact.

With 40.3 million euros in sales revenue in 2012, Esker operates in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific with global headquarters in Lyon, France and U.S. headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. Esker is listed on the NYSE Alternext in Paris (Code ISIN FR0000035818). For more information, visit www.esker.com. Follow Esker on Twitter at twitter.com/eskerinc and join the conversation on the Esker blog at www.quitpaper.com.

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