Posted by Ignacio Eceiza, Head of Global IT Projects at Euralis
Editor's note: Today we hear from Ignacio Eceiza, head of Global IT projects at Euralis, a food and agriculture company with an annual revenue of $1.7B. Read how this innovative company is using Google Apps for Work with AODocs to help manage their documents, create workflows and go paperless, creating a faster, more agile business. You can also register here to join our Hangout on Air, on March 15 at 9 a.m. to learn more about how AODocs, a Google Apps for Work partner, can improve your business.
Euralis started out as a cooperative venture when a group of local wheat farmers in southwest France came together to sell their crops. Nearly 80 years later, we’ve grown to over 5,000 employees around the world who bring high-quality food to market, from seed selection and poultry rearing to the harvesting and selling of the agricultural products. In addition to our employees, we bring together over 12,000 farmers to accomplish our mission. Collaboration remains a core part of who we are.
We have 130 farming and production sites for wheat, cereal, poultry, wine and vegetables; 14 processing plants to prepare these items for distribution; and we market in more than 120 countries across 5 continents — our annual revenue is $1.7B. To accomplish all this, our team needs the tools to work together across diverse environments, in different languages and timezones, within an industry that’s subject to strict quality regulations.
Going Google
Three years ago, when we wanted to improve our document management infrastructure, we moved to Google for Work with
AODocs. We had compared Apps with AODocs against IBM Lotus Quickplace and Microsoft Sharepoint, and going Google was the obvious choice. The user interface of Google Drive with AODocs was easy to adopt and we could tailor workflows and views in AODocs without requiring much help from the IT department. We were also convinced by the ease of migration, the improvement we’d see in the quality compliance processes and the opportunity to reduce our environmental impact.
AODocs and Drive make it an easy move to Google
In addition to giving us all the features we had on our legacy system, AODocs also provided ready-to-use tools that let us migrate our existing content easily into Google Drive. The migration project started in 2014, with multiple document libraries used for human resources, quality policies and ISO 9001 compliance. We trusted AODocs with these critical documents because they were the first enterprise content management solution fully integrated with Google Drive, and their product could be easily configured for a variety of needs, without customized development. We also had peace of mind because of the excellent support of the AODocs team whenever we had questions or needed help.
AODocs and Drive, a perfect fit for quality and regulatory compliance
Of course, quality is paramount in the food business, and from farm to warehouse to table, each and every one of us on the team had a part to play in maintaining this quality for our customers. AODocs on Google Drive made it easier to put more attention and focus on quality. Our intranet portal, which uses Google Sites with embedded customized views from AODocs, ensures that we have quick access to all the latest quality-related documents and processes we rely on.
Going paperless with AODocs on Drive
With the powerful workflow engine we gained by choosing AODocs on Google Drive, and AODocs’ ability to integrate with SAP, we’ve transformed a formerly complex network of invoicing and purchase processing with multiple custom-built applications on our legacy IBM infrastructure into a simplified, paperless system.
Our accountants can now send invoices to AODocs by email directly from the scanner. AODocs then manages the entire validation workflow and sends notification emails to the corresponding managers. Our managers are often traveling, and they love that they can validate the documents on their smartphone, by simply reviewing notification emails and clicking the validation links.
Furthermore, our managers can configure and update their AODocs applications the way they want, without involving IT as much. Teams are more agile, and now the company has more resources to focus on important goals, like feeding the world.
