De Nijs

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Contractor De Nijs specializes in inner-city construction. It tackles projects large and small, but the common denominator is that they are often complicated. De Nijs is committed to training and developing young construction professionals at all levels. It combines professionalism, commitment, short policy lines and a down-to-earth view of construction. This makes the company a reliable partner in construction and development. The area in which De Nijs mainly operates: the Randstad and the regions of Alkmaar, Haarlem and Amsterdam.

The need

About two years ago, De Nijs was facing a new development within the company. De Nijs has quite a few companies and the ERP package used at the time was no longer sufficient. As a result, the company decided to switch to the AFAS ERP system, as this best suited the changed requirements. This switch also called for a new OCR solution. Because the scanning and recognition software that De Nijs was using at the time was also no longer adequate – especially in combination with AFAS.

The solution

De Nijs soon learned that AFAS maintains a close partnership with Whitevision. Moreover, one of the employees knew Whitevision from a previous employer and could therefore confirm that the total solution can do a lot in terms of invoice recognition. After some good contact moments with Whitevision, the decision was made: De Nijs chose the AFAS-Whitevision combination.

The benefits of Whitevision

Efficiency boost through significant reduction in manual operations.
Automation of all email handling and much of the invoice flow.
Room for fun and more valuable work, such as analyzing data.
Superb help desk with lightning fast response time.
Accessible, easily approachable and innovative OCR party that offers excellent interfacing with AFAS.

“Whitevision in four terms? 'Efficient', 'fast', 'user-friendly' and 'accurate'!”

“With Whitevision, the manual operations are significantly reduced, so the solution has given us a lot of efficiency,” says Dave van Poelgeest, who has been an administrative assistant at Van Nijs for 12 years. “We no longer have to retype data. And using the SMART E-mail handler also eliminates the need to sift through mails and determine what to do with which message. All e-mail handling is automated: the SMART E-mail handler sorts and processes the entire mailbox. Reminders arrive separately in a bin. And invoices are automatically forwarded to Whitevision, which reads and recognizes them correctly. That works very well!”

Controller Kees Lokhorst adds: “We no longer book invoices manually because Whitevision recognizes everything. That creates space. Because the better your recognition software, the fewer people you need to get to the bottom of the invoice flow. That’s good, because I always say: you have to do things you like. If you know that software is taking over your work well, you can spend time on things you really need to figure out. For example, we now have a lot more time to analyze our data.”

“Much of the invoice flow is automated.”

According to the two colleagues, Whitevision has played an important role in optimizing internal processes. “Much of the invoice flow has been automated,” Kees says. “When subcontractor performance vouchers come in, the system recognizes and books them automatically.” “You can train the software and it works very well,” says Dave. In addition to the OCR software, he finds the line recognition to be very beneficial. “After you train the system on a particular vendor, it recognizes numbers and dates – even at the line level – and generates booking proposals automatically. As a result, we now have primarily a controlling function.”

“Whitevisions help desk is grandiose and the link works fine”

De Nijs is very pleased with the support from Whitevision. “The help desk is grandiose,” says Dave. “If you put a question down, it is taken care of immediately.” And Dave should know, because he has been assigned internally as Whitevision’s administrator. “When questions arise, I create the tickets. Whitevision’s response time is insanely fast – from sending a confirmation of receipt to resolving the issue.”

Dave describes Whitevision as ‘accessible’ and ‘easily approachable’: “Whitevision thinks with you when you ask a question or need a solution to a problem. Also in combination with AFAS. The two parties are always looking for opportunities to make things even more user-friendly and better.” With emphasis on ‘even better’, because Dave only has good words to say about the link with AFAS: “It works just fine. I can’t think of a moment when something has gone wrong with it.”

“The coupling and Whitevision's solution meet expectations”

Innovative? You can call Whitevision that, according to De Nijs. Dave gives an example: “Two years ago, we were struggling with an issue for which there was no technical solution. We record our entire procurement invoice data structure within AFAS and we wanted to have it read by Whitevision. In the current version, Whitevision has made this possible. We are now implementing that solution.” Kees also praises Whitevision’s live in-depth courses: “Two of my colleagues went there this year, including Dave. It was very well organized. They both came back very enthusiastic!”

De Nijs is therefore happy to recommend Whitevision – so much so that it regularly shows the AFAS-Whitevision link to fellow construction companies. “We are in the AFAS user group and are a thinking partner,” Dave explains. “That’s why other construction companies visit us regularly to see how AFAS and our invoice flow work in Whitevision.” “We then explain why we chose this combination,” says Kees. “AFAS is getting bigger and bigger in the construction industry, makes changes fairly easily and links well with Whitevision. Both the link and Whitevision’s solution meet expectations.” Or, as Dave sums it up, “We got what we asked for!”