ROI CASE STUDY KOFAX PLAINS ALL AMERICAN PIPELINE

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1 ROI CASE STUDY KOFAX PLAINS ALL AMERICAN PIPELINE THE BOTTOM LINE By deploying Kofax s MarkView Financial Suite, Plains All American Pipeline avoided additions to its accounts payable (AP) staff, improved the productivity of people involved in AP workflows, and reduced operating costs by taking better advantage of early payment terms offered by its vendors. ROI: 60% Payback: 1.75 years Average annual benefit: $419,176 THE COMPANY Plains All American Pipeline is engaged in the transportation, storage, and marketing of crude oil, refined products and liquefied petroleum gas. The company is also engaged in the development and operation of natural gas storage facilities. Plains All American handles over 3 million barrels per day of crude oil, refined products and liquefied petroleum gas through a network of assets located in key North American production and transportation areas. THE CHALLENGE As a result of an aggressive acquisition strategy, Plains All American s revenues grew from $3.5 billion in 1998 to $30 billion in Although this rapid growth increased the company s profitability and returns to shareholders, it had begun to tax some of its accounting operations including AP in In fact, the organization determined that if the aggressive pace of acquisitions continued, the AP department would require additional headcount, which would offset some of the benefits of completing acquisitions. Geographically dispersed and unsupported by software, Plains All American s AP workflows were lengthy, labor intensive and error prone. Vendors forwarded invoices to the local field offices they dealt with, rather than Plains All American s headquarters in Houston. Invoice-related workflows in the local offices were both informal and inconsistent. Once invoices were located, administrators in the various offices would then hand code each to identify which general ledger account to which the invoice should be applied. Next, administrators sought out the appropriate manager with sufficient signing authority in order to get the invoice approved for payment. Because these workflows were entirely manual and involved complex accounting and payment rules, they were typically both error Corporate Headquarters Nucleus Research Inc. 100 State Street Boston, MA Phone: Nucleus Research Inc. NucleusResearch.com

2 TOPICS Enterprise Applications prone and lengthy. As a result, the company was continually adding to its AP staff as it grew and typically paid its vendors in 30 to 60 days, which was too slow for good vendor relations or collection of discounts offered for early payment. THE STRATEGY In 2005, the AP manager at Plains All American attended a webinar put on by Kofax (then 170 Systems) that detailed the benefits of its application for automating AP workflows. As a result, she considered adopting MarkView and viewed demonstrations, talked to reference customers with similar challenges, and evaluated a detailed proposal by a Kofax account representative. Other solutions were considered but rejected because they were focused on just one aspect of the AP process and did not provide automated workflows. Because Plains All American s AP manager believed there was an opportunity to rapidly reduce costs with MarkView, and based on the strength of customer references that were fellow Oracle shops, Plains All American s AP manager chose to adopt the application. In mid 2005, Plains All American deployed MarkView over a 3-month period. First, two members of the accounting department mapped out the AP workflows they wanted to have in place as a result of the deployment and determined the accounting rules and role-based authorities that would be applied when invoices were processed. After five role-based authorities were customized for the application, it was then integrated with the company s Oracle ERP. MarkView went live in October 2005, resulting in entirely new workflows and procedures for AP processing. All invoices are forwarded to Plains All American s headquarters with proper routing information included on the invoice where they are immediately scanned and ed to the appropriate business unit so managers can analyze them and determine if they should be paid. s to these managers include a Web address that managers use to process the invoice online. KEY BENEFIT AREAS Adopting MarkView enabled Plains All American to increase capture of early payment discounts, improve productivity, and reduce the costs of shipping and storing invoices. Key benefits from the solution include: Increased discounts. Because the workflows for processing invoices are both centralized and entirely paperless, they are also far more rapid and error free. As a result, average payment times have reduced from 60 days to 10. With such rapid payment, the company has increased the percentage of invoices for which it takes advantage of early payment terms from approximately five percent to approximately 70 percent. Improved productivity. Because AP-related workflows are now entirely electronic, productivity has improved. AP administrators neither search their local field offices for invoices, nor perform multiple steps to verify, authorize, and perform the proper accounting for them. Managers also save time because they handle invoices only once, and rarely handle them a second time because of errors in the process. In all, 250 employees participate to some degree in invoice-processing workflows in various ways, and their productivity has improved by an average of 30 minutes per week. Avoided headcount. MarkView enabled Plains All American to grow without adding staff to its AP department. In fact, if the adoption hadn t happened, 2

3 rapid growth between 2005 and 2008 would have resulted in approximately six new hires in the AP department. Reduced postage costs. Because invoices are received centrally, then transmitted electronically, the company no longer has to pay to ship invoices from the local offices to the headquarters, which some local offices did several times a week. BENEFITS Indirect 22% Direct 78% TOTAL: $1,257,528 Reduced storage fees. Because invoices are now archived electronically, any paper versions are shredded after 60 days, reducing archiving costs. KEY COST AREAS Key cost areas for the deployment included software, consulting, personnel, training, and hardware. COSTS Consulting 29% Personnel 7% Training 1% Hardware 7% Software 56% TOTAL: $586,555 The solution was deployed over a 3-month period by a team consisting of three consultants from Kofax and six employees from Plains All American. These employees were from the accounting and IT departments; two spent all of their time on the deployment, and the others dedicated 50 percent or less of their time. During the deployment, consultants assisted in mapping and planning the new AP workflows and configuring MarkView for the role-based authorities that Plains needed. Plains purchased seats and annual license maintenance for 250 end users and once the system was ready to go live, each user received one hour of formal 3

4 training on the application. Hardware costs consisted of two scanners and new storage space for both the application and supporting data. BEST PRACTICES One reason the deployment was so successful is that Kofax and Plains All American teamed up on keeping the deployment and configuration simple. Early in the deployment, the team wanted to configure up to a dozen role-based authorities in MarkView in order to accommodate the preferences of senior management, which was accustomed to tightly governing accounting workflows for audit purposes. However, the consultants made the case that because the application impacts workflows rather than accounting entries, the added granularity of role-based authorities would not have benefitted the accounting department. Additionally, the more authorities that were configured into the system, the more expensive the application would have been to maintain and the more complex end-user training would have been. Ideally, companies adopting MarkView should minimize the number of roles, rules, and authorities they configure in order to simplify and accelerate their deployment. CALCULATING THE ROI Nucleus calculated the costs of software, consulting, personnel, training, and hardware over a 3-year period to quantify the total investment that Plains All American made in MarkView. Direct benefits calculated included increased discounts because of accelerated payment, reduced postage costs, and reduced storage costs. The value of increased discounts was based on the total number of invoices processed by MarkView, an estimate of the portion which includes early payment terms, the average discount, and the increase to the percentage of invoices that had early payment terms where a discount was eventually received as the result of early payment by Plains. Indirect benefits consisted of improvements in productivity, which were based on employees average fully loaded annual cost and an estimation of the amount of time they save as a result of the deployment. Productivity benefits were reduced by a correction factor in order to take into account the fact that not all time saved will be converted by employees into time spent on new tasks. 4

5 DETAILED FINANCIAL ANALYSIS PLAINS ALL AMERICAN PIPELINE SUMMARY Project: Kofax's MarkView Financial Suite Annual return on investment (ROI) 60% Payback period (years) 1.75 Average annual benefit 419,176 Average annual total cost of ownership 195,518 ANNUAL BENEFITS Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Direct 0 191, , ,162 Indirect 0 93,750 93,750 93,750 Total Benefits Per Period 0 284, , ,912 DEPRECIATED ASSETS Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Software 209, Hardware 40, Total Per Period 249, DEPRECIATION SCHEDULE Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Software 0 41,980 41,980 41,980 Hardware 0 8,000 8,000 8,000 Total Per Period 0 49,980 49,980 49,980 EXPENSED COSTS Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Software 0 39,881 39,881 39,881 Hardware 2, Consulting 170, Personnel 39, Training 6, Other Total Per Period 217,010 39,881 39,881 39,881 FINANCIAL ANALYSIS Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Net cash flow before taxes (466,912) 245, , ,031 Net cash flow after taxes (358,407) 147, , ,506 Annual ROI - direct and indirect benefits 41% 60% 60% Annual ROI - direct benefits only 28% 47% 47% Net present value (NPV) (358,407) (230,118) (16,980) 124,061 Payback (years) 1.75 Average annual cost of ownership 466, , , ,518 3-year IRR 34% 34% FINANCIAL ASSUMPTIONS All government taxes 50% Discount rate 15% All calculations are based on Nucleus Research's independent analysis of the expected costs and benefits associated with the solution. 5