Entium Revamps Accounts Receivable for STV Inc.

Entium eliminated paper records for STV Accounting to streamline processing, storage, and auditing for Corporate Accounting.

ABout STV

STV is one of North America's top architecture, engineering, and construction management (AEC) firms. They provide a full range of services from design to program management for public and private sector clients in the transportation, commercial, industrial, defense, and other industries. Since 1912, STV has helped shape critical projects, including 1 World Trade Center and its transportation hub, the Hoboken Ferry Terminal rehabilitation, the AirTran terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the East Side Access project at New York's Penn Station, and the new high-tech Seagirt Marine Terminal in the Port of Baltimore.

Being a 100% employee-owned company gives each of the 1,700 STV employees a stake in the business. This deep personal commitment to creating exceptional value for clients consistently places STV among the top 25 firms in education, corrections, highways, bridges, rail, and mass transit projects. Maintaining this leadership position while supporting dozens of concurrent projects in the USA, Canada, and Abu Dhabi requires 35 office locations plus numerous temporary on-site deployments.

CHALLENGE

Adequately and efficiently supporting a geographically diverse workforce in dozens of offices and project sites spread across two continents presented a crucial challenge for STV. The multifaceted nature of the work itself poses additional challenges because engineers and architects form teams that touch all parts of a project cycle from design to construction. Regional project accountants assigned to these teams manage all project related billing with high degrees of regional autonomy.  When STV management instituted the paperless initiative to reduce the burdens and costs of managing paper processes and physical records, the Accounting department, and the project accountants in particular, faced the challenge of eliminating the physical assembly of invoices (including timesheets, expenses, and all related back-up materials received from contractors and participants) set by FedEx to corporate accounting — how could project accountants prepare and submit complex, voluminous monthly project invoices to corporate accounting, efficiently using the technology available currently in place at every regional project office — some of which were not more than job-site trailers?

SOLUTION

Based on Entium's analysis and knowledge of STV's unique solution requirements, Entium proposed and then implemented a solution involving Microsoft Office 365 with SharePoint Online, PSIGEN Psi:Capture, and new high-volume Kodak scanners.  The process installed by Entium enables project accountants nation-wide to submit invoices to corporate Accounting electronically.  While some project accountants continue to prepare paper invoices which they scan on their local MFP device, other accountants prepare fully electronic invoices.  In either case, a final PDF is submitted to a "drop box" for Accounts Receivable invoices.  Entium designed a custom Psi:Capture profile that monitors the drop box and automatically processes every submission into SharePoint Online.  Within SharePoint, every Accounts Receivable Invoice has Site Column metadata populated with BST Accounting information to facilitate search and retrieval of the PDF.