InformationWeek

December 22, 1997

Images For Billing

Laser-disk imaging system will replace microfiche files for ice cream maker

ce cream isn't the only thing that's cold at Carvel Ice Cream Bakery Inc. The frozen-dessert maker is deploying a COLD (Computer Output to Laser Disk) system that it hopes will save money and make it easier to resolve billing problems.

Carvel, in Farmington, Conn., will use a system based on integrated imaging and COLD technology from Filemark Corp. in Natick, Mass. The system will let Carvel's accounting staff retrieve and view on PCs text files of customer accounts, as well as images of all related paper documents, such as delivery tickets.

The time needed to find documents "will be reduced from several minutes to instantaneous access," says Barbara Bond, Carvel's billing manager. "We'll also cut down on the number of misplaced or misindexed documents from about 10% to probably less than 1% or 2%."

The system will also cut the time it takes to make document images available to Carvel staff, Bond adds. "In the past, we outsourced the microfiching of this weekly, and it would take about a month," she says. With the Filemark system, which will be tied to Carvel's Microsoft SQL Server database, the scanning of documents and inputting of text can be done by Carvel's own staff in a day. Bond would not disclose the cost of the Filemark solution, but she estimates Carvel will save from $150,000 to $160,000 before the year 2000 just from eliminating the microfiche outsourcing.

Carvel's billing paperwork has soared as the company has grown from an East Coast chain of ice cream shops to a manufacturer and distributor of ice cream products sold in 4,000 U.S. supermarkets, Bond says. Carvel's billing department now processes 35,000 transactions monthly, involving 400,000 individual documents. Filemark president John Bernard says the company's solution can link to several database platforms, including Oracle, Informix, SQL Server, Informix, and Sybase.

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