Weatherford International Utilizes Distributed Capture to Improve Business Processes
Captovation Web Capture transforms Weatherford’s invoice and QA document processing

Customer Profile

Weatherford International Ltd. is one of the leading oilfield service companies in the world.  The company employs over 30,000 people in more than 100 countries and 87 manufacturing facilities supporting 730 service bases. Weatherford serves two specific businesses: the Completion and Production Systems (CPS), and Evaluation, Drilling and Intervention (EDI). 

The Weatherford of today was formed in 1998 from the merger of EVI, Inc., a leading manufacturer of drill stem products, premium tubulars, completion products and artificial lift systems, and Weatherford Enterra, Inc., a leading provider of drilling and cementing products, well installation and intervention services, and compression products and services. A $6.1 billion dollar company, Weatherford rationalizes and focuses itself on customer needs in the drilling, completion and production segments of the oil and gas industry.   

Business Challenge

Supplier invoices were being mailed to Weatherford locations around the world.  The various locations would then forward the invoices via inter-company mail to regional offices for entry into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.  Sending invoices via mail impeded Weatherford’s overall invoice processing procedures because it took a number of days for invoices to reach the regional office.  Adding to this problem was the fact that many times invoices were not always correct, resulting in Weatherford having to send them back to the originating office for correction.  This presented a significant time delay before invoices were correctly entered and also subjected Weatherford to lost or misplaced invoices entirely. 

Once the invoices were entered into Weatherford’s ERP system, a copy was filed, and after 90 days, sent to an off-site storage facility.  When an invoice needed to be reviewed, the original document had to be retrieved either from the local or off-site location – a cumbersome and time-consuming process.  In many cases, local offices were also making and filing copies of invoices before submitting to the regional office.  Not only did this process hinder information sharing across the company, it also generated additional labor and storage costs. 

It was also becoming increasingly difficult for Weatherford to maintain and grant access to their Quality Assurance (QA) documents used in the manufacturing and service rental divisions.  Employees in the field did not have an easy method to access these documents as the system containing the QA document information had limited electronic search and retrieval capabilities. 

Weatherford needed a more efficient means to process their invoices and QA documents.  They also needed a system that would enhance information sharing across the company, as well as provide a consistent and more efficient method for document control and storage.   

Solution

Weatherford determined that a document imaging system would help them improve their invoice processing procedures and enhance information sharing. The first step in choosing a system was determining document volumes at their corporate and regional offices.  Weatherford’s central accounts payable (AP) department had a fairly high document volume, so they implemented Captovation Scan and Index components at corporate in Houston, TX, as well as in the regional office in Canada and in the United Kingdom.  However, Weatherford’s other regional offices did not have a high enough volume to warrant implementing a production-level document capture system.  Furthermore, with both regional and field offices around the world, including countries in Asia (Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China and Brunei), Europe (Scotland, the Netherlands), the Middle East (United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, etc.) and North America (Canada, United States), Weatherford felt that implementing such software at over a hundred locations would be expensive and difficult to administer from a central IT perspective.  

Based upon these factors, Weatherford began to evaluate distributed document capture at their remote locations.  In learning that Captovation had such an offering, they were interested in installing Captovation Web Capture for a short proof-of-concept phase.  Satisfied with the functionality Web Capture provided, Weatherford implemented distributed capture at the smaller regional offices, as well as at the remote office locations that were currently sending physical invoices and QA documents to regional offices.  Since Web Capture does not require manual software installation, Weatherford’s biggest implementation concern was put to ease.  “Not only did it allow for fast implementation, it was also very easy for us to train our field staff and convenient for them to use,” said Kathy Hern, Advanced Systems Manager for Weatherford International. “In fact, we were able to train many of our users through web meetings.”

Implementation

Weatherford purchased 150 user licenses of Captovation Web Capture and timed the installation of the program with the roll-out of their new ERP system - JD Edwards.  This was done to ensure that employee training for the two systems would coincide.  Remote users utilize Captovation Web Capture with scanners such as the Fujitsu 5120C document scanners and the Savin IS200e network scanners to scan and index invoices, QA documents, and backup documentation for customer invoices.  To streamline the indexing process, remote users take advantage of a Captovation Web Capture feature that enables it to perform database lookups over the Internet.  This unique functionality utilizes XML (extensible markup language) technology to facilitate the data transfer from corporate to remote offices.  Being firewall friendly, XML allows the database lookup and data return to take place without incident, thereby allowing remote users complete access to corporate databases.  With this feature, processing documents involves these steps: 

1. Users scan documents.
2. Users index documents and perform database lookups against Weatherford’s JD Edwards system.  For example, user keys Order Number in index field and initiates database lookup on Order Number field.  Order Number is used to query the DB2 database for JD Edwards.  All other relevant data pertaining to that order number, such as customer number, company number, etc., is returned to the user in a list grid.
3. Users select correct invoice information from grid.
4. Users send images and index data over the Internet via secure hyper text transfer protocol (https) to corporate.
5. Web Capture Server, installed at corporate, archives images and data into Weatherford’s electronic document management system – Oracle (Stellent) Imaging and Process Management (I/PM).

Benefits 

Information Sharing
Web Capture initiates and expedites the information sharing process by imaging documents at their point of origination and archiving them in Oracle I/PM.  Oracle allows all local and remote users with access rights to query the system and retrieve company documents.  The corporate office in Houston no longer has to contact remote sites to pull documents when needed for review.

Document Index Control

All document index fields available to Web Capture users are configured centrally at Weatherford corporate by an administrator.  This ensures that consistent index data is applied to all documents across Weatherford’s entire organization.  This is further helped by Web Capture’s ability to perform database lookups against Weatherford’s JD Edwards system.

Time Savings

There have been significant improvements in the time it takes to process an invoice.  With scanning and indexing done in the field, documents are more quickly available for processing and readily available within Oracle I/PM.  At the same time, unique I/PM integration enables invoice information to be more easily entered into Weatherford’s JD Edwards system while viewing an electronic image of the invoice.  

Reduced Storage Costs

Storage costs have also been reduced.  Accounts payable files no longer need to be filed or stored off-site.  Once the documents are scanned, indexed, and archived, they become immediately available in electronic format.

Sarbanes Oxley

Additionally, the entire solution has helped Weatherford meet the Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.  With the help of Captovation Web Capture implemented with the JD Edwards system, Weatherford International has been able to create a transparent and auditable system for recording transactions, dealings and any kind of business correspondence that must also be archived.    As far as being in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, Weatherford has taken a very important first step by imaging and electronically storing important company documents – most importantly sales transactions (Customer Invoices and supporting backup documentation).  This will help them not only find information quickly and easily, but also provide the necessary audit trails in the case of inspection ratings, etc., on tools sent out to a jobsite.

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