Fujita Metal Corp. realizes approximately 17 million JPY in annual cost savings by digitizing paper forms, surpassing investment

WingArc1st Inc. is pleased to announce that Fujita Metal Corp., a general trading company whose business encompasses all aspects of steel processing, sales, and rentals, has adopted SVF Cloud (a cloud-based solution for business forms) and invoiceAgent (a platform for electronic business forms) in its move to digitize invoices and statements of delivery and deliver these forms electronically.

■Background
Fujita Metal Corp. is a Japanese steel trading company connected to customers throughout the steel manufacturing and construction industry. Working with well over 2,000 client businesses of all sizes, Fujita Metal Corp. was producing more than 2,000 invoices and approximately 20,000 statements of delivery per month on copy paper with dot matrix printers.

In addition to the need to print a large volume of business forms each month, the company's 21 offices nationwide had to deal with the manual tasks of tearing off parts of forms, sorting, sealing envelopes, and sending everything by postal mail. On top of that, the storage and disposal of paper documents posed challenges.

Fujita Metal Corp. made operational reforms and quality improvement one of the basic strategies of its medium-term management plan, and endeavored to digitize its business forms and adopt electronic delivery in order to be ready to meet compliance with Japan's new invoice reporting system and Electronic Book Storage Act.

The primary solutions adopted by Fujita Metal Corp. were the following:
・SVF Cloud, a cloud-based service that gives users flexible control over the design and operations of digitized business forms
・invoiceAgent Transact, whose ability to process high volumes of invoices and statements of delivery make it a reliable solution for organizations of all sizes
・invoiceAgent Documents, a solution that facilitates secure electronic document management in compliance with Japan's Electronic Book Storage Act

■Benefits realized through implementation
Fujita Metal Corp. began operations to digitize its invoices and statements of delivery and deliver these forms electronically in October of 2023. As of March 2024, it is now delivering a total of approximately 20,000 forms--including invoices, statements of delivery, statements of loss purchases, and processing reports--electronically each month for over 90% of its more than two thousand customers. About 70 total staff use invoiceAgent as they check and manage the company's business forms, including two staff at each of the company's 21 offices across Japan and managers at the head office.

Specific results include:
・Web-based distribution of electronic forms and documents to customers has realized a total annual cost savings of approximately 17 million yen, exceeding their return on investment. This includes 5 million yen in real costs saved on paper, mailing, printing, storage, and disposal, and 12 million yen in personnel costs saved on management and operations.

・Building a digital-forms infrastructure that fully complies with Japan's Electronic Book Storage Act has resulted in highly productive form operations.

・The digitization of business forms has standardized internal operations and improved searchability. This in turn has enhanced corporate governance by making audits more efficient.

・The company has eliminated the need to issue and mail invoices, statements of delivery, loss-purchase statements, and processing reports, a process which used to sometimes take up to half a day or more. The result has been significantly reduced workloads and improved operational efficiency.

When considering whether to adopt electronic Web-based form distribution, the company worked to standardize operations, including workflows that had been formerly optimized individually within each division. They also strove to build an internal system to facilitate smooth project implementation, coordinating the needs of different on-site departments and the information systems department, with input from accounting department managers.

Implementation went smoothly and stable operations were achieved by actively working to acquire the necessary skills, and by taking advantage of WingArc1st's onboarding program, in which dedicated Customer Success Managers (CSMs) provided support for all aspects of the process, from clarifying post-implementation objectives and initial system setup to producing business results.

■Use case:
https://www.wingarc.com/product/usecase/1088.html (Japanese)

■Fujita Metal Corp.
Established: 1892
Location: Chuo Ward, Niigata City
Business: Steel processing and sales, rental of temporary construction and architectural materials, design and construction work
Website: https://www.fujita-kz.com/