Customer Story

JMP

Faced with a chaotic document management system that reduced agility, JMP made the decision to regain control over its documents.

JMP has fundamentally changed its document management process, but there’s still more that can be done to increase operational efficiency.

Industry
HVAC & Plumbing Equipment Distribution

Location
Greensboro, North Carolina, United States

How JMP created a centralised document management hub with D365 F&O, CE and Lasernet

JMP represents industry-leading manufacturers of HVAC, plumbing and pumping equipment, controls and related products. The organisation has 13 offices and four warehouses across the United States, operating several divisions, including packaging manufacturing, after-sales support, and fire pump inspection.

When Martin Messick joined JMP as IT Manager in 2017, he quickly recognized that various aspects of the company’s backend required a digital transformation. Over the next two years, Martin and the IT team stabilized systems that weren’t functioning optimally, eliminated wasted effort and explored all possibilities to make processes as efficient as possible.

The state of the invoicing process perfectly captured the company’s need for a digital overhaul. The invoicing system Martin inherited consisted of paper-based quotes created using Microsoft Excel, which, as you can imagine, generated a substantial amount of paper. 

With 40 salespeople creating hundreds or thousands of quotes each week, the paper very quickly stacked up. In the company’s accounting department, Martin found nearly 1,000 boxes full of paper invoices, five times the number of people who worked for JMP. Change was desperately needed.

Reinventing a chaotic document management process

In July 2019, the IT team’s hard work started to pay off. They made the strategic decision to take complete control of document workflows, moving away from inefficient and fragmented processes and toward a single, unified system.

To achieve this, they integrated Lasernet into their core ERP systems, building a new document ecosystem based on seamless integration with Microsoft Dynamics F&O and CE. This meant that, for the first time, key processes such as invoice and PO automation were managed through a centrally controlled hub.

The team developed their own SharePoint document portal, creating a centralized location where they could find the documents they needed in seconds, including price sheets, Power BI reports and invoices. This central content hub, which the team integrated directly with Lasernet, became the single source of truth for the entire company.

Now, every team member, regardless of their role, can find the documents they need without wasting hours searching databases (or worse, hunting for paper documents). The impact of this change was twofold: it directly cut licensing costs while also saving the team countless hours.

Close-up of shiny stainless steel pipes and valves in an industrial setting, highlighting the intricate connections and machinery.

How JMP’s document overhaul created real ROI from day one

With Lasernet as the foundation, the new document management approach delivered far-reaching results for JMP:

No SSRS limitations

JMP is no longer dependent on complex and costly SSRS development, thereby removing the need for external consultants and maintaining control and budget in-house.

Making the most of in-house expertise

The entire JMP team quickly got to grips with the new document management process. This allowed them to handle all form development internally, with most requests being managed by an in-house apprentice.

Rapid document creation and delivery

For the entire company, the document management overhaul has been a game-changer. By taking the process in-house, JMP slashed the turnaround time for document or form updates from days or weeks to just hours or minutes, as they no longer had to wait for help from external consultants.

JMP traded paper chaos for centralized document control

The key to JMP’s success was choosing software that was versatile enough to handle complexity, yet simple enough to use, so that document control was put back into the team’s hands. Lasernet was designed to simplify the management of complex documents. It gave JMP everything it needed to pull data across its business-critical systems without relying heavily on expensive consultants.

Lasernet gave JMP the flexibility to develop a process that worked the way they do. This ensured the workflows they created delivered value across the entire company from day one, from the sales team in the offices to the logistics team in the warehouses.

Organized shelves filled with labeled bins containing various metal plumbing fittings and hardware components.

Exploring future applications

The beauty of Lasernet is in its versatility. JMP has fundamentally changed its document management process, but there’s still more that can be done to increase operational efficiency. With a strong document management foundation now in place, the JMP team sees a clear path to tackling one of the company’s most time-consuming processes: creating submittals.

For their sales and engineering teams, this would mean replacing hours of tedious manual document creation with an automated process that pulls the correct data into the proper format.