Success story
FARYS

Industry• Public Sector• Utilities

Solutions• SAP® Document Presentment
by OpenText™
• OpenText™ Archivingfor SAP® Solutions

Results
New communications deployedon average in less than one week,
reduced from approximately threemonths (90 percent reduction)
Heightened independence fromprint provider
Lower cost of external print
productionMore predictable workload forcustomer service agents

FARYS cuts document template
management significantlywith OpenText

SAP® Document Presentment by OpenText™ reduces deployment
time from three months to under seven days, with lower costsand improved customer service“The use of OpenText together with SAP gives us the confidence
for future growth. We are working toward a true 360-degreeview of our customers within SAP, thanks to OpenText. The
combination of SAP and OpenText is crucial for FARYS.”
Inge Opreel

ICT Department ManagerFARYSFARYS cuts document template management significantly with OpenText

Headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, FARYS provides drinking water
throughout the country. The public sector firm is also active in themanagement of sewerage networks and the building, renovation andmaintenance of swimming pools. Additionally, FARYS also provides apurchasing and service center for public and semi-public entities.
Each month, FARYS produces more than 100,000 documents,
including bills, meter reading cards, connection letters, and an arrayof other customer communications. It sends output files from its
core enterprise system, SAP®, to an external print provider. The printprovider then combines the output files with pre-printed paper toproduce printed documents.
Inge Opreel, ICT department manager at FARYS, explained thechallenges of its old approach, “We were totally reliant on the printprovider for any updates to the layout. If we needed a new document,
it could take up to three months and would be costly. Even smallchanges incurred a charge. In addition, every document was done in
an individual way; there was no base to build from.”

SAP recommends OpenText for customer
communications management

FARYS faced a number of business drivers for change. The lack of independence from the external print provider made it almost impossible
to shop around for a lower print price. Once output, documents must
be stored to help service customer enquiries and for legal archival
reasons. Any non-standard letter to a customer triggered a request tothe back-office, where it would be composed using Microsoft® Word.
“We considered a number of customer communication management
solutions and selected OpenText Document Presentment for SAP
Solutions as the best suited solution for our needs. This followed aTM

recommendation from SAP and our own research and evaluation. The
solution allows us to bring all of our output together, inside SAP, aspart of a digital transformation strategy that will see us increasingly
move away from paper output,” said Opreel.
All customer communications generated from SAP are now designed
using the OpenText solution, removing the reliance on the print provider.
FARYS now handles any new document template or change to an
existing template in-house, reducing dependency and the cost of using
the print provider.
“The business can now implement a new document template in under
one week, far less than the three months it used to take—a reductionof about 90 percent. Additionally, changes to existing templates canbe completed almost instantly and without the costs of the past. For
example, adding a seasonal message to warn about the risk of a burst
pipe in freezing temperatures to a batch of bills,” said Opreel.

Improved customer service with one sourcefor documents

Staff at the FARYS Customer Interaction Center handle inbound queries
from both residential and business customers. Using SAP as its coresystem, service agents regularly need to access and update accountinformation, send letters, or access past communications.

“With OpenText, our service agents can now access all customer
communications from within the SAP customer interaction center.
There is no need to access other systems and they can generate
new outbound communications, such as amended bills. OpenText
allows them to preview the new document exactly as the customer
will ultimately see it, saving time and improving the service weoffer,” said Opreel.

“We are now working
towards providing
all our outboundcommunications ina digital format. This
will reduce our paper
usage, which is helpful
to the environment andalso reduces our costs.”
Inge Opreel

ICT Department ManagerFARYSFARYS cuts document template management significantly with OpenText

Throughout FARYS, more than 400 staff now use the solution, whichhandles every document output from SAP. Millions of documents are
output every year, with more than 1.5 million bills alone.

Cash flow protected and predictable workload

For FARYS, having a stable, reliable solution has added benefits inprotecting cash flow and ensuring a more predictable workload forcustomer service agents.
FARYS still uses an outside company for the physical printing of documents,
but is able to look for a more competitive provider should it choose.

“As we now manage the layout and document templates internally, wesimply provide the complete output file to our print provider.
This means every two or three years, we can return to the market
and seek the most cost-effective option, reducing our print costs
further,” said Opreel.

Digital transformation, compliance and plans

FARYS is making greater use of digital channels to deliver customer
communications, progressing its digital transformation strategy. Largecustomers, such as the City of Ghent, are now receiving their bills
electronically. SAP produces an XML data stream to OpenText and an
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) service delivers it to the customer.

“We are now working towards providing all our outbound communications in a digital format. For customers that opt for electroniccommunications, they will receive all document types as PDF
attachments in emails. This will reduce our paper usage, which is
helpful to the environment and also reduces our costs,” said Opreel.
FARYS has also turned to OpenText to provide a legal archive of customer
facing documents. Once generated, documents are archived in OpenTextand instantly available via SAP. With the ideal combination of SAP andOpenText, FARYS is also looking at ways to further streamline andoptimize its operations.
“The use of OpenText together with SAP gives us the confidence for
future growth. The synergy between the two platforms is clear and weare working toward a true 360-degree view of our customers within
SAP, thanks to OpenText. The combination of SAP and OpenText iscrucial for FARYS”, said Opreel.
FARYS is also working with another water company seeking to implement
SAP and OpenText. The firm plans to replicate the success of FARYS,
using its SAP and OpenText solutions as a model.

About OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information aboutOpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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