Oakwood Worldwide Leverages Leading Invoice Processing Solution to Enhance Operations, Client Experience

Oakwood Worldwide, the leading global temporary housing and serviced apartment provider, today announced that Kofax Intelligent Capture & Exchange is currently implemented in Oakwood’s Phoenix-based National Processing Center to enhance and automate invoice processing, and as a result, serve clients more effectively.

The Kofax solution is designed to capture, track and process the more than 70,000 utility bills that Oakwood receives every month to keep each Oakwood furnished apartment in perfect working order. With the Kofax solution, Oakwood can now easily manage and process up to 10 different types of utility bills, including gas, electricity, Internet, cable and phone. Since adopting the Kofax solution, Oakwood’s transaction productivity has gone up 50 percent in the number of invoices it can process each day.

“Managing utility bills is a never ending challenge,” says Chris Ahearn, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Oakwood Worldwide. “And it is one that has plagued the corporate housing industry for years. Few things are worse than when a guest shows up at an apartment where the utilities aren’t turned on. In our continual pursuit to improve customer satisfaction, our CFO Steve Selcer led a team to mitigate this problem. The result was an innovative solution using the Kofax technology. This is a great example of how Oakwood’s entire workforce is focused on delivering a Gold Standard of service to our customers. It is another reason why Oakwood has earned the reputation as the most trusted provider of temporary furnished apartments.”

With Kofax software, Oakwood can capture and categorize each invoice so that it is paid on time, and connectivity in each apartment is virtually guaranteed. Through numerous data lookups the system recognizes everything from the general ledger account number, the vendor number and apartment coding – no small feat given the thousands of utility companies Oakwood uses throughout the country.

“Because of their format and length, utility bills pose a unique challenge for organizations to process in large volumes,” says Andrew Prey, Vice President of Marketing for Kofax. “Intelligent Capture & Exchange offers a flexible, advanced solution that can easily recognize, classify and extract the many different lines of data found on utility bills to help organizations automate their accounts payable processes.”

“We’re happy to report that our disconnects are currently running at less than .05 percent (.0005) of all utility services provided, which is a phenomenal number,” Ahearn concludes. “Our accounts payable processors are also able to process 50 percent more transactions with the Kofax solution. We expect both these percentages to improve even more as our staff gains more experience with the system.”

About Oakwood Worldwide

Oakwood Worldwide is the global leader and most trusted provider of temporary furnished apartments. Whether traveling for business, leisure or when relocating, Oakwood has remained the international leader by consistently providing outstanding quality, reliability and value. Our focus and commitment to customer service makes us easy to do business with to fulfill your temporary housing needs.

Featuring an expansive portfolio of nearly 30,000 furnished and unfurnished residences in the most desired locations throughout North America, Europe and Asia, Oakwood offers a full spectrum of housing solutions virtually everywhere to meet the demands of today’s personal and business travelers. A global staff of more than 3,000 trained professionals, innovative technologies and unparalleled customer service has made Oakwood the premier choice in temporary housing solutions for nearly half a century. For more information, please visit www.Oakwood.com.

About Kofax

Kofax, a division of DICOM Group plc (LSE:DCM), is a global leader of Intelligent Capture & Exchange solutions. Its leading-edge capture and exchange technologies and solutions enable Business Process Automation by managing the transformation and exchange of business-critical information (residing in various formats such as paper, fax, electronic documents, e-mail, SMS) among people, applications and devices. Kofax products are widely used in finance, government, insurance, healthcare, and a broad range of companies and agencies that must capture critical business information from paper and electronic documents and forms.