U.S. & Canada 877.653.7215 www.zoption.com Outside U.S. +1.972.315.8800

SUCCESS STORY

Customer:• Publishers Circulation Fulfillment, Inc.Industry: • Newspaper Distribution Challenge:• Migration to SAP• Limited functionality with in-house toolSolution:• GLSU from Z OptionResults:• Fast and easy AP• Park or post option• Built-in flexibility• Data validation• Time-savingBenefits:• Improved data integrity• Better use of time for accountants• Fast and efficient

Customer ProfilePublishers Circulation Fulfillment, Inc. (PCF) is the leading independent newspaper home delivery and distribution logistical services company in the United States, arranging for the delivery of more than 11 mil-lion copies each week and serving over 60 clients, ranging from national newspapers to local and targeted specialty publications. Headquartered in Towson, Maryland, PCF has provided newspaper home delivery and distribution logistical services to publishers for 25 years. PCF also manages more than 250 third-party newspaper delivery partnerships. Major customers include The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal.

With 2,500 employees and 9,000 independent contractors, PCF helps publications of all sizes to reduce home delivery costs, expand or maintain home delivery footprint, and stabilize service to improve subscriber retention. Outsourcing partnerships for both distribution and contact center services enables publishers to offload daily operational headaches to PCF.

ChallengesAfter successfully migrating to SAP 4.7 from their previous legacy system, PCF’s accounting department needed a fast and efficient way to quickly upload financial information and transactions into SAP. Their only option within SAP was to use the Legacy System Migration Workbench (LSMW) tool, which unfortunately did not meet their needs.

To remedy the situation, PCF began a blueprinting process to identify their needs for financial uploading software. One of their key criteria was the ability to quickly upload information with as little manipulation as possible. Once PCF identified and evaluated GLSU from Z Option, they simply stopped shopping – and GLSU was quickly selected and purchased.

PCF Selects GLSU as First Choicefor Financial Uploading to SAP

“Once you have GLSU, you can’t imagine working without it!”- Michael Slabik, Director of Financial Reporting, PCF, Inc.

U.S. & Canada 877.653.7215 www.zoption.com Outside U.S. +1.972.315.8800

Z Option offers software solutions

(GLSU, BudgetLoader and LIVExpress)

that enable organizations to streamline

SAP financial data entry and reporting,

with Microsoft Excel. By leveraging existing

Excel expertise, users can calculate

financial transactions and post them

directly to SAP. Z Option, an SAP

partner, was established in 1999 and

has hundreds of customer companies,

with thousands of users, worldwide.

© 2010 Z Option Inc. All rights reserved. SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG. Microsoft Excel is a registered trademark of Microsoft. All other products are the registered or unregistered trademarks of their respective owners.

Solution GLSU helped PCF manage their transition to SAP because it is “very simple and straightforward,” according to Slabik. In addition, not only is GLSU’s price “very fair,” it comes with “well-written and user-friendly documentation.” Installation is also a breeze. “We had GLSU up and running in a couple of hours at the most, and we were able to use it right away,” Slabik reports. “Because our users know Excel, they found the training a very easy process and were able to adapt to it pretty easily. Nobody expressed frustration with GLSU.” Today, PCF regularly re-uses approximately 25 different GLSU templates, making transaction uploading easier than ever before. For example, Accounts Receivable uses GLSU every week to upload miscellaneous revenue information not contained in shipping orders in SAP’s Media Sales Distribution module – allowing them to quickly create and send invoices to customers. PCF also uses GLSU for journal entries and allocations. For instance, GLSU allows them to extract payroll information and upload journal entries into SAP. If a transaction is entered incorrectly into SAP, PCF can quickly download it from SAP into GLSU, then create and upload the correcting journal entry. “For any transaction with four or more lines of detail to it, it’s easier to use GLSU than keying it in,” Slabik says, laughing. “My rule is that I use GLSU if the transaction is more than one line!”

Results

Fast and Easy AP: GLSU helps PCF’s Accounts Payable department easily handle 500 weekly invoices for 1700 active vendors. “Each month, we just cut and paste from the billing to the GLSU template we maintain for the various vendors,” Slabik says. “We can include a lot of detail because we have GLSU.”

Option to Park or Post Documents: GLSU allows PCF to either park or post documents, depending on their needs. Sensitive AP documents are parked, so transactions can be reviewed before they are posted to the General Ledger. All other entries are posted directly.

Drop Header Flexibility: PCF has approximately 135 landlords that they pay each month. Because GLSU allows them to pull the reference field into the body of GLSU, they can create AP documents using one worksheet, not 135 different worksheets. Changing the reference number automatically creates a new SAP document number. “We use it for Accounts Receivable too,” Slabik notes. “It keeps us from tripping over our feet because too many files are open.”

Intelligent Data: Text fields in the GLSU template contain intelligent data that provide transaction details for quick reference. It has some “real intel-ligence built in,” according to Slabik. The ability to insert comments in skip rows is also a “good fea-ture.”

Time-Saving: “Try to key a 300-line transaction into SAP and make sure everything correctly balances,” Slabik says. “It takes at least an hour, but with GLSU it takes less than a minute.”

Business Benefits Slabik calls the support from Z Option second to none. As a result, we get our problems fixed quickly and are able to move on.” Thanks to standardized GLSU templates and built-in validation, errors are flagged before upload-ing to SAP. “Accuracy is improved many times over,” Slabik says. “It improves the integrity of data in your GL system, and results in a lot fewer reclass entries.” GLSU also allows PCF accountants to make better use of their time. As Slabik notes, “Instead of wast-ing time taking a large invoice and keying it in line by line, we have time to look more closely at important questions such as: Is the content of the invoices correct? Are we being billed properly?” Slabik readily admits that PCF is now “very de-pendent” on GLSU. “Once you have GLSU, you can’t imagine working without it!”

“Try to key a 300-line transaction into SAP and make sure it balances, with everything correct. It takes at least an hour, but with GLSU it takes less than a minute.”

- Michael Slabik, Director of Financial Reporting, PCF, Inc.