Custom Document Management Solution

Going Paperless: Digitizing an FMCG Manufacturer

Paper-based processes are still common across manufacturing and FMCG companies, especially for contracts, protocols, and invoices that move through multiple departments. For one of our long-term partners, this meant hours of manual handling, higher error rates, and audit processes that took longer than they should.

The client: FMCG manufacturer

Our partner is a large FMCG manufacturer operating in Bulgaria as part of a global beverage group, with production facilities and a multi-layered distribution network reaching thousands of points of sale. The company had already digitized its distribution channel management with PLAN A, replacing manual tracking of orders and inventory across warehouses, distributors, and points of sale with a real-time system. Building on that partnership, the client asked us to tackle a second operational bottleneck: how documents were created, stored, and processed internally.

The business problem: hours of manual work with paper documents

Contracts, protocols, invoices, and other documents were still handled largely on paper or through disconnected digital files. This created repetitive manual work, made documents hard to locate, increased the risk of human error, and slowed down the audit process. The goal was a tailored solution that would automate the paperwork process end to end, removing repetitive manual tasks while keeping the process auditable.

What we built: custom document management & e-sign

We designed a centralized document management system covering the full document lifecycle:

• Document storage and organization - a centralized repository for contracts, protocols, invoices, and other business documents
• Document capture and scanning - streamlined entry of paper and digital documents into the system
• Collaboration - document sharing, co-authoring, and commenting between teams
• E-signature - a built-in way to authenticate and complete transactions digitally
• Search and retrieval - locating documents by keyword, metadata, or other criteria
• Security and access control - user authentication, role-based access, and permissions management

The approach: end-to-end-digitalization with a managed team

The project followed an agile, collaborative process:

• Audit of the existing process to understand how documents currently moved through the organization
• Feature definition in close collaboration with the client, based on the audit findings
• Cloud infrastructure design
• UI design, moving from wireframes to a design library and then an interactive prototype
• Development, delivered by a dedicated squad of two front-end and two back-end engineers, managed by a team lead and PM
• Integration with the client's ERP system, ensuring a seamless data flow between the new solution and existing business processes
• Implementation and user adoption

Tech stack: .NET Core, React.js, AWS Cloud, Azure

The results: thousands of dollars saved & environmental impact

The solution delivered:

• €24,000 in cost savings
• 540,000 fewer paper sheets used
• 4,300 tonnes of CO2 emissions reduced
• 5 employees moved into new, more strategic roles as manual document handling was automated

Takeaways

Digitizing document handling requires understanding how a specific organization's paperwork actually flows before automating it. For this client, having already worked together on a related operational system made the audit and rollout faster, since the team already understood the internal processes and ERP landscape. The result was a system that reduced manual work, freed up staff for higher-value tasks, and produced a measurable environmental impact alongside the cost savings.