A Smooth Transition Into Going Paperless
There are advantages to going department by department when you implement a document management system. Think of starting small as your “sandbox,” a development term for experimentation that confirms the direction you should be taking. Working through your first implementation project provides valuable information about priorities and processes that you can bring to your next one. Too much change at one time may initially overwhelm users. This is especially true if one person deals with multiple processes across departments. Your goals for the implementation give you an endpoint to reach for, but it can be more effective to take smaller, manageable steps toward that goal. Zero in on one department and go forward from there For most organizations, the accounting department offers a significant opportunity for savings of time and resources. Accounting still tends to be paper-centric. For example, processing incoming invoices is often done manually. This presents significant ROI potential because when you use document management to become more efficient at sending and collecting on invoices, it enables you to get paid more quickly. This results in improved cash flow. Automating these processes saves time as well and allows you to grow your business without adding staff. Document management ultimately works best when multiple departments are connected. Even when you start in one department, it’s important to create a plan to assess which other departments you will automate in the next project phase. Then you can develop a staggered implementation timeline for each department to “go live” while automating the next department is already underway. Find out why three DocuWare customers who implemented the solution in their accounting departments used the experience as a stepping stone for expanding the use of their document management systems. Please note that these are not our clients, but they use one of the document management systems that we use. Propel Schools bring high-performance educational options to their students Propel Schools operates 13 charter schools located in and around Pittsburgh. Today, Propel’s invoice approval workflow is fully automated. Staff at each school scans their documents into DocuWare. The Accounting Department accesses the documents online and performs a 3-way match. Then they quickly route the invoice out for approval. Automations save time in other ways as well. Accounting staff no longer call individual schools to track down invoices that were “lost” in someone’s in-basket. Efficiency is further improved because everyone involved in the workflow can view supporting documents online. In the past, all documentation was stored in physical files that were only accessible in the central business office. Propel’s new invoice approval process is transparent, so staff can easily determine which invoices are outstanding and track their status. With DocuWare in place, invoices never need to be recopied and resent; a quick email reminder is all it takes to move the process along. Approval time has dropped from up to two weeks to just a few days. “DocuWare is helping our business office run much smoother,” Business Manager Darryl Robinson says. “I love this program because it provides my staff with quick, easy access to the information we need and that makes our department look good,” The new electronic invoice approval workflow was so successful that Propel is planning to expand DocuWare to manage student and HR records. Document management is essential at Corestruc Corestruc is the flagship company of a conglomerate that includes eleven individual companies and 250 employees. All are active in the concrete, real estate and agricultural industries in South Africa and neighboring countries. Corestruc designs and manufactures pre-cast concrete structures that are used in public infrastructure and the private construction sector. A digital document management system helps coordinate all these corporate threads from their headquarters in Polokwane, located northeast of Johannesburg. Corestruc is benefiting from digitization, especially on the cost side. DocuWare not only significantly reduces processing times, but also improves the flow of information between administration and subsidiaries. As a result, only a fraction of the time is now spent between receipt of invoice and payment. Based on their positive experience, the company plans to use DocuWare in human resources as well. Shelter Products Automates Accounts Payable to Streamline Processes Headquartered in Milwaukie, Oregon, Shelter Products is a distributor of lumber, plywood and other building materials. With sales offices in six states, the company supplies premier building contractors across the country, specializing in just-in-time shipments for projects including multi-family housing, assisted living, hotels and motels. Installing DocuWare solved several industry-specific challenges. “In the construction business, our customers get a draw from their bank loans once a month,” IT director Colin McDonell explains. “Quick turn-around of invoices is critical. If we miss a cut-off by one day, we’re not getting paid for an additional 30 days.” The company has only a few days to take advantage of early payment discounts, and often missed that window due to lost or incorrectly routed paperwork. “We recently put in an automated invoice approval process that replaced the need for sign off on paper. Because we process 2,400 invoices a month, it was a pinch point,” McDonell says. Now invoices are approved within three hours, rather than possibly sitting on someone’s desk for a day or two. “DocuWare’s Workflow Manager has been transformational in the Shelter Products business. While not part of our initial evaluation, it has quickly become the key piece of the puzzle. After Accounts Payable, rolling it out to the Credit and Legal departments is the next step.” 4 Tips for department-by-department implementations Invite future users to your first training sessions: Once you’ve introduced the solution in one department, invite representatives from other departments to sit in on training. They’ll get first-hand experience with the solution. This will get them excited about how document management can positively impact their work lives. Hold a review and optimization workshop and invite business leaders from other departments to attend: Bring your existing users together to talk about what works and doesn’t, and how to apply these successes and challenges in the future. This workshop also serves as a showcase for other departments.
Is your business ready for Cloud Print Management?
How do you know if your business is suited to cloud print management? If you’re a smaller business, whether you want to track and manage or enable your printing, you have more options than running a print server on-premise. You can now manage your printing in the public cloud. But how do you know you’re suited to serverless printing? What’s the checklist? Oh you better believe that’s a hackneyed set-up for a listicle! 4 signs you’re ready for print management in the cloud 1. You’re already in the public cloud More specifically, you’re already using the public cloud for most of your organization’s work. Many SMB workplaces don’t start up with server racks for their data storage. They outsource to Google Drive or Dropbox. Likewise with the various software-as-a-service (SaaS) business applications found in the likes of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. For these workplaces, it makes sense to also utilize cloud print management solutions. No point in just having a print server if all the rest of your work needs are satisfied by cloud-based software. 2. You’re new to print management For years you’ve had one MFP or a couple of small A4 printers used by a handful of employees in a modestly sized office. You know who’s coming and going, you know who’s printing what, you’re not printing anything more confidential than regular office documents. You’ve never felt the need for print tracking and monitoring. Especially when considering it means you have to shell out more cash for a print server and ongoing IT maintenance. Well, now is your time to dip your toe in the water. COVID-19 has accelerated adoption of cloud services for a variety of business worktools and print management is no exception. With cloud print management, you’re not purchasing any additional equipment or budgeting for resources – it removes the print server from the equation. That means no ongoing maintenance costs – that’s all-inclusive in the cloud print management SaaS model. Once upon a time, there was a barrier to print management for businesses that couldn’t justify the expenditure on infrastructure. That’s no longer the case with cloud print management solutions. 3. You’re embracing hybrid/remote working Covid-19 forced a change to professional life that was well overdue: you can be just as productive (if not more) working from home. Since undertaking remote working out of necessity during the pandemic, many businesses worldwide are adopting hybrid working models with a split between office and home working. With workers now coming and going from the office, this redefines many a workplace’s approach to printing. For end-users, sometimes they’ll need to press print in one location and collect their job at another. For IT teams and sysadmins, they require the ability to manage and track printing remotely and on location. With cloud print management and enablement, end-users can juggle between printing at home or the office. Similarly, sysadmins and IT staff can manage printing flexibly. 4. You’re an early tech adopter Print management in the public cloud isn’t new, but it’s still a maturing technology. It will take some time before cloud-native solutions reach the same feature-set and embedded functionality as on-prem and private hosted print management solutions. But for those futurists out there who love getting their hands on new technologies, cloud-native print management is your moment. Remember how smug your Gen Z coworker was when they were early on the TikTok hype train? That could be you! Interested in learning more about our Document Management solutions? Give us a call or shoot us a message here: https://boring.com/contact-us/ Source: Papercut Blog
The Upkeep: Maintaining Your Digital Documents
In this episode of our blog, we are going to go over how to keep those digital documents digital. Most companies that you talk to have already done or are in the process of digitizing all their files. Some may have them saved in their local files, some in a form of cloud-based storage, and others have moved those files to their CRM. Let’s go over some of the departments that may not be keeping those day forward files digital and may still be creating paper-based docs that tend to get lost or misfiled. Accounting – Accounting can be either AP or AR, so this will go over several documents that they have that may still be paper based. Invoices – Companies still rely on printed invoices to send to their clients. Because of the reliance on the Postal Service, it takes longer now to get to the client meaning it takes longer for your company to get paid. This is the same on your end as it now takes longer to pay those invoices and does not allow you to take advantage of early pay discounts. It also means that those invoices could be lost or mis-filed leading to late charges and possibly affecting those relationships with clients or vendors. Expenses – Using paper receipts to capture expenses for the company. This leads to missed charges, late repayment of those expenses, or no reimbursement at all if you cannot recreate the receipt. Delivery Forms – Because there are so many ways to get goods to clients, relying on paper delivery forms can create issues. You cannot charge a client for your goods without proof of delivery, and you would not want to be charged for something delivered if it cannot be proven it was delivered and signed for. HR – HR still heavily relies on paper forms to capture information that they need for the employee profile and file. Repetitive filling out of forms, missing information, and requesting forms for equipment that is needed for the position. Sales – Sales has multiple documents that are important to the company, yet still rely on paper-based processes to move through companies. Sales Packets – These are the lifeblood for any organization with sales teams. Most of the documents are still paper based. Even though companies may be using digital signature capture to get docs signed, they are still internally processing it using paper-based workflows. Customer Documents – These are previous deals, correspondence, proposals, and more. Typically, these documents are kept either paper-based or digital. The real challenge is whether paper-based or digital, trying to find the right document can be a challenge. With CRM’s, you cannot use keyword searching to locate documents. This can be a challenge if you are looking for specific documents that you may not have all the information on, or if it was mistakenly put in the wrong place. In keeping with the theme of keeping docs digital, next blog will go over some ideas and best practices in order to digitize current workflows within your organization. Contact us today to learn more about document digitization! Author: Tom Hubler, Technical Solutions Consultant at Boring
How to Digitize Your Documents and Best Practices
Document digitization is the future of document storage for companies that want to be ahead of the curve. Work from home and hybrid work environments do not allow for traditional file storage as most companies now know it. Rising rents and flexible work schedules are also accelerating this move to digitization with many companies. In this episode of the Boring Blog, we are going to go over the rules and best practices for document digitization. Rule 1 – Decide what would need to be digitized first: Many companies start by scanning / storing all their documents. Depending on how your retention policy is set up, you may just want to start with day forward and then look at what needs to be kept. Once you decide this, you’ll need to see if you have a scanner that can handle the volume of documents needing to be digitized. Typically, you can use a desktop scanner or copier / MFP. If the volume is too large for either of these devices, you may need to look at a dedicated high-speed scanner. You may even need to look at a 3rd party that specializes in this type of work if you do not have the manpower for the project available in-office. Rule 2 – Decide how you would like the documents indexed: Once you set up how these documents are going to be named, stick to it. If you take all the time to digitize your files, index fields make sure that you can find and identify those documents in your system. If you decide to outsource, they will ask you for these fields in advance to make sure the documents are indexed correctly. Rule 3 – Decide who needs to have access to the documents: If these documents need to be accessed by large numbers of people, you may want to look at a cloud-based software to store your documents rather than local storage. You may also want to look at this if you are worried about disaster recovery or if the documents in question are mission critical. Cloud-based document management systems are highly secure and easily accessible from a web browser or even a mobile device. They also save multiple copies of your documents in different data centers in case of disaster or accidental deletion. You can also set up rules regarding who can access documents and what they can do with them. Rule 4 – How to handle the old documents: Depending on your industry, a digital copy of a document is just as compliant as a paper one. If your industry requires paper, you then need to look at the retention schedule. With this in mind, you can then look at the retention schedule of your industry and decide if you need to keep or shred them after digitization. Once you have this answer to this question, you can set up the retention policy or just securely shred the documents. In the next Boring Blog, we are going to go over how you can keep digital documents digital and make them actionable with a cloud-based Document Management System. Contact us to learn more about our Document Management Solutions! Author: Tom Hubler, Technical Solutions Consultant at Boring
The Benefits of Document Digitization
Document digitization is the future of document storage for companies now and in the future. Work from home and hybrid work environments do not allow for traditional file storage as most companies now know it. Rising rents and flexible work schedules are also accelerating this move to digitization with many companies. Right now, companies are paying $25,000 to file a file cabinet and $2,000 a year to maintain that same cabinet. The average commercial office is using 50 to 70% of the floorspace just to store those documents. This doesn’t even begin to address the companies and government agencies that use off premises storage for their documents If you need to know what it is costing your company, you can use this chart to calculate: Paper Costs = Monthly Paper Costs x 12 months File Storage Costs = Number of Filing Cabinets x 16 sq. ft. x Cost per sq. ft. of Office Space Third-Party Storage Costs = Monthly Rent x 12 months Printing Costs = Printer Rental Price + Annual Printer Maintenance Fees + Monthly Ink Cost x 12 months Printer Costs: If you purchased your printers, check your records to average their yearly cost. Print-Related Labor Costs = Labor Hours Spent Managing Paper x Average Hourly Wage x Number of Workdays per Year After you look at the cost of this to your office, you may then have to look at another aspect of paper files, accessibility. With work-from-home and hybrid environments, your workers may not be able to access the documents that they need to perform their jobs effectively. This means lower productivity and higher costs to process tasks for your company. Digitization can be easy if done right. Scanning documents into a traditional Windows folder structure could lead to more confusion and misplaced files if there is not a simple and effective way to retrieve those files when needed. This is where a Content Management System or Document Management System comes into play. These systems allow for full text search and a more structured system for filing and retrieving those documents. Bonus, they are typically cloud based, which means that they can be accessed anywhere with a secure log-in and you do not have to worry about the extra burden on your IT infrastructure. Contact us to help make your office more efficient, streamlined and productive! Author: Tom Hubler, Technical Solutions Consultant at Boring
The Best Practices for Automating Your Office
Dismantling information silos and giving employees easy access to the knowledge they need to drive processes and complete projects is a key objective of any office automation initiative. With the right tools, your organization can unlock the value of information assets, boost employee collaboration and eliminate complicated, broken workarounds for processes. The discovery process that kicks off office automation efforts identifies bottlenecks and highlights how reengineering paper-based processes is necessary for your business to grow. This can also help get you faster buy-in from your peers. Consider this before you start Workflow automation will help you meet information management challenges in both practical and innovative ways. If you take these 10 steps into consideration when making your digital transformation, you will already be miles ahead of your competition. 1. Define the business rules that underlie each workflow process These guidelines describe company policies and procedures and can always be expressed in “either or” questions such as “yes or no” or “true or false.” For example, a business rule might say that if a customer is already in the system (true), they get a 10% discount. If the customer is not in the system (false) they get a 20% discount. 2. Consider the document lifecycle What initiates the process — an email, a phone call, an electronic form, a paper form, a letter that comes in the mail or a walk-in? What is the first action you take with the information? Who is involved in the process? Does the document require review or approval? Is integration with another system or ERP necessary? Is there a mandatory retention schedule for the document? If so, how long do you have to keep it in your archive? 3. Use a process-mapping tool like the free DocuWare Process Planner If you want to plan and optimize your processes, it is crucial to visualize them. Quickly design your processes and workflow and share them with your colleagues. The Process Planner can be used independently without a DocuWare system. 4. Harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) Optical Character Recognition (OCR) templates are a useful tool, but they have limits. Advanced software, such as DocuWare Intelligent Indexing, takes it further and uses AI to automatically process documents when data fields like invoice numbers and company names are in different places on the document depending on the supplier. The software can scan electronic and paper documents for key terms and convert that information into searchable indexed data. 5. Use version control Version control ensures that documents maintain their original integrity so that you don’t have to worry about managing multiple paper copies or having multiple electronic copies edited by different people offline. You can also make sure that everyone who makes changes to a document is working with the most current version. Older versions can be viewed in the version history which also shows the version numbers, the status, the storage date, any comments, and the user who saved the document. 6. Specify substitution rules to assign tasks to groups rather than to one person Then tasks can be automatically assigned to the first employee who currently has free capacity. At the same time, managers can monitor the processing of the workflows. Substitution rules can also reassign tasks when a team member is out of the office. 7. Use barcodes to speed up the indexing of paper documents If you attach a barcode to the first page of every document that should be grouped together, you can scan all your documents in one batch. Each new barcode identifies a new document type. In addition, they separate documents when scanning and when importing large batches of documents. For example, if you receive a lot of invoices that you would like to scan and store in one step, you can use a barcode to identify the invoice number field and send every invoice to a specified folder to be reviewed and approved. 8. Automate import Use automated import to send documents to a monitored folder from which they can be automatically and correctly stored. This is particularly useful when you are using network scanners or ERP software that create many PDF documents. Automated import is beneficial for companies that process large volumes of documents. 9. Follow consistent naming conventions across the organization Stick to a consistent method for naming files and folders. Use broad headings for folders rather than getting too specific. Paying attention to this detail will increase searchability. 10. Use an automated related documents feature Linking documents that are part of the same business process can be done easily by creating a common data field. Associated documents can then be retrieved in one click. Contact us to help make your office more efficient, streamlined and productive! Source: DocuWare Blog, Joan Honig