Planting the seed for an effective ECM system...

As the weather warms up, you may be making preparations for planting a garden.  Before you start, you’ll need to pick the best location. You’ll also have to find the proper tools and the right seeds. You’ll need to tend to the garden…water it…weed it…keep the pests away. In the end you'll (hopefully) have wonderful fruits, vegetables, and flowers as proof of all of your hard work. 

In a similar way, a fair amount of planning goes into an effective ECM system before you're able to enjoy the fruits of your labor.  You'll need to figure out exactly how you want to set everything up before you even get started. Specifically, you'll need to:  

• Analyze what document types you plan to store electronically, for example – invoices, expense reports, resumes, claims forms, etc.

• Evaluate what types of metadata—name, employee number, date, company, etc.—describe each of those documents. This will simplify retrieval later.

• Determine whether any of those documents should enter into business process models for automated processing.

The article, Indexing 101: A Candid Look at the Birds and the Bees, explains how you should assemble a team of users, administrators, and IT staff from each department that may use the system to come up with an indexing plan, which may involve:

• Identifying every type of incoming document

• Grouping documents according to the departments that process them

• Listing document metadata

• Identifying the criteria that staff use to retrieve documents today

• Determining how you will handle exceptions

The bottom line:

Just like planting a garden, ECM projects can be a lot of work. But, with the proper planning and expertise from the beginning, you'll be able to enjoy the "harvest" of a successfully managed ECM system including increased efficiency and reduced costs.

Talk to us:

For help in planting the seed of an effective ECM system in your organization, contact us today.

Optical Image Technology, Inc. - 100 Oakwood Avenue, Suite 700, State College, PA  16803  Ph: 800.678-3241  www.docfinity.com

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