Progressing Beyond Electronic Storage and Retrieval: 4 Tips That Show you How

If you were an adult in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, you may remember your first cell phone sighting. I certainly remember mine. A friend of mine had moved from Los Angeles to my town, and he brought his cell phone with him. It was a cumbersome device, almost unrecognizable by today’s standards. (I can remember secretly wondering if my friend was really so important that people would need to reach him at all times. It was a different mentality back then—maybe not so much in L.A., but definitely in central Pennsylvania.)

Fast forward 17 years. Cell phones have evolved to become a ubiquitous part of our daily lives. In many households, cell phones have replace land lines. Much to the horror of a colleague of mine, the word “text” has entered our lexicon as a verb.

And still, cell phones continue to evolve in order to meet our communication and networking needs. The phone capability—once the defining characteristic of these devices—has been relegated to the backseat. More often than not, phones are used for Internet access, social networking, cameras, texting (sorry, Rhonda), and yes, even making and receiving calls. It’s easy to recognize that mobile computing offers thousands of applications that can simplify our lives—usually in ways that target our unique needs.

Enterprise content management (ECM) systems, too, have advanced to address specialized business needs—regardless of your organization’s size or budget. As such, if your company is looking at ECM solely as a means to reduce paper, you’re missing the big picture. The technology has evolved far beyond front-end capture. Workflow, integration, automation, and business process management (BPM) help businesses become more productive, competitive, and efficient. If you haven’t embraced the new technology, not only are you not getting the most out of your software investments—you’re losing money with every passing day.

An attractive nuisance

On the surface, a simple imaging and storage solution seems like an attractive idea. It enables you to minimize paper coming into your organization, and improves access to information in ways that— under a paper-based system—you could never before have imagined. Imaging and storage saves you time, effort, and money that might otherwise be spent on office supplies, physical storage costs, and time-consuming searches for information. Electronic access to your documents reduces paper and helps tremendously with audits. If you have a good indexing system, your documents are no longer lost, misplaced, or duplicated. What’s not to like?

It’s all good. So maybe “nuisance” is a little strong. But if you’re using ECM solely for imaging and storage, you’re not getting your money’s worth. It’s like using your Blackberry or iPhone just to make phone calls. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that as an SMB, you can’t afford to automate. Anyone can make the excuse that they don’t have the resources. Every day that you hesitate, you continue to lose money.

The reality is that in today’s competitive business environment, you can’t afford not to automate. The following areas, in particular, can yield tremendous returns when enhanced with workflow and business process management (BPM):

1. Customer service

Many SMBs make the mistake of thinking that just because they’ve reduced paper, they’ve taken ECM as far as it can go. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Admittedly, you experience great improvements by making customer records available electronically. Electronic access is a great place to start with ECM; however, you need to be asking yourself what more you can be doing to optimize the customer experience.

By using workflow and BPM to provide self-service to your customers, you can dramatically improve turnaround. At the same time, you relieve your workforce of processing burdens. Routine processing can be automated, which frees your skilled staff to focus on exceptions and specialized cases that require critical analysis.

The fundamental component in automating self-service is the implementation of electronic forms. An ECM system allows you to securely create, access, manage, and transmit forms online. This benefits customers, and also improves transactions for clients, partners, and staff. Electronic forms ensure consistency in the collection of information. At the same time, they allow you to increase revenue by improving turnaround time, efficiency, and accuracy. A robust system will allow you to capture and workflow data from both structured and unstructured forms.

Your customers expect to have self-service. If they don’t have that option, they may very well take their business elsewhere.

2. Automating HR and other back office processes

As you consider automation, don’t neglect your back-office. A robust ECM system will integrate with Lawson, SAP, PeopleSoft, and other HR applications, allowing you to manage back office records more effectively. You can automate hiring processes (such as onboarding), purchasing, accounting, accounts payable, and other areas that traditionally are paper-intensive.

ECM offers the ability to launch documents requiring approvals, signatures, processing, or other actions into a workflow by automatically pushing them to the right parties at the right time. Routine procedures such as job postings and policy updates can be automated, while security and comprehensive audit trails can be used to demonstrate governance. Which brings us to our next topic:

3. Risk Management and Good Governance

It’s true that—compared to paper records—a simple imaging and electronic storage solution offers unparalleled improvements in privacy and security. With electronic access, customer and staff records are better protected from being lost, misplaced, or viewed by unauthorized personnel. In a potential e-discovery situation, you can locate and produce requested records more easily when they are electronic. However, in terms of governance, a simple storage/retrieval system offers breadth but not depth. To truly minimize risk, you need the ability to automate.

Regardless of your industry, the stringent requirements regarding records retention and disposition demand a cohesive strategy. If you hold on to records beyond their retention period, you are putting your company at risk. Similarly, if you destroy records prematurely, you are at risk of noncompliance. By using workflow and BPM to automate your records management strategy (retention schedules, audit trails, purge requirements, data migration, backups, etc.), you can remove the potential for human error from the process. There is a role for front-end capture, but that is merely a starting point. Your ECM system will allow you to:

1. Differentiate records from other documents, and designate the length of their lifecycles.
2. Automate retention and destruction schedules.
3. Implement a timeframe for data migration of records, and automate the process. (This allows you to archive records on a cost-effective electronic medium when they are no longer active but still need to be retained.)
4. Enact a disaster recovery plan.

In this litigious age, records management is serious business. Regulators are no longer just focusing on large businesses when enforcing compliance. A solid—and transparent—records management strategy that is driven by workflow and BPM will not only streamline efficiency; it could save your business.

4. Where to start?

Where you start with automation depends on your business processes. Typically, SMBs experience successful implementations when they start in one area and—after enhancing that area—roll out the solution to the rest of the company. The following recommendations can help to ensure success:

1. Don’t assume that as an SMB, you can’t afford ECM. Find a vendor who not only has a superior product, but also offers pricing options. An experienced vendor will work with you to provide a solution that addresses your business needs and meets your budgetary constraints. Look for ECM software that is based on open architecture so that it can integrate with your current and future software applications. It should have a superior BPM/Workflow product that offers the flexibility and extensibility to meet your needs, and have the scalability to address your challenges as you grow.
2. Know the intricacies of your business processes. The importance of this step cannot be overemphasized. If you have existing inefficiencies with a paper-based system, don’t duplicate them electronically. Enlisting your vendor’s expertise for a process analysis can be extremely helpful during the planning stages of your implementation.
3. Enact a change management plan. The idea of automation can be intimidating to staff who think that their jobs might be threatened. Include staff in your workflow and BPM plans, and find ways to generate excitement about the changes. Your implementation is far more likely to fail because of staff resistance than it is from limitations in any particular ECM software.
4. Enlist members from every department when you develop a document indexing plan. In order to optimize efficiency throughout your company, you need to make sure that people are able to retrieve the documents they need. They may look for documents in different ways, and this should be reflected in your indexing plan.
5. Start small. Find an area that is infused with routine processes. Map those processes, and determine how automation can simplify them and ensure consistency.

Make a commitment

Even if you are able to process your materials efficiently with your current system, do not make the mistake of becoming complacent. Make a commitment to continual process improvement. If your IT staff is not in a position to take on new challenges, talk with an ECM vendor about evaluating your business processes. Every process improvement that you can implement today will have lasting contributions to a prosperous future.

For more information or to schedule a demonstration, please Contact DocFinity now.