Document Imaging Blog

Information Input and Output Relationships

I was talking to an IT director at a large customer of ours recently about his information management strategy and was impressed by his realistic and holistic view of information management…or Enterprise Content Management (ECM), to use AIIM’s industry term. Like many organizations, he has an ECM application in the center of his content management strategy. And, like many organizations, he has mapped out the connections from that ECM system to his line of business applications, Intranets, Extranets, desktop applications and email systems, as well as paper.

 

Where this conversation became interesting was his view of the input/output relationships between every one of these parts, including paper. This input/output relationship is often forgotten when considering paper, with the focus being solely on the act of converting paper-based information to electronic form (input). But conversion and input is only half of the story. Understanding how users work with electronic files (both scanned and digitally originated), is critical to the success of an information management strategy. What he has delivered is an information management strategy that encompasses the complete document or content lifecycle.

 

 

Think about your users’ work processes. Getting a paper document into an electronic system is good for storage, but most of the time that document needs to be accessed again, edited, possibly combined with other documents, and either shared or checked back into the system. These tasks typically consist of performing multiple steps and opening multiple applications. However, using standard document formats like PDF, and working with PDF software that is integrated directly with your other applications, can significantly reduce the number of steps…improving productivity, saving labor costs, reducing resource contraints, and creating a better work environment.

Partner Ecosystems and the Customer

Jeff Shuey, who writes a great blog about the intersection of People and Process, made a very important comment in a recent post about Microsoft partners. Talking about how each partner in an ecosystem benefited (revenue wise) from the ecosystem, he noted one of the primary benefits of ecosystems for customers:

 

"…customers can take comfort in the knowledge that the partner ecosystem will be there to support them. Note that I said the 'ecosystem' – I did not say the specific partners. A vibrant partner ecosystem allows the mix of partners to change over time to meet the ever changing needs of the customer."

 

This is in reference to Microsoft, but it applies to the Document Imaging ecosystem as well. Hardware manufacturers, ISVs, VARs, Office Equipment Dealers and Systems Integrators all sit in the ecosystem, and can all benefit from working together. But rarely do the ecosystem pieces remain static at a customer. MFP vendors change on a regular basis as leases expire. New software applications are consistently being rolled out. And the VARs, dealers and SIs that sell and support these systems change with them.

 

In the Microsoft world, Microsoft sits at the center of the ecosystem as the glue. Choose to work with Microsoft, and you also get the benefit of working with their ecosystem. With Document Imaging, that glue is an open platform that lets any scanning device (MFPs and scanners) connect to any software application. Add some Xerox devices to a Canon environment? – no problem. Decide to roll-out SharePoint to supplement OnBase and Documentum? No need to change how you handle the problem of getting paper into those systems.

 

Ecosystems are an essential ingredient in delivering customer-focused solutions. And they help drive standards. And, they present revenue opportunities for all the partners involved. It’s no wonder that Microsoft spends so much money on building theirs!

Deliver Fast ROI via Document Imaging

With the end of the year approaching and a weakening economic forecast, there is a lot of talk right now about the IT forecasts for the coming year. A recent AIIM survey of end users found that 42% or organizations see hard dollar ROI as "more" or "much more" important than 12 months ago. On a positive note, the same survey showed that only 27% of organizations expect IT spending to decrease.

I’m certainly biased, but this news is encouraging for the document imaging space. Why? It is a technology that delivers fast, demonstratable ROI in a number of ways. Just a few examples:

1. Cuts operating costs – hard dollars are recovered by lowering the costs of resources, materials, courier and fax charges, and storage related to paper processes
2. Increases worker efficiencies – replacing manual, labor-intensive and error-prone paper-based processes with electronic workflows allows you to get more value from your existing employees, reducing the need for expanding your workforce
3. Leverage your IT systems – businesses aren’t fully benefiting from software investments because information/data that exists in paper form isn’t being processed as quickly or securely as the information that resides in those systems.

As these examples show, document imaging ROI is typically process-oriented. But BPM and other process automation methods and technologies are at risk of being put on hold due to tightened budgets and a track record of taking a long time to implement and even longer time to demonstrate ROI. Maybe this year is not the time to undertake a corporate-wide BPM project. But it is definitely the year to look at eliminating paper from typical business processes such as invoice processing, expense reporting, purchase orders, employee on-boarding, recruitment, contract management, loan processing and so on. More examples are available here.

If you can demonstrate immediate ROI by using document imaging to improve business processes by integrating paper into electronic workflows this year, it will go a long way towards a successful business process management initiative in the future.

SharePoint, BPM and Document Imaging

As promised, here’s a couple of things I gleaned during last week’s AIIM seminar in Boston. If you missed the roadshow and are interested in learning more about Document Imaging, SharePoint and BPM, register for the November 19th AIIM webinar.

1. SharePoint adoption is still growing, but it has not yet moved past a collaboration and document library/portal tool in most organizations.
2. Pretty much every ECM vendor has built integration into SharePoint and is happily co-existing. SharePoint does not seem to be a threat to ECM technology vendors.
3. Records management is the major area where SharePoint lacks functionality to compete against ECM solutions.

Good information, but nothing earth shattering. What resonated with me, however, was Carl Frappalo’s keynote about BPM. He noted that when undertaking a Business Process Management initiative, technology considerations are secondary. Instead, it is all about understanding your business workflows at their most granular level and determining where the inefficiencies lie. Only then can you begin to improve those processes through re-design and, sometimes, technology.

For example, we have a customer that was spending well north of $100K each year retrieving invoices, checks and other financial documents for use by auditors. The images below represent the before and after workflows for invoice retrieval. Note that in this “before” workflow, most steps are colored Red, indicating that they are paper-based. The only electronic step is the first one…meaning that this workflow originated electronically, but then reverted to paper-based. Definitely not a path to business process efficiencies!

In the “after” workflow, the invoices are scanned at the beginning of the workflow process, enabling the rest of the workflow to be completed electronically. As important, the process is now “self-service”; eliminating the need to engage the A/P department for standard invoice retrieval tasks.

The result of this single workflow change and the elimination of paper early in a business process? $100K+ in cost savings and a reduction in process time from days to minutes!! Just think about how many processes in your organization could be improved simply by identifying areas where paper intersects with a business process.

SharePoint and Business Process Management

I’m headed down to Boston tomorrow for the AIIM seminar: "Automating Document-Centric Processes: Is SharePoint Enough?". I’m looking forward to hearing from vendors and end users alike about how far SharePoint has actually come in terms of Business Process Management and Business Process Automation. There is little question that SharePoint adoption is still hot. In fact, at our Paper Connection Forum last week, 4 of our 6 Best Practices winners are in the process of rolling out SharePoint or are already using it enterprise-wide.

However, the big question seems to be whether the technology can move from a hosted document library and collaboration tool to a technology that sits at the core of business processes.  For example, of those customers at our event last week that I mentioned, every deployment of SharePoint was focused on collaboration and content management, not business processes. I think a big part of this is a lack of understanding and I hope that tomorrow will shed some light on the topic. What do you think? What have you observed? And what would you like to find out about it? I’ll be writing a post following the seminar and would be interested to compare your thoughts to those of the seminar attendees.

And if you are interested in more information on this topic, please register for the November 19th AIIM Webinar, Automating Document-Centric Processes within SharePoint.

Reducing Paper in Document Workflows

I’ve been spending some time lately putting together before and after workflow diagrams of some of our customer implementations and had an interesting realization. It seems that too often we get laser focused on how many steps are reduced in a “before and after” solution. And we believe that a reduction in steps from 9 to 7 is not as good as a reduction from 9 to 6.

What I am realizing is that this may not always be the case with document imaging. With document imaging, the workflow improvements come from the reduction of paper, and the resulting manual processes. Yes, there may be a reduction in steps as well. But, in some cases, there may actually be steps added as more electronic systems are touched.  However, there is always a reduction in the time spent on steps, since working with electronic information is vastly quicker than working with paper.

Not surprisingly, the workflows that showed the biggest improvements in time spent (and therefore $$) were the ones that moved the scanning process closest to the beginning of the workflow. With document imaging, it’s not a complicated message -- the earlier that paper is eliminated, the more efficient the remainder of the workflow is.

Content Management, Document Imaging and ROI

Thank you Peter Hagopian, for expanding the reach of the eDOC Magazine article “Making a Case for Content Management” in InformationWeek’s Content Management Blog. Numbers always make for a compelling story, and the City of Torrance is a terrific example of how removing inefficiencies from document workflows can have a major impact. A $500,000 annual return on a $100,000 investment is tremendous – and is especially nice to see when taxpayer money is impacted!

A big reason that the City of Torrance was able to get this level of ROI from their solution (eCopy, Rainmaker & Interwoven) was due to the fact that they identified document imaging as a core part of their content management solution. Falling into the trap of implementing a document or content management system to handle electronic documents but ignoring the amount of paper that exists in an organization is a sure way to see diminishing returns on that system.

The paperless office is still only a vision, and paper continues to be an important business tool. The challenge, perhaps, is not to create a paperless office, but to create an office where paper and digital documents are woven together in an efficient, cost-effective and easy-to-use workflow that revolutionizes the way people work. This is what the City of Torrance has done to great success by including document imaging as part of their content management solution.  To read more about their success, download the case study.

Making Scanning & Sharing Documents Easier with SharePoint

Microsoft posted a SharePoint customer case study article today on the Microsoft Momentum site. The article features eCopy document imaging software customer Introgen Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company that used SharePoint and eCopy to meet government regulations. The author, Alan Earls, discusses how eCopy duplicates the Microsoft SharePoint user experience at the MFP. To read the article click on Microsoft SharePont document imaging.

School Pays for Student Laptops via the Paperless Office

The UK national newspaper The Guardian posted an article today in its education section about a high school that helped pay for its students' laptops by implementing a paperless office strategy through MFP document imaging. The savings came from eliminating the cost of distributing paper documents. The article can be read by clicking here. You know that when a national, daily newspaper starts writing about MFP document imaging, the topic is beginning to be popular.

4th Annual eCopy Paper Connection Forum

I generally try to avoid talking about eCopy specific information in this blog, but wanted to put in a quick plug for our annual conference, the eCopy Paper Connection Forum. It’s a unique event in the industry, as we gather hundreds of representatives from office equipment manufacturers, independent software vendors and office equipment resellers all in the same location to network, learn about document imaging, and help each other succeed. And this year, for the first time, we’re inviting end users to participate in the event and get a chance to meet with all of the different companies that make up the office document ecosystem and learn how they can improve their document workflows.

So, mark your calendars for October 6-9, 2008 for the event in Boston. And please tell us what is important for you to hear at the event -- we’re working on the agenda now and we welcome your input!