Graham Robinson, Avanquest ProcessFlows

We can forget to measure the costs of some of the familiar things we take for granted in our every day working environment, and they all add up!

Do you know, or does anyone in your organisation know how much is spent on:

• Office Paper for copying and printing?
• Printers and consumables?
• MFD’s – have they saved you any money?
• General filing stationery?
• Internal Mail/Communications?
• External Mail/Communications?
• Fax machines and consumables?
• Storage space?
• Data entry?
• Business Travel?
• Fixing mistakes in processes?

For many organisations these costs can run into hundreds of £1000’s, and that is not taking in account the huge labour cost consumed incurring all these costs.

We can show you how to halve these costs– then, if you are lucky, you can use the savings for much better returns or simply meet your target cut as directed.

0800 988 5543, or email sales@processflows.co.uk.

Whatever the reason, simply not showing up for a hospital appointment is not acceptable – or so you would have thought. 

There will always be genuine reasons for missed appointments, but such a large figure does make you wonder if there are a lot of people who think it is acceptable not to turn up without letting anyone know?

There are lots of ‘excuses’, but the truth is, we probably just forgot.  Medical appointments can be made weeks, or even months in advance, so the fact that we forget isn’t surprising. 

Could a simple reminder by text – perhaps scheduled a week before the appointment, then another the day before – solve the problem?

Chatting in the office, we all agreed that none of us like to miss appointments and that we would not ignore an appointment reminder if we received it on our mobile phone – particularly if we received a second reminder.  It would definitely prompt us to let the clinic or surgery know if we couldn’t make it.  Then they have time to fill our slot and a medical professional’s time would not be compromised.

At ProcessFlows we are probably more familiar than a lot of people about the convenience of text messaging beyond just being a great way to keep in touch with friends and family. 

As we sell an SMS solution and use it on a daily basis in-house to communicate with work colleagues – email to text and vice versa – we are fully up to speed on the business uses of SMS as well. 

Our customers tell us that using text has vastly improved communications – which is why our technical team have developed an SMS Patient Notification System. 

Information on our SMS Patient Notification Solution can be found in the Solutions section of our web site.  Find out more about the many uses of SMS in business on the Text Message Server web site.

Alternatively, if you want to give us a call, we will be happy to answer any queries and arrange a demo for you.

0800 988 5543, or email sales@processflows.co.uk.

Antony Biondi, Business Development Manager, Avanquest ProcessFlows

It happens all too often – usually because you just can’t get the ‘paperwork’ through the system in time to hit the bank run.

Queries, which will be out of your control, slow everything up – so and so maybe on holiday, at the dentist etc. so can’t get a timesheet authorised or the timesheet maybe illegible – and no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get the information into the payroll system by the deadline.

You know that staff who don’t get paid on time will have a rotten weekend – no money for a night out or cash to spend on a new pair of shoes!

The knock-on effect is that staff who don’t get paid on time then don’t perform well and productivity drops off, and that will affect the whole business.

There is a simple way of solving this problem – Timesheet Automation.  Timesheet Automation speeds up the time critical task of processing timesheets from receipt to payroll and eliminates time consuming mistakes.

A processing task which took days can be reduced to just a few hours.  The result is a workforce that is confident about having their wages in the bank in time for the weekend and a happier workforce.

Payroll staff will feel better too.  They will be less stressed as they will not have that weekly pressure of nagging/cajoling/persuading people to deal with the timesheet exceptions in time for the payroll run.   They will no longer feel guilty that they have let employees down by missing the deadline.

If you empathise with this problem, take a look at our Timesheet Automation page.

If you think we can help smooth the passage of your Timesheets through to Payroll, give us a call on 0800 988 5543, or email sales@processflows.co.uk.

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As there is a two-step process for voting we now need you to vote again for us in the “Channel Partner of the Year” category.

We still need as much support as possible so we would be grateful, if you have a minute, to vote for us!

Please go to www.dmawards.com and then click on the tab at the top marked ‘Vote Now’ – we are top of the list in the Partner category.

The rules are:

One email address, one vote and voting closes on 30th September 2010.

So please get voting now!

Waveney District Council is using text messaging to notify their kennelling contractor (Dog Warden) that a stray dog needs to be rounded up.

It is cutting down the number of stray dogs roaming about by saving the contractor time – he no longer needs to keep going back to base to pick up the next faxed list of ‘dogs to collect’, he can go straight to the next location/dog.

How it works:

• Between 8:30am and 9:00pm, 7 days a week, members of the public can report a stray dog (out of hours - advice is available on what to do if you find a stray)
• If a dog needs to be collected, the call centre operator fills in an e-form on their intranet
• The e-form generates a text message which is sent to the kennelling contractor, informing him of the location and a description of the dog
• The dog is collected and taken to the Council’s designated kennels

Future plans are to take the service one step further by making the e-form available on the council’s web site so it can be completed directly by the public.

Why did they do this?

The Clean Neighbourhoods & Environment Act removed the obligation on the police to accept strays delivered to police stations by members of the public.

This meant the number of dogs notified to the council as ‘strays’ increased overnight from about 100 to 450 per year.

Visit our dedicated Text Message Server web site for further information and inspiration on other ways of using text to improve communications.

Businesses are holding back on investing in new office equipment to save costs – but if you continue to own your fleet of printers, fax machines, scanners and Multi Function Printers (MFPs) there is a limited amount you can do to reduce overall costs.

Print Technologies Enable Cost Savings and Revenue Growth

The pressures to reduce costs, cut carbon footprint and adhere to regulatory compliance are all driving companies towards Managed Print Services (MPS) – whereby the whole printing and copying estate is placed on a single contract covering hardware, consumables and maintenance.

A Managed Print Service (MPS) removes the cost of hardware ownership, takes away any associated staffing responsibility and delivers greater visibility of spending.

Increasingly, software applications are being included in managed print services; to reduce the costs of printing by using mono or duplex devices, increase security and tracking with network authentication or proximity cards and to automate business processes like invoice approval, by integrating scanning and printing with ECM and workflow applications.

Fax is another important consideration for organisations that are considering moving to a managed print service.

Fax continues to be used in banking, healthcare, the legal sector and many other industries for daily, critical communications.

The estimated running cost of a fax machine when you include the capital cost of the device, maintenance, power usage, phone line rental and consumables is a staggering £300 per year!

Customer, Bernard Matthews Farms, told us that for every 4 conventional devices, they need only one MFP

Whilst most MFPs have the ability to send and receive faxes, they rely on an analogue phone line or an Internet connection with a third party fax service.

Whilst this may suffice for the basic job of sending a fax, the ability to integrate fax into other applications (MS Office, MS Outlook, ERP, CRM, ECM) is limited as is the ability to provide an electronic tracking which can be integrated into the overall printing, scanning and copying audit-trail.

Furthermore, many companies have now deployed Voice over IP (VoIP) or intend to in the future, with the goal of dramatically reducing their telephony costs by moving voice traffic onto the data network and eliminating analogue lines. Enabling analogue fax cards on Multi-Function devices does not fit in with this strategy.

Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition allows users to send faxes from the front-panel of the Multi-function device by simply logging in, selecting the fax option and entering the number.

• The fax is sent across the network to Open Text Fax Server where it interprets the sending user, applies a coversheet and transmits the document to its destination
• The user is notified in email of a successful send, retries or undelivered faxes
• Inbound faxes can be routed directly to the nearest device and stored until the user enters their credentials
• Alternatively, they can be routed directly to the user’s email inbox
• Fax Server supports a wide range of vendors including Canon, HP, Konica-Minolta, Ricoh, Sharp and Xerox

There are a number of additional benefits to be gained by implementing a Fax Server as part of your managed print services

• Improved productivity (reducing the time it takes to send, receive and distribute faxes)
• Reduced call costs by using your IP network to transmit faxes for some or all of the journey
• Reduced administration by using a single virtualised IP fax server which can support all offices on the IP network and increased visibility of fax usage

It is therefore easy to understand why the demand for Fax Servers is increasing. MFPs have gone a long way to unify the print, fax, copy and scan functionality.  Cutting the number of fax machines, printers etc. by replacing them with a MFP, will dramatically reduce energy consumption (computers, printers, fax machines and copiers consume energy even while they are not in use) and being ‘greener and leaner’ in this way will ultimately add to the bottom line.

There is no disagreement on the fact that SharePoint is a great enterprise collaboration and productivity tool which meets the strong business need to provide a company-wide, easy access infrastructure for the sharing of information.  There is also a common belief that SharePoint is for internal use only, but this is not the case.  SharePoint is frequently accessed remotely by employees via web enabled devices.

Graham Reddie, Avanquest ProcessFlows

Information security compliance relies on the enforcement of policies and controls

Given that SharePoint is misunderstood as being ‘for internal use only’; it is likely that only basic security guidelines to protect the data may have been followed.  Organisations naively believe that their IT department have the security issues covered.  But this is false sense of security – once the SharePoint data leaves the network, you lose visibility and control of what happens to it.

You can’t secure what you don’t know about

Monitoring, encrypting, filtering and blocking SharePoint data when it is being accessed modified and transferred across a network via multiple points of entry and exit is the only way to insure security both internally and externally.

We can develop a security solution to protect your SharePoint information automatically as it leaves the SharePoint server (still retaining indexing and search functionality) and facilitate the application of management rules so you can control the security of content being added or moved from/into SharePoint.

Paul Bamberger, Technical Consultant at Avanquest ProcessFlows recounts a recent conversation he had on the train with  a senior telecoms consultant who worked for a major UK telecommunications company.

For many reasons, which I won’t bother you with, I travel a lot by train and one of the things I have a bad habit of doing is chatting to whoever is unlucky enough to be sitting next to or opposite me. Firstly, if you are someone who I have spoken too, please accept my apologies if all you actually wanted to do was read your novel, catch up with the newspaper or enjoy your latest iTunes download.

I genuinely find snapshots of peoples’ lives from these brief conversations can be quite fascinating. For me, some of the most interesting conversations are around the work that people do and especially their experience of technologies and the associated struggles that they have in their work. When I tell them that I am involved in Document Management and Fax Server technologies, many have stories of how inefficient their businesses are – it’s almost tempting to hand over a business card – but there is a silent etiquette for these conversations that usually precludes it.

Sometimes I am able to suggest ideas to them that they would have dismissed. On a recent journey out of London on a packed commuter train, stood in the vestibule, I chatted to a senior telecoms consultant who worked for a major UK telecommunications company. When he discovered that I worked with fax he was quite dismissive of the technology, not because he felt it was irrelevant – he recognised that there are large business sectors where it is still a key means of communication –  but because fax is unable to integrate into modern IP telephone technologies.

The problem, he explained, was that fax machines and fax servers needed IP voice calls to be converted back into an old style analogue calls – he informed me that when he discussed this with the technology experts in the business and they had confirmed it. I know they are not on their own on this – it seems to be widely accepted by the telecoms industry that fax does not integrate into modern IP infrastructures.

What I was able to explain to him was that his knowledge was out of date! He seemed genuinely surprised to discover that we can connect our Fax Servers via IP (Fax over IP) to either the IP telephone systems (including makes such as Cisco, Avaya and Nortel) or directly to IP trunks provided by the telecommunications company. Many businesses who move to VoIP systems have to put in analogue fax lines or converters to support fax machines and multi-function printers – I explained how we could remove this need.

Then he got off the train.

Left with me in the vestibule area were a mother and daughter, who had spent the last half hour dissecting a burger & fries and a man in uncomfortable looking bicycle shorts, holding his bike up at an odd angle so people could walk by. They didn’t seem that interested in Fax over IP … but maybe a conversation on healthy eating?

If you’d like to talk about how we can help integrate your fax into your VoIP environment, just email with your regular train routes, times and where you sit.

“Many independent reports agree that over 10% of knowledge-workers costs can be lost on searching for and manually processing information, and some claim 25% of employee time is frittered away in this pursuit.”
Graham Robinson, Avanquest ProcessFlows.

As the recession eases for commerce, but as the government bail-out costs begin to reduce the budgets for public sector bodies, these inefficiencies are to be avoided for both markets.

Despite the ECM technology being mature, offices still abound with paper and manual processes, but managing the change and being confident of the benefits are sometimes factors hindering the use of ECM. Some ECM projects have failed through being overly ambitious causing suspicion on adopting such methods.

Organisations can be put off by the word ‘Enterprise’ since this infers change across the entire organisation. This may be the ultimate goal, but not the way to start out.

Using the components of ECM, as illustrated below, it is better to take a phased approach to implementation.

• Build the ECM solution in well defined projects, with measurable benefits, so that one can clearly see progress and build confidence in the new methods
• Engage with stakeholders at all levels, since ECM can impact all roles in the organisation.

1. CAPTURE

If there are documents arriving as paper in the mail, or being printed out from faxes and emails, then you are perpetuating inefficient working.

A hard copy file cannot be retrieved or processed in any other way than manually – keying in data from it, moving it from one place to another, photocopying, filing, retrieving the file, making it a record, sending it to someone else as an email by scanning it or using the internal post – are all slow methods.

Moving from paper based working to electronic is the single largest change that will be caused by investing in ECM.  Paper-based working is firmly embedded in many business processes which have been used for a great many years.  This change is fundamental to more efficient working, and so must be undertaken with care and consideration for those affected by this change.

CAPTURE includes converting paper copies into scanned images, NOT printing out faxes and emails, and where appropriate uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to automatically extract the data contained in the document for entry to another process, e.g. Invoices, Application Forms, correspondence.

One customer recently quoted that whereas it used to take 10 minutes for each document to be processed they can now process 10 documents per minute using an automated capture solution.

• Valuable TIME is saved by NOT manually processing from paper
• Valuable COST is saved too: by using far less paper, not copying, less filing cabinets, freeing up office space, less postage, less files, and all the associated labour costs.

2. SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL

Unless you make multiple copies you can only file a document in one filing classification, whether it is an electronic file or paper.

Let’s take a simple Invoice that has been received. For example we can file it under:

• Purchase Order Number sequence
• Date order sequence
• Alphabetical by Vendor Name sequence
• Alphabetical by Product Type sequence.

So how do you find all the Invoices received from a particular vendor, for a particular product, over a given date range?  Or how do you find all the PO’s that have been raised for a particular product?  Such questions that are asked every day for management information or to resolve a query, take personal knowledge of the filing conventions used and time to answer (much time sometimes).

You either make multiple copies for each filing classification or spend time rooting out the files you need and then sometimes photocopying these to save losing the original copies.

Within an ECM database one single electronic file (formed either from scanning or imported from an email etc) can be given multiple classifications.  This means that you can search for “all the Invoices received from a particular vendor, for a particular product, over a given date range”, with just a simple query and then given precisely all the files that match those criteria immediately.

• NO physical searching
• NO copying
• NO lost files,
• NO re-filing
• NO TIME taken
• NO MONEY is spent on searching, paper and photocopying.

The effort to place documents into an ECM system on arrival is trivial compared to the effort of not doing so.

3. FILING AND RECORD KEEPING

Who takes care of the archives in your organisation – you, a third party, the office administrator, the company archivist or no-one?

It is not uncommon for paper files to be moved to a remote place for ‘safe-storage’, once the filing cabinet space has all been used up.  A construction company stored all its paper archives in the roof void of the offices they occupied!  Others send them to commercial organisations for long term storage, and there have been occasions of major fires in these paper-filled warehouses with the consequential loss of very valuable records.

Records are documents and files that need to be kept for a given length of time and then destroyed, or reviewed for further retention.  Some may be kept for many years.  Some Records Managers wish to destroy as many records as possible, to save cost and effort!

Events normally trigger the declaration of a document as a Record.  An employee leaves the company; an Invoice is paid; a contract is agreed; etc.  Without some automation Record Keeping can be:

• Very inconsistent
• Inaccurate
• Basically ignored.

In the case of the latter, companies can be in breach of the Data Protection Act 1988 by keeping records of failed job applicants for more than seven months and for ex-employees for more than seven years.

ECM takes away all these issues by controlling the processes in the business using workflow (see below) and when a key event takes place then Records are made at that point automatically and reviewed and/or destroyed at times set by the record keeping rules used in the business.  Furthermore, compared to paper archives, there is much higher security for document access provided by ECM, since all files are electronically protected and are audited for every access.

Some organisations are afraid that electronic files may not be legally admissible in court.  This is not true, since many records only ever existed in electronic form.

• So TIME is saved by not having to ‘make’ records, transporting these to offsite locations and managing these records
• COST is saved by not having to pay third parties, or occupying office accommodation that can be better used, and by instant access to corporate Records when and if you need to.

The same benefits apply to any form of electronic information /media type used within the organisation.

Note: it is not recommended that all historic paper archives are converted by scanning to image, only those which need to be freely accessed.  The historic physical files can be referenced within the ECM system and retrieved/destroyed as required.

4. DOCUMENT VERSIONING and NOTIFICATION

Whether they are compliance rules and regulations; contracts; proposals; procedure manuals or any other important document, it is common for such documents to be changed, either during their development or as a result of legislative or corporate directives.

But where are these documents kept and how are they managed; on a corporate network drive, in a filing cabinet, on your laptop/desktop computer?

The problem is that inadvertently one might use an out-of-date version of a document that can result in either a minor or serious error.

In 1988 it was a contractor working on the Piper Alpha Oil Rig referring to out-of-date instructions and drawings that caused the explosion that caused 167 rig workers to lose their lives.

In another example, it can also be a challenge to make sure that annual contracts are reviewed regularly to make sure that they are either re-negotiated or cancelled before they automatically renew themselves by default.

• ECM can provide strict version control of documents ensuring that only authors can see multiple versions and other users always being automatically only presented with the currently authorised version
• ECM can notify communities of users to alert them to the change in a key reference document and ensure that they take note of this change
• Additionally within a Contract Management regime, alerts can be placed on documents to review them in time to make changes if required
• Thus TIME and COST are saved from inadvertent use of out-of-date information.

5. DATA PROCESSING SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

You can’t integrate a paper file with a computer system, but you can with ECM.

If we take the example of a supplier invoice, which is being managed in paper form, then when the Accounts Clerk is reviewing the posting on the ERP/Accounts system for that purchase and they need to see the copy invoice, they have to physically locate the document and then return it to its file location/paper tray after use. By comparison the same Accounts Clerk has instant retrieval of all the data for the posting from the ERP.

Why do we allow this massive disparity of speed when an electronic version of the same invoice can be brought to the user’s workstation as instantly as the data?

• In some Accounts Departments they scan invoices to image after the transaction has been completed
• This gives small benefit compared to scanning the Invoice as it arrives in the organisation, before the transaction, to enable the electronic version to be viewed instantly, integrated with the ERP solution and instantly sent to approvers for review and sign off
• TIME is saved by removing the need to physically find the documents and COST is saved from reduced labour costs, removal of paper, faster processing and query handling and better management information.

Integration can also take place with other departmental and corporate solutions e.g. CRM, HR, Purchase Order processing, legacy databases etc.

6. WORKFLOW

Competitive and financial pressures force organisations to do more with less, and this tends to mean higher productivity from staff.

• Workflow helps to take the inefficiencies out of business processes, giving staff more time to spend on value-added activities compared to administrative chores – like searching, photocopying, filing, archiving, distributing, etc
• ECM makes workflow feasible for all information types. Whether it is a web form, hardcopy application form, photograph, email or any other object, ECM enables the workflow to homogenize all these information forms to enable users to able to view, comment, approve, forward, review etc., with the same level of high efficiency irrespective of the media type
• TIME and COST are saved by faster processes, more productive staff, better compliance and auditing, increased customer satisfaction and better management information.

7. REMOTE WORKING

With the ready availability of Broadband and high speed voice networks, and with the use of ECM, it is now feasible to be fully productive when not sitting at your office desk.

Historically many staff required ready access to paper archives and files to be able to fulfill their job role.  This means loss of flexibility, weak resilience for holidays and sickness and loss of productivity for employees who need to travel as part of their work duties.

• ECM, where all necessary information objects are electronically managed, coupled with today’s high speed networks, enables staff to be fully productive at any location where they can connect to the corporate network
• They can also retain an electronic copy of any files that they need on their Laptop/PDA.  A typical 80 Gb Laptop drive can securely hold over 1m pages of documents
• It is also feasible to ‘check-out’ a batch of documents to be conveniently available on a user’s laptop for off-line access and update, and then on reconnection to the host solution have any changes automatically updated to provide a consistent document and data set
• TIME is saved by being able to conduct tasks and access ECM managed information irrespective of location and COST is saved by reduced travelling, faster processes, more resilient working and simple delegation in cases of holidays and sickness.

SUMMARY

ECM does not necessarily mean that every part of the Enterprise is using electronic working.

This was the vision some years ago, when the ECM technologies were originally marketed, but it has been often found that such projects are too large to be successful.

However the principles of ECM are very sound where these methods are deployed for specific applications, such as:

• Invoice Processing
• Purchase Order Requisition approval
• CRM workflow tasks
• Order Processing
• Recruitment
• Online Applications etc.

They do SAVE much TIME and COST, and the return on investment can be just a few months with good planning and execution.

For more information please contact us by clicking here or call us on 0800 988 5543.

Rob Davis, Avanquest ProcessFlows:

eCabinet is a 1990’s document imaging system; it automatically captures documents from a variety of sources – email, fax, printouts and paper documents – and stores and retrieves them.

The data at Le Crossing was also corrupted. Image files (scanned files) and metadata had become separated, so documents could not be opened/viewed and made sense of.  They could use the system for lookup, but nothing else.

Using Open Text Document Server, Alchemy Edition and the Open Text Document Server DataGrabber module as a ‘convertor tool’, we were able to extract and capture at source the corrupted image files and the metadata created by eCabinet.  The files were then recombined and imported directly into the Document Server data repository so they could once again be opened, viewed and understood. Read image extraction case study.

Document Imaging is a technology that has been available for some 30 years and there have been many entrants to this market (eCabinet, Hummingbird, Filenet, Xerox DocuImage). Some have thrived whilst others have discontinued developing and supporting their products.  As a result, companies have document images stuck there.

So if you need to migrate legacy data, or want to reinstate lost image index/meta data … we can probably help – for more information please click here or call us on 0800 988 5543.