3 Ways To Immediately Improve Your Business Processes

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

Three Technologies that Can Provide Immediate Efficiency and Productivity Improvements

There are so many applications out there on the street that tout “Instant ROI”, “Immediate Efficiency” and “Enhanced Productivity”.   But really, when you get down to it, do they really deliver?  In the world of document automation, there are some key focal points that can provide immediate value, and most of them revolve around paper and process.  So here is a list of the “Big 3”:

Document Capture – “The Filing Assistant”

In a previous life, my office was right outside our records area, a vast paper wasteland, with over 60 file cabinets.  I used to watch one of our administrators walk back and forth all day, filing new paperwork, creating new folders, and filing away an endless stream of paper.  Think of document capture software as an efficient clerk, that takes a scanned document, identifies where it needs to go, what folder it needs to go to, and how it needs to be named.  With document capture, most customers see a 25-75% reduction in time to file paper documents, immediately.

Document Management – “The Electronic Filing Cabinet”

In that same previous life, traffic flowed all day, back and forth to the filing area, as administrators would look for paper records, sometimes make a copy, and then walk back to their desk.  All departments would be seen: Contracts, Service, IT, Finance, etc.   In steps document management, where you can access files from your desk in an instant.  No longer do you put customers on hold to find out some information.   Document distribution is a snap, and now you can easily email or fax documents from within your digital filing interface.  Huge time savings, improvement in customer service and many other benefits can be gleaned immediately.

Document Workflow – “The Electronic Inbox & Outbox”

–Ah, the messy paper desk.  Walk into your accounting or HR department sometime and just take a peek at what sits on the desktop.  Usually it is a mass of paper and folders, being manually processed, reviewed, signed, and then moved on through the organization.   In steps electronic workflow.  Working hand-in-hand with capture and your repository, now documents can be easily sent to individuals for review or approval.  Business rules are now built right in to the system.  Need to route all expenses over $1000 to a manager, it’s a snap.

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AS400 Spool Files: Cracking the Code

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

 

Easily Manipulate AS/400 Spool Files

Are you looking to break up and convert a spool file to PDF or Excel format or improve your AS/400 reports by processing and outputting an AS/400 spool file with conditions in the text?

If you depend on complex spool file data to generate your business documents, such as invoices, purchases orders, bills of lading, etc., then you are faced with many different reporting challenges. There are ways that you can work with the spool file output without hand coding and tedious development effort. inFORM Decisions, SmartRouter^TM, can be used to facilitate complex filtering and distribution requirements for IBM i spooled reports, forms and business documents, as well as, controlling the bursting and processing of spool files by individual page based on user-defined criteria. The solution can easily and intelligently sort, burst, re-bundle and deliver spool content to any defined target: email address, fax address, Printer Output Queue, the IFS, or any mapped or cloud drive in a PDF format

iSeries reporting challenge:

The spool file data does not contain all of the information you need on your business document.

Solution:

SmartRouter can include any combination of DB2 data, external spool file attributes, internal spool file content and targets for accurate implementation of unique or complex output requirements. Conditional spool file mapping can easily determine where on the page to include that data. Or simply add text to the iSeries spool file, that can be used as a trigger or mapped and printed.

 

iSeries reporting challenge:

The spool data output is long and you only need a portion of that data for your business document.

Solution:

Instead of printing and sending unnecessarily large business documents, reduce the output on the page through useful prompts to quickly define custom conditions. Split out, process, regroup and distribute individual pages of a spool file in order to expedite delivery of business forms, reports and other documents.

iSeries reporting challenge:

How do I convert spool to PDF or Excel format ?

Solution:

Utilizing iDocs and SmartRouter,  you can convert AS/400 spool file into PDF. PDF documents are intelligent text, so all text is searchable. You can even turn spool file data into html, Text, or ZIP formats. Documents can be burst, sorted collated and routed to email recipients or posted to a storage location for web access.

 

Related keywords: as400 to excel, As400 excel, spool file in as400, iSeries document management, As/400 excel, iseries excel

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Are Your PDFs in SharePoint Missing Something?

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

Making Sure Your PDFs Are Optimized with Metadata

 

PDFs are the standard in most organizations for archiving files as records.   Whether you are scanning paper files to SharePoint for long-term archival, spooling your print files to PDF or converting your Office documents to PDF / A for long-term storage, there are some key things you need to know.  From a scanning perspective, most scanners just produce an image based TIFF/PDF, barren if you will of all metadata.  PDFs are a rich format that can become a long-term “suitcase” of metadata for storage and information.  Here are some tips on how to make your PDFs complete records:

1.  Make sure your Document Capture Software supports the PDF /A standard.  PDF /A is a long-term archive standard for image files.  It ensures the viability of the file in the long-term, allows embedding of metadata and can prevent alteration of the record.  This is a must for any long-term archival of documents.  For a summary on the PDF Archive standard, see Adobe’s summary PDFs for Long Term Archive

2.  Populate the Standard PDF Headers.  When creating a PDF through a document capture or conversion process, make sure you populate the PDF headers with metadata.  The standard headers include: author, subject, keywords and title.  Populating these fields can speed up searching and indexing, and makes sure critical information is secured about the record.  Below is an example of an invoice that was scanned with a document capture application (iCapture), where the standard headers were packed with PDF information:

3.  Build Complete Custom Headers for SharePoint Metadata.  Advanced conversion software will build out custom PDF header information, and allow you to “tag” your documents.   With this, the PDF can now become a redundant container for SharePoint Metadata column information with column name and metadata values.  This is the ultimate in metadata packing, and creates a true portable PDF with all pertinent information.  Below is an example of custom headers or properties, where invoice number, date, total and vendor are entered:

4.  Always use OCR to create text and image PDFs .  Using an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process will convert the image in the PDF into searchable text that can be crawled by SharePoint for the ultimate in searchability.  This is a must for all documents.

 

Did I miss anything?  Please comment with anything I missed.

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More on AP Automation: Invoice Processing Slideshare

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

Overview of Scanning and Capturing Invocies

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5 Tips for a Successful Paperless Project

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

Tips on Creating a Paperless Environment

So in our previous article, The Paperless Office: Is It Just a Dream, we discussed some statistics, and the key reasons why organizations don’t move towards an environment with less paper.  In this post, we will discuss key focus areas for Paperless Project Success.  Below are 5 Tips to Follow:

• Start Small and Grow – all too often I see organizations with broad reaching goals, and huge projects.  Pick a key pain point, create a successful solution, learn you lessons and grow.
• Focus on Simplicity – technologists like to use a sledgehammer to pound in a nail.  Always, always, use building blocks and start with the simplest solution that provides the maximum value.
• Find a Champion – forcing a project on an unwilling participant is always a recipe for failure.  Find the person with the most paper pain in your organization and get full buy in.
• It’s About the Users – the technology will work, it is proven, but the biggest barrier you will face is user adoption.  Time after time, I have seen users that just refuse to use scanning technology, and managers that let them.  Educate, train and encourage.
• Track Success – building an internal case study with gains in efficiency and productivity, as well as cost savings is key.  Once you have success, promote and expand.

These are some tips that can be used in the implementation of any paperless technology:  advanced capture and scanning, digital forms, digital workflow/business process management, print to PDF or a digital archive.  Want more info on these technologies?  See our presentation on Key Tech for Paperless.  Thoughts?

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The Paperless Journey

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

4 Key Technologies for the Paperless Office

 

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The Paperless Office: Is it Just a Dream?

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

Paperless Office Statistics

People love their paper. It’s just a plain old fact. Throughout recent history, many visionaries in the business world have predicted the demise of paper as a medium for doing business. In fact, the government has even stepped in, “requiring” industries (healthcare) to be paperless, with looming deadlines approaching. But, we continue to use paper. In fact, some of the statistics are shocking:

• 47% of organizations have only made 5% progress towards a paperless goal.
• 18% have not started any initiatives.
• 19% of organizations have increased their paper usage.

(An AIIM Study)

So why are so many organizations stagnant in their move towards the paperless office? Below are some key reasons:

• No Idea Where to Start – for most organizations, paper is so pervasive throughout their business processes, they just cant imagine a key starting point for any paperless initiative.
• “That’s How We Have Always Done It” – the mindset that “if it is not broken, why fix it?” can be a challenge, especially with admin staff that have been around for a while. Paper is just the way it is done.
• Technology is Scary – taking the leap can be seen as a huge risk for managers, and many of the paperless initiatives fail due to poor planning, project mismanagement, or biting off too big a piece for a starting point.

Through experience, we have found that the key to successfully starting the Paperless Journey, it to start small, and grow. The technology works, it has been proven, but it is really the people and process that need to adapt to the digital workflow. In our next post, we will cover how to overcome organization objections, and create an environment for success.

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What is Document Capture?

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

Do you Scan or Capture?

We hear it from clients all the time, “I already scan my documents.  Why would I need another piece of software?”

Scanning and Capture have two different definitions, as outlined below:

Scanning Software – this can be a separate piece of software, or software that is resident on a device that lets you simply create an image.  It is appropriate for very basic needs.

Document Capture Software – Document Capture applications take scanning to a whole new level, adding a level of automation and efficiency, and minimizing the time required to scan and archive documents, and extract information.

So, to take it a step further, here are the true benefits of adding document capture to any document automation environment:

Efficiency – with capture applications, the key goal is to eliminate keystrokes, and auto-identify, auto-extract information and auto-name and archive.  Think of the typical office worker that walks to a copier, scans a document to email, and then manually names and saves the file to a folder.  With capture, he/she just hits the scan button, and advanced capture does the rest.

Standardization – walk into any office and hand the same document to 10 people, and they will all scan it differently, name it differently, and put it in their own repository.  With document capture, you can create a standardized, repeatable process that is done the same every time, regardless of the person.

Integration – A key benefit of capture is also the level of integration it provides.  What is your repository?  SharePoint?  An Accounting System?  With an advanced capture app, you can send or route documents to any back end system with just a tap.

Hopefully, this was helpful, and outlined the major difference between “Scanning” and “Capturing”.  Comments?

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Invoice Scanning Benefits: Automating Your AP

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

The Benefits of Digital AP Automation

In my previous post, we discussed the pain of paper invoice processing, and all the key cost areas that are affected by physical workflows in AP. (Previous post: True Pain of Paper-based AP Workflow ). In this post, let’s discus the all the benefits of digital invoice processing and AP Document Automation. Below is a survey of accounting and finance professionals, and what they specific as key benefits of a digital invoice processing workflow (Survey data by Paystream Advisors).

As you can see, there are numerous benefits from capturing invoices through a scanning process. All of the benefits contribute in some way to cost reduction, both in hard and soft costs.

Along with these surveyed benefits, there is also quite a bit of value in time savings, as outlined below:

Paper – the average time to file a paper invoice in a standard file cabinet system is approximately 5 minutes. This is just the actual time to file, and not other additional costs including copying, keying, etc. Based on avaerage labor rates, this comes to $1.67 for each invoice you process.

Scanning Invoices – the average time to file is 30s to 90s depending on the level of automation and scanning device that is utilized. Jut in pure time, this equates to $0.50.

So, if you just look at pure filing time, you are looking at cutting your time based costs by 2/3.

Hopefully this has presented a compelling reason to move to a digital workflow when it comes to your Account Payable process. As you can see, even a small business can benefit substantially from a scanning process, improving efficiency and making employees more productive.  You can watch a quick video of our AP Solutions here:

 

For more information, or for a real time demo of our AP Solutions, contact us today.

 

CONTACT US

 

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Do Invoices Really Have to Be So Painful?

Written by Ken Kramer. Posted in Blog

The True Pain of Paper-based AP Workflow

Ah, the pain of the paper invoice. AP Automation is all the buzz nowadays, and scanning and capturing your invoices and accounting data doesn’t have to be hard. It still amazes me that an estimated 75-80% of all invoices are still in paper form (Gartner AP Invoice Automation Study). The costs of dealing with paper can be exorbitant, even for a small business. Below are some interesting statistics from the AIIM:

• Companies spend $20 to file a single document (time, materials, copies, etc)
• It costs $120 in labor to find a misfiled document
• It runs $220 to reproduce a lost document

Now those are just generic numbers on the pain of running a paper-based office. Let’s get into some specifics on the cost of processing paper invoices. Below are some key cost areas, and really the justification for any move to an AP Automation Solution:

Shipping and Mail– Many organizations with remote locations and branches still ship invoices to a central accounting office for processing. This creates time delays, and the opportunity for invoices to be misplaced or lost entirely. Some utilize “digital” invoice shipping, through the use of a scanning copier or a network scanner. This can add additional pain for the folks in the head office, that typically download, rename and save invoices in digital form. Some organizations will even print scanned invoices, to have a single flow of processing.

Payment Cycles – According to IOMA, 25% of all invoices are paid late. Studies have shown that late payment is usually due to processing delays, and are quite typical in paper-based accounting workflows. Data transfer and entry errors can also lead to delays, as well as increased time to search file cabinets for errant invoices.

Searching and Locating – In a previous life, my office was right outside a file cabinet row for accounting. There was a nice lady named Joan, who spent her entire day walking back and forth, looking for invoices. During audit time, many others joined her, and the traffic was crazy. They would spend untold hours searching, copying, removing and replacing folders. To top it all off, they would typically have to “put off” the inquiring person, and call them back while they searched.

Archive and Storage – Long term storage costs can quickly multiply, especially if you are using an off-site storage provider. For growing companies, floor space is a huge consideration, and with the average file cabinet taking up 10-12 square feet of space, costs can quickly add up. Finally, there is the concern of disaster recovery. You cannot backup paper, and all it takes is a fire or triggered sprinkler to destroy important records.

In this post, I cover all the pains of paper and Invoice Processing. In my next post, we will cover the benefits of a digital AP workflow, and how scanning/imaging your invoices can lead to efficiency and higher productivity. If you would like to jump ahead and see how InForm can help you with its iCapture product, you can take a peek here: iCapture for Invoice Processing and AP Automation

 

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