ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Enterprise Content Management comprises strategies to manage and correlate documents pertaining to work within an organization.

In today’s information age, the success and failure of an enterprise is dictated primarily by two factors – the rate of influx of data into an enterprise database and the continuous task of interpreting and evaluating this data into blocks or sets of logical information. This information serves as input for strategic planning objectives.

In a hierarchical setup within the organization, information is collected at the lowest managerial levels and collated in data warehouses. As unstructured content is checked in and out of a system, each use can add to the content's profile. Raw data is filtered and analyzed within the warehouse and converted to information. As the ECM system ‘learns’ this method of filtering, it grows more intuitive, which assists in making better decisions, determining the relevance of information and documents.

For example, in order to improve efficiency while still adhering to Federal Laws and guidelines, a university may turn to implement Enterprise Content Management. ECM is used to bring together all information being processed in business transactions. This solution helps in accelerating the exchange and flow of information, without adding to redundancy of data and unnecessary repetitions. Thus, efficiency is improved and staff impact is minimized, leading to improving in productivity and obviously cutting down on costs.

The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) defines the process of Enterprise Content Management in 5 important tasks or steps:

• Collect: Collect all transaction data.
• Manage: Process the data and interpret as per needs.
• Store: Transient and in-processing information is stored.
• Preserve: Storage of valuable and required information.
• Deliver: Provide end users with analyzed data and forecast needs.

It may be difficult to accurately point to a single, major contribution of ECM implementation. But the signs are everywhere to be seen, in little improvements and positive steps. The reason is that most benefits of ECM are not directly quantifiable, although they bring about situations of great quantifiable benefit.

In the modern climate of competition, it is not enough to maintain and hold extensive databases. The content must be managed, analyzed and correlated with other data to predict patterns. These are essential to fulfill most business goals.

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ECM Solutions: Copier and Facsimile Systems, Ltd. Joins Laserfiche as Value-Added Reseller

CFS will provide ECM solutions to customers in the Bristol and South West areas of the United Kingdom.

Laserfiche welcomes Copier and Facsimile Systems, Ltd. (CFS) as the newest authorized Value Added Reseller (VAR) to provide enterprise content management (ECM) solutions to customers in the Bristol and South West areas of the UK.

CFS Director Graham Withers said, “As a leading supplier of business technologies, we have an excellent track record of supplying state-of-the-art solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing organizational IT environments.” He added, “Laserfiche has a suite of award-winning Enterprise content management products that we’re proud to offer our clients, along with ongoing training and support that will help us succeed.”

Laserfiche Senior Vice President of Business Development Chris Wacker said, “As a company that has been committed to providing outstanding document solutions since 1985, CFS has the experience and capability to help numerous organizations in the financial, education and commercial markets succeed with the Laserfiche product suite. We’re pleased to welcome them to our five-star VAR channel.”

Laserfiche Announces Empower 2010 International Conference

Cstomers, resellers, analysts, consultants and partners from around the world come together for three days of technical training, networking and hands-on experience with ECM

Laserfiche today announced that its Empower 2010 international conference will be held January 11-13 at the Hilton LAX in Los Angeles, CA. The conference, which attracts Laserfiche customers, resellers, partners and ACE members from around the world, will give attendees fresh insight into how to maximize operational efficiency with Agile enterprise content management (ECM).

“Even during times of economic uncertainty, people recognize the importance of increasing productivity and efficiency,” said Nien-Ling Wacker, Laserfiche president and CEO. “Agile ECM plays a pivotal role in improving organizational effectiveness, and we’re very pleased to give our community the chance to share strategies for best leveraging Agile enterprise content management.”

The conference will offer three full days of more than 60 technical training labs and comprehensive classes, including a number of courses offered as part of the new Laserfiche Certified Professional Program. More information about the new certification program will be available soon.

“Every year we try to improve the conference and offer a more personalized experience to attendees. This year we’ve expanded all of the tracks, added more best practices courses and made it easier for attendees to tailor their schedules to meet their needs,” said Laserfiche Institute Director Jereb Cheatham.

Laserfiche Announces Empower 2010 International Conference

Cstomers, resellers, analysts, consultants and partners from around the world come together for three days of technical training, networking and hands-on experience with ECM

Laserfiche today announced that its Empower 2010 international conference will be held January 11-13 at the Hilton LAX in Los Angeles, CA. The conference, which attracts Laserfiche customers, resellers, partners and ACE members from around the world, will give attendees fresh insight into how to maximize operational efficiency with Agile enterprise content management (ECM).

“Even during times of economic uncertainty, people recognize the importance of increasing productivity and efficiency,” said Nien-Ling Wacker, Laserfiche president and CEO. “Agile ECM plays a pivotal role in improving organizational effectiveness, and we’re very pleased to give our community the chance to share strategies for best leveraging Agile enterprise content management.”

The conference will offer three full days of more than 60 technical training labs and comprehensive classes, including a number of courses offered as part of the new Laserfiche Certified Professional Program. More information about the new certification program will be available soon.

“Every year we try to improve the conference and offer a more personalized experience to attendees. This year we’ve expanded all of the tracks, added more best practices courses and made it easier for attendees to tailor their schedules to meet their needs,” said Laserfiche Institute Director Jereb Cheatham.

Laserfiche Announces Empower 2010 International Conference

Cstomers, resellers, analysts, consultants and partners from around the world come together for three days of technical training, networking and hands-on experience with ECM

Laserfiche today announced that its Empower 2010 international conference will be held January 11-13 at the Hilton LAX in Los Angeles, CA. The conference, which attracts Laserfiche customers, resellers, partners and ACE members from around the world, will give attendees fresh insight into how to maximize operational efficiency with Agile enterprise content management (ECM).

“Even during times of economic uncertainty, people recognize the importance of increasing productivity and efficiency,” said Nien-Ling Wacker, Laserfiche president and CEO. “Agile ECM plays a pivotal role in improving organizational effectiveness, and we’re very pleased to give our community the chance to share strategies for best leveraging Agile enterprise content management.”

The conference will offer three full days of more than 60 technical training labs and comprehensive classes, including a number of courses offered as part of the new Laserfiche Certified Professional Program. More information about the new certification program will be available soon.

“Every year we try to improve the conference and offer a more personalized experience to attendees. This year we’ve expanded all of the tracks, added more best practices courses and made it easier for attendees to tailor their schedules to meet their needs,” said Laserfiche Institute Director Jereb Cheatham.

Your Guide to Enterprise Content Management Systems

Every company has wide variety of data that it needs to manage. While for some it is easy to take care of the information stored in their machines by taking a backup every night, others need more expert solutions, especially the organizations spread over different cities, countries and continents.

ECM or enterprise content management combines a wide variety of components and technologies to deliver robust solutions. Some of these components are used as stand-alone systems and are not required to be incorporated into an enterprise-wide system.

ECM helps content management systems of organizations manage, control, utilize and share important information and optimises the business processes. A good enterprise content management system integrates with the organization’s applications and enhances the durability of content delivered to users, whether internal or external. It also ensures that the risks are minimized and also eliminates the redundancy very effectively.

What to keep in mind when building the ECM for your company?

Since the cost of installing an ECM system can be too much, it is very essential that organizations select the enterprise content management system which fits their needs and budget in the most suitable way. Spending too much on ECM initially can be a grave mistake as it requires a constant update and if a hefty amount is spent in the beginning only then the upgrades will require more financial resources. The best way to keep away from overspending is to create a list of requirements before installing the system.

What are the Requirements of a Good ECM?

Content creators are the vital users of the enterprise content management system. Therefore all the areas within the system must be analyzed carefully to see and notice the effects they will have on the work done by the content creators. These content creators have to have the complete access of the system and some have to be given advanced users rights as well, depending on the seniority of the person.

What Can Enterprise Content Management Do For Your Company?

ECM refers to the strategies, technologies, methods and tools used to capture manage, store, preserve and deliver content. Enterprise content management tools allow management to be at an enterprise level of organization.

ECM has moved away from the old ways of finding-and-filing to a technology that not only manages information, but processes it as well. Enterprise content management can manage information without regard to its source or use.

Many organizations hesitate to implement enterprise content management solutions because of the problems of implementing best practices and standardizing operations enterprise-wide. Each department, each regional office and each workgroup has its own ways of doing business, and they often fear it will force them to change the way they work. Information ends up in multiple locations, with no way for the central office to sort it all out. And the system ends up compounding the problems it was supposed to solve.

The Laserfiche Rio ECM system is different and fits with existing business processes into an enterprise framework. It gives organizations control and flexibility.

Where are the Little Efficiencies?

ECM: The budget crunch is upon all of us, and, as a result, we’re all looking at where the little efficiencies are to stretch our existing dollars as far as possible. With Laserfiche ECM there are many aspects to consider when making decisions.

Repositories and licenses cost money. So does scanning. How can we best use our existing resources?

Change your repository settings!

Changing your repository options, specifically the ‘logout automatically’ option, will prevent your users from becoming license hogs. That person who logs in and then leaves for lunch will be logged off automatically, freeing up a license for another user.

In Hampton, we’ve adopted a 1:5 user license ratio for both FX and RX licenses. Due to the fact that licenses are concurrent, we believe that it’s reasonable to expect that any user, particularly retrieve or read-only users, will access enterprise content management, find what they need and then exit the system.

What kind of scanning devices do you have available?

While scanners are “the” option when it comes to high quantity document capture, almost all types of copy machines have scanning capability and can easily scan to e-mail. Ask your IT Department or manufacturer representative to set the image to either tiff or pdf and add all users to the email setting.

Even if all of your office staff are not enterprise content management users, being able to copy/scan to e-mail prevents the proliferation of paper, which could be another significant cost savings for you.

Do all of your users know, enterprise content management and understand how to use Laserfiche’s e-mail utility?

This again will decrease the proliferation of paper in your office and to your clients or the public.

Are you fully utilizing your LSAP?

Your time is valuable to your employer and we all pay for software support. When you have questions, contact your reseller and employ their assistance with answers and best practices. You don’t have to figure it out on your own.

What’s in ECM?

If Laserfiche has become the new dumping ground (in addition to your network, pc’s, and ancillary devices…) then your data – and your server – could use some basic management.

1. Purge your data; set up your Records Management Edition if you have it – practice good records management!
2. Check your folder structure.
3. Manage your volumes.
4. Use your Column Display wisely.

BOOST YOUR BUSINESS WITH ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) consists of the strategies and methods used to manage and interpret documents related to work in an organization.

In today’s information age, the success and failure of an enterprise is dictated primarily by two factors – the rate of influx of data into an enterprise database and the constant interpreting and evaluation of this data into logical information as input for strategic planning.

As unstructured content is checked in and out of a system, each use can potentially add to the content's profile. With time, the ECM system might gradually adopt new filtering, which assists in making better decisions, determining the relevance of information and documents.

For example, in order to improve efficiency while still adhering to Federal Laws and guidelines, an eminent South Western US University turned to implement Enterprise Content Management. The university used ECM to bring business processes together and accelerate information exchange. This solution not only helped the university to ensure efficient administration, it also minimized the impact on staff—improving productivity and reducing costs.

According to the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), Enterprise Content Management can be broken down into five major components:

• Capture: Obtain and organize information.
• Manage: Process and employ information as per requirement.
• Store: Temporary back up of transient information.
• Preserve: More permanent storage of unchanging data.
• Deliver: Provide clients and end users with requested data and analyses.

While identifying a direct return on investment can be difficult, it is possible to see the impacts of the improved process efficiency. With the enforced usage of these tools within the organization, they become part of the work culture. What's the ROI on a fax-machine? Virtually negligible, per se. However, who can imagine running an organization without one?

It's not enough to simply maintain and hold extensive database information. Content must be managed so that it can be used to achieve business goals, which is the goal behind implementation of Enterprise Content Management.

News from the Central VA Laserfiche User Group

In Central Virginia, ECM is moving right along! In fact, the Central Virginia Regional Enterprise content management system company Laserfiche User Group, is meeting at the Albemarle County Office Building. This meeting will feature speakers from the Library of Virginia, who will give a presentation and field questions about ECM records for local governments and state agencies.

Training will cover electronic records, both scanned documents as well as other enterprise content management stored records (such as databases, Word files, Excel, etc). Retention and destruction requirements and using the retention schedules will all be included as well.

One of our members, Corey Smith, from the Library of Virginia, has provided some information that provides excellent background and will help everyone attending come prepared with specific, pertinent questions.

Corey says:

“As your primary interest is with electronic records that are scanned and in a database, I would like to mention that records follow the same retention period regardless of format. Caveats come into play as retention periods differ and some records may not be the best candidate for a particular format. For example, a record with a 50 yr retention would not be recommended to kept on a CD. The life expectancy of a CD is only 20 yrs. Because of this, anything with a permanent retention or with a long retention would not be recommended for a CD format.

“On the LVA Website, you can access our updated Electronic Records Guidelines that can hopefully provide some additional information for your benefit.

“To give you an idea of what’s considered personal identifying information, under section “C” of 18.2-186.3 in the Code of Virginia, it defines certain types of personal identifying information.”

If you’re in the Central Virginia area, we hope to see you at our User Group meeting!

Our Agenda:

• Welcome/introductions
• Group business & info
• Lightning Talks (Mini-Success Stories) – each person has up to 3 minutes to talk about something cool they learned or did with Laserfiche recently
• Library of Virginia presentation, followed by questions from attendees

Flexible Enterprise Content Management Solutions for Your Industry

Many organizations hesitate to implement ECM solutions because of the problems of implementing best practices and standardizing operations enterprise-wide. Each department, each regional office and each workgroup has its own ways of doing business, and they often fear it will force them to change the way they work. Information ends up in multiple locations, with no way for the central office to sort it all out. And the system ends up compounding the problems it was supposed to solve.

The Rio ECM system is different because it fits existing business processes into an enterprise framework. It gives people the control they need and the flexibility they want. Enterprise content management organically expands throughout organizations, regardless of the industry:

· State and Local Government

· Federal Government:

· Financial Services

· Health Care:

Enterprise content management offers organizations the strength of a proven information management system and the technology of a highly sophisticated business process management engine.

Enterprise Content Management System

According to AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) International, Enterprise Content Management or ECM is the collection of methods, strategies, and tools that are used to manage, capture, preserve or store, and deliver content matter and documents related to organizational processes. In other words,

content management suite is a computer application that lets you create, edit, publish or manipulate the content of a website.

It is generally used for the purpose of storing and retrieval of user manuals, news articles, brochures, guides and other technical data. The content can be in any form: audio, video, visual, text, spreadsheet, excel, word documents etc. The basic types of Content Management Suites include: Web, Enterprise and Component systems.

So if you are looking to introduce your business to the audience on World Wide Web, or perhaps have an existing website and feel that there is a need to update its looks, a content management suite can help you in achieving your target.

Prerequisites of a good Enterprise Content Management :

Content creators are the most important users of an enterprise management system. Everything within the system has to be analyzed cautiously to see different kind of effects they have on the work done by the content creators. These content creators require full access to all features of the ECM and ensure that it is setup appropriately and working all the time, whenever any user needs.

Enterprise content management systems ensure that all applications used in an organization deliver their content to a repository, which provides the information to various applications. An ideal ECM allows multiple users, technical and non-technical authorizations, capturing of meta data and has powerful linking capabilities. It also ensures non-stop flow of content. Enterprise content management software has become a necessity in the ever changing and highly competitive world of business. There are many firms that offer customized products and services to help you establish your business processes.

Flexible Enterprise Content Management Solutions for Your Industry

Many organizations hesitate to implement ECM solutions because of the problems of implementing best practices and standardizing operations enterprise-wide. Each department, each regional office and each workgroup has its own ways of doing business, and they often fear it will force them to change the way they work. Information ends up in multiple locations, with no way for the central office to sort it all out. And the system ends up compounding the problems it was supposed to solve.

The

Rio ECM system is different. Rio fits with existing business processes into an enterprise content management framework, it gives you the control you need and the flexibility you want. Enterprise content management organically expands throughout your organization, regardless of your industry.

Taming the Paper Monster

Their decision to go paperless with ECM was driven not by cost or budget issues, but by the desire to grow their business, tame a paper monster that was consuming every available square foot of office space, improve customer service, and keep up with a rapidly-changing financial planning industry.

In their view, they had no choice as to whether to go paperless with ECM. They must go paperless if you want to survive and thrive in the financial planning industry. They were slowly becoming buried in paper, running out of space and spending valuable time looking for missing files. And as their investment business grew, their paper mushroomed, due to trade confirmations and quarterly investment statements. When their broker-dealer conducted our annual audit in 2004, it took a long time to find required forms. That’s when they knew they had to make changes.

At Texas Christian University’s annual student job fair, Blake Woodard was manning a booth when he ran into a local Laserfiche reseller.

“I had looked at several systems,” Woodard says, “but Laserfiche offered us the greatest flexibility to work like we always had, only using enterprise content management files instead of paper. Laserfiche used TIFF files instead of proprietary file formats and used SQL as its underlying database, which gave us the ability to move our data to a different system later if we needed to. Also, the SQL platform is scalable as our electronic storage needs grow.”

Woodard Insurance purchased enterprise content management software and installed it immediately. Transition to the new system was relatively quick, given that there was an existing document management system in place, just not a digital one. Client securities files had been moved from paper file folders to three-ring binders with topical dividers and, when it came time to implement a digital solution, this interim step made the process much easier.

Where the old paper files were in strict chronological order, the topical divisions in the client binders made organizing Laserfiche’s filing structure much simpler. “We immediately began writing scanning procedures that covered the naming, indexing and location of each document in a binder,” says Woodard. These flexible procedures are updated and refined as employees encounter new situations or better ideas.

ECM: Worth the Investment?

Financial advisors are facing increased regulation and, in some instances, overlapping regulations that will constrain business and also increase their workload, add to their storage needs and require them to do additional staff training. Never has there been a greater need for electronic document management (sometimes called ECM or enterprise content management ).

Most firms look at document management as filing, whether they use paper or electronic files, and it’s often likely that they’ve set up informal procedures for handling them. A properly designed ECM system integrates work-flow procedures and controls, which usually means it is tied into a database (client relationship management software, for instance). Other firms that aren’t using enterprise content management have set up a stand-alone indexing system—a folder tree like the one you find on a computer’s operating system. But without specific, strict controls, informal systems pose problems. One is that documents can be misfiled, or worse, that employees unfamiliar with the folder trees can simply create new folders for items that should have been placed elsewhere. This makes document retrieval difficult and frustrating, to say the least.

A common mistake made by some firms is to use a system that saves documents in a PDF instead of a more secure format such as a TIFF. This means documents can be altered after the fact, and the firm risks potentially violating federal regulations. While some scanner manufacturers have addressed this issue with post-imprint symbols and other coding mechanisms to ensure authenticity, there are still lingering doubts about the security of the original documents.

It may be tough to justify additional expenses nowadays, but the simple truth is that those advisors boasting an efficient document management system can bring their costs down over time—way down. These lower costs can soften the blow of any up-front expenses and fully justify the time commitmentnecessary to implement the systems.

If you’re associated with a broker-dealer, chances are it is already offering some level of document management (form capture, forms you can fill out, outsourced electronic storage, etc.). If not, there are a host of available systems that can transform your financial practice into a highly efficient operation by helping you go paperless.

The SEC and FINRA have both ruled on the acceptability of paperless storage, retrieval and recovery. They have even ruled on the acceptability of electronic signatures (with specific guidelines). Among other things, a planner’s document management process must comply with SEC and FINRA rules, Sarbanes-Oxley and the USA Patriot Act. There should also be a way for him to provide an audit trail.

So what is stopping you? It’s likely two things: the cost and the knowledge you need to get the job done right. A typical system such as Laserfiche Avante for example, can cost about $4,000 for the initial outlay to serve an office of four staffers (and the Avante system was designed to be affordable).

While it sounds like a lot of money, though, consider what such a system could do in shaving off staff time and increasing productivity and profitability. With such a system, there would be a much faster document storage and retrieval process. The office can also go paperless, allowing a planner to save a great deal of office space and reduce staff time enough to equal the salary of another employee. So you may wish to ask yourself, would I be willing to spend $4,000 to save up to $40,000? Also consider that the annual renewal costs are much less, even though the savings continue.

Most financial advisors are only aware of Laserfiche as a provider of document management solutions for the financial advisory profession. But clients such as the Mexican Immigration Service, the country of Uganda and the U.S. Congress also use the technology. The product allows users to build a more robust enterprise-level system later, if their firms grow.

Broker-dealers often provide their own documents, many times fillable PDF versions that advisors must transmit through secure, proprietary systems the B-D owns itself. If the B-D does not supply the advisor with forms, she may need to locate a reliable source, and there are at least two: LaserApps and QuikForms. Firms like these typically offer thousands of forms for download, though advisors use only a few. It would be wise to ensure that the forms you need are actually located in these databases before signing up for them. These services might also add a form for you, if they don’t already have it in their inventory.

You may also create your own forms if they aren’t available elsewhere. For this, you need Adobe Acrobat, either in its standard or professional versions. There is a much-overlooked feature in this program that permits you to take a PDF document and create empty form fields. You may only need to do this to a few forms, so it could save hours of staff labor.

However you choose to create documents, if you use a comprehensive document management system with automated work-flow features, you can significantly increase the efficiency and profitability of your practice.

Enterprise Content Management from Rio | ECM | Enterprise Document Management Software

Enterprise Content Management Solutions for Your Industry

Enterprise Content Management Solutions for Your Industry

Many organizations hesitate to implement ECM solutions because of the problems of implementing best practices and standardizing operations enterprise-wide. Each department, each regional office and each workgroup has its own ways of doing business, and they often fear it will force them to change the way they work. Information ends up in multiple locations, with no way for the central office to sort it all out. And the system ends up compounding the problems it was supposed to solve.

Rio Enterprise Content Management : Balancing Flexibility with Control

The Rio ECM system is different. Because Laserfiche Rio fits your existing business processes into an enterprise framework, it gives you the control you need and the flexibility you want. Rio organically expands throughout your organization, regardless of your industry:

State and Local Government: Highly scalable enterprise solutions for cities and counties of all sizes.

Federal Government: Proven technology to meet the business process management and information security needs of federal agencies and departments.

Financial Services: Straight-through processing platforms to fit the needs of field representatives, OSJ offices and home offices, as well as enterprise solutions for RIAs, banks and trust companies.

Healthcare: Automated solutions to simplify billing, patient records management and admissions, designed for ambulatory care centers, hospitals and third-party billing organizations.

Rio offers your organization the strength of a proven information management system, the technology of a highly sophisticated business process management engine and the support of the Laserfiche community—with the flexibility to meet the needs of multiple departments and users.

Enterprise Content Management Can Help Drive Business in a Tough Economy

In order to stay competitive during the economic downturn, executives involved in ECM say their company plans to reduce operating expenses and improve cash flow. Effectively managing enterprise content management processes can help meet these objectives, particularly with reducing expenses.

ECM accelerates the flow of information throughout an enterprise which simplifies administration, installation and support IT. Enterprise content management systems help organizations better manage their information, but systems is intended to standardize business processes that often end up confined to just one or two departments, because they simply aren’t flexible enough to meet the diverse needs of individual departments and offices.

Companies have realized that the potential for enterprise content management is one the best practices to yield benefits such as lower operating expenses, which can help them to survive and thrive in the days ahead.

Disclaimer: This blog or article is for information purpose only, and should not be treated a professional advise or price protection guarantee. This blog is mainly used for search engine optimization and other commercial purposes and it is advised that readers seek professional consultation in the field of interest for more information.

Technology as a Recruiting Advantage

Technorati ProfileSpire Investment Partners uses ECM to recruit new advisors

“If financial advisors aren’t talking to people, they’re not making money,” says Paul Murphy, National Sales Director at Spire Investment Partners, LLC. Murphy’s problem was that his top earners were spending too much time staying on top of the paperwork that comes with handling over $1 billion in client assets, which he expects to at least double this year. “It’s the regulators. It’s the auditors. The paper starts to pile up from the first client meeting and all the way through the process,” he says.

For Murphy, his previous experience integrating two large broker-dealers had shown how the right technology ultimately leads to success. “If you want to succeed in this business, you’ve got to get great technology,” he says. “Using technology not only defensively, but offensively, is very near and dear to my heart.”

Murphy and Phillip Fournier, Spire’s Chief Operating Officer, went on the offensive and decided to invest in a enterprise content management system. They chose ECM not just to manage paper, but also as a tool to cut costs and increase services—which would eventually help recruit both clients and advisors.

Murphy says that, at first, just the idea of a new system and way of doing things intimidated the firm’s advisors. “How many people have said ‘paperless’ in front of advisors and had them say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’? That’s where we started,” he admits.

But, once apprehensive advisors, and more importantly, their sales and service assistants, began using enterprise content management and saw how easy and efficient it was, implementation and initial roll-out went smoothly.

National Sales Director Paul Murphy

Murphy credits the training his staff received from the firm’s Laserfiche reseller, One Source/ADI, for easing the implementation process. “I can’t say enough good things about the training. The results are great.” In the 18 months since the firm implemented ECM, Spire has scanned documents from approximately 80% of their offices – with nearly all of their advisors and staff using the system regularly.

“The goal,” says Murphy, “is to apply technology to make work easier. Efficient process flow obviously increases efficiency. If everyone is more efficient, they’re happier. If they’re happier, they’re more productive. If they’re more productive, you’re more profitable.”

With document management, Murphy immediately noticed that Service Assistants and back office personnel were able to respond to client inquiries much more efficiently. ECM is the way to make them more productive,” says Murphy. “We’re very happy that our staff is better able to process workflow and therefore better able to support our Consultants.”

Disclaimer: This blog or article is for information purpose only, and should not be treated a professional advise or price protection guarantee. This blog is mainly used for search engine optimization and other commercial purposes and it is advised that readers seek professional consultation in the field of interest for more information.

Electric content management: Is your office saving trees?

Walk into Le Chic Dentistry and you’ll notice space free of clutter, unlike most offices.

What’s different at this forward-thinking practice is there’s no paper to be found anywhere because they have incorporated electronic content management software. ECM can be an expensive initial investment but important and also very environmental friendly.

'We wanted our office to resonate with warmth and care for our patients and also demonstrate, in a real way, what people can do every day to make small changes that can have a huge impact,' Dr Hadian says.

‘In the long term, the ECM paperless system is more cost-effective than keeping traditional paper charts,' says Dr Sadri. It also reduces toxicity issues associated with dentistry, an important factor in protecting the health of staff and patients. The environmentally friendly system works like this: A first time patient is directed to a computer workstation to fill out their information. Their file is kept in digital format with electronic content management rather than traditional paper files, including charts, x-rays, camera images, prescriptions and clinical notes.

This system saves mounds of paper each week and is an enormous benefit for patients. Everything can be done online, from requesting an appointment, making a payment or accessing their account.

Electronic document management will soon become the standard for dental care. The benefits are a wiser, healthier and greener choice for all.

Disclaimer: This blog or article is for information purpose only, and should not be treated a professional advise or price protection guarantee. This blog is mainly used for search engine optimization and other commercial purposes and it is advised that readers seek professional consultation in the field of interest for more information.

Technorati Profile

Seamless Integration

MAC Financial marries ECM and their CRM system to enhance efficiency while cutting costs and streamlining workflow

The Challenge

The strict oversight of the Isle of Man Government’s Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) means that independent financial advisers require a secure enterprise content management system for tracking and managing both paper and electronic records. Proliferating work process documents, extensive audits and strict records-retention rules leave many financial services firms struggling to maintain productivity in a highly-competitive industry.

For Jon McGowan, managing director of MAC Financial, these challenges multiplied with his business’s increasing success. With three major acquisitions in three years, McGowan and his staff were dealing with more customers, more work and significantly more paper. They needed a solution that would not only organize their records, but would also assist them in following compliance directives. Whatever solution they chose had to have enterprise capabilities, be able to manage a large volume of documents and integrate with their customer relationship management (CRM) system to enable fast, efficient and flexible client service.

It took less than half a day for MAC Financial to implement an enterprise content management solution, enabling instant document retrieval and freeing up an entire floor of office space. Now, MAC Financial runs more efficiently, saving time, money and staff resources while increasing revenue.

The Situation

MAC Financial, a firm of financial advisers based on the Isle of Man, boasts over twenty-five years’ experience providing employee benefits advice to large multi-national and small corporate clients. As a Corporate IFA (Independent Financial Adviser) for investment business, they also provide a full range of bespoke services to private clients.

With over 5,000 individual clients and more than 300 corporate schemes encompassing 4,000 employees, MAC Financial operates in a complex environment. Recent acquisitions made it even more difficult to keep up with business demands. McGowan knew his team needed a solution that would enable efficient document management procedures while also providing the tools for superior customer service and comprehensive compliance procedures.

MAC Financial required a proven and reliable document management platform that could produce benefits in several key areas: customer service, compliance and operations. Integration with their CRM system was also crucial, because their solution had to function not only as a system for storage, search and retrieval, but also as a workflow management system integrated with their existing CRM software.

With a solution using content management suite, MAC Financial has improved productivity, streamlined their workflow and even enabled an employee to telecommute from Australia—not to mention benefited from savings of 25-35% achieved through reduced staff and a more efficient use of time.

The Solution

Before document management, staff needed to walk up three flights of stairs to the attic to retrieve documents. They were spending enormous amounts of time searching for information and filing documents, not to mention impeding profitability due to the overhead costs of paper used to print correspondence and copies for their files. Since implementing document management, MAC Financial has cleared the attic of paper, completely freeing an entire floor of office space. Staff spend less time searching thanks to instant document retrieval and only print out documents for correspondence, cutting down on printer output and storage space. According to Chris Reynolds, senior consultant at Viking Office Systems Ltd., the value-added reseller that implemented MAC Financial’s Laserfiche solution, “They don’t print anymore.” With over 5,000 clients, that’s an incredible amount of paper that has been eliminated.

Since implementing ECM, client service has noticeably improved. Comprehensive search capabilities enable staff to search through client information instantaneously, without leaving their desks to go up to the attic. In addition, staff can access documents simultaneously, something impossible with paper files. “There’s no more shouting ‘Where’s the file?’, as any person can access the records in conjunction with our core CRM system,” McGowan comments.

“It’s been an exciting process getting to this point, and we continue looking for ways to streamline wherever we can,” McGowan adds. “Our philosophy is to continue to innovate in both technology and process, and Laserfiche is a critical component of our plans going forward.

“Essentially, ECM has moved us from the paper century to the electronic century.”

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