Enterprise Content Management

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

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.

Friday, May 1, 2009

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.”

Friday, April 17, 2009

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.

Technorati Profile

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

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.”

Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Real Cold Case Files: ECM Makes a Difference

Two years ago, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in Florida was another local government agency with overflowing file cabinets and the inspiration (and budget) to do something about it. Laserfiche was at first intended to help with enterprise content management in departmental records, but was soon adapted to catalogue domestic violence cases and help create SORT, the county’s public database of sexual predators. “Being able to scan in domestic violence case reports is important because these cases are very time-sensitive as far as victims support services go,” says Commander Doug Waller. “Time is definitely not on our side.”

The importance of time is especially crucial to homicide cases. “We only see about 10-12 homicides a year and we generally stay on top of them,” says Lieutenant Bruce Barnett. “But the longer a case stays open, the more the paperwork piles up.”

Nowhere was this more evident than in the murder case of Charlotte “Amy” Gellert. One Sunday evening in March, 1994, the 21-year-old returned to her parents’ home, only to walk into a botched robbery attempt. The thief, who had tied up her parents, stabbed Gellert to death and fled the scene.

Over the past decade and a half, the case had gone cold, leaving a mountain of paperwork behind. Most homicides accumulate a box or two of paperwork, but the Gellert case had eight owing to its myriad suspects, reports, statements, testimony and evidence, all stored in what officers referred to as “the big room.”

Barnett saw the potential of using ECM for compiling and indexing the Gellert case along with the county’s other 46 cold case homicides. Some dated as far back as 1967. Almost all had long since seen their initial team of investigators transfer, retire or move on, which complicated the already-difficult task of locating information in decades-old paperwork. “In the past we’d had issues with misplaced files,” Barnett says.

Beginning late last year, the Sheriff’s office began a painstaking backlog conversion project beginning with the Gellert case. Staff often worked after hours to scan and organize files with information management software.

In the process, they’d possibly uncover a piece of the puzzle that could hopefully bring a resolution to crimes that have haunted victims’ families for decades. Barnett had realistic hopes for the new technology, pointing out that police departments are not as high-tech as Hollywood makes them out to be. “It’s frustrating when you’re in front of jurors who think we should be able to have a case solved in an hour because they’re so used to seeing Hollywood depict it that way. It’s not something we can do from our desktop yet,” Barnett adds.

But business process management software is a step in the right direction, especially for police departments with limited resources.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

A True Document Management Partner

The economic climate hasn’t been looking so great and it has been estimated that companies will continue to layoff millions of workers until summer. As companies are forced to cut costs by downsizing administration, they look to technological advances in ECM to maintain efficiency.

Usually, the average cost of two or three administrators is around $30,000 - $40,000 each. So companies who have to keep labor costs within their budget, investing in Enterprise Document Management is a smart business decision. Business process management software increases efficiency by eliminating the paper chase and maximizes leverage for accelerated business processes. Many companies who have already integrated information management by Laserfiche can safely say that it is vital for any company that process large amounts of paperwork to invest in a paperless filing system which ensures your company that your documents are safely stored in a secured software.

ECM is also a great way to promote a green environment. It’s the key to achieve success, both now and in the future

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Integration Nation: Go Green!

Bakersfield, CA, uses document management to unite documents with business-critical applications

In Bakersfield, CA, a town known for its agriculture, manufacturing and petroleum extraction and refining is now known for something different: its innovative technology.

As the fastest-growing city in the United States with a population of over 250,000, Bakersfield was experiencing an explosion of records. “We wanted a document management software to store public documents in a secure, easily searchable manner,” says IT Director Bob Trammell.

With staff in 38 offices across the city’s 148 square miles, there’s no reason to limit document management solutions to a single department. Using document management in all departments means results have really achieved.

For example, human resources department puts performance evaluations into document images. Our fire department has a HazMat folder that only department personnel have access to, so the locations of hazardous material won’t become public knowledge. But it’s available in document management to the fire crew 24/7, so they can know any potential danger at a fire site.

According to Trammell, the city was recently asked to cooperate with the California Attorney General’s office, which was conducting a major probe into price fixing. Staff had to collect all purchase records that met certain pre-determined criteria. “This would have required a lot of city resources,” he says. “Instead, we set up the Attorney General’s office with a document management system so they could access and search the necessary records themselves—which saved a great deal of time for us.”