Step away from the paper

Finding document management too hard? It’s worth persevering because cost savings and efficiency will be your reward. By Kevin Kevany.

For many SME owner managers, the choice of high-tech solutions is often more about the logo on the device, how cool it will look to others and its raw horsepower. The major IT providers like Microsoft, Apple, Dell, Samsung and the rest are happy to keep it that way.
This has provided a gap for the likes of Fuji Xerox, Konica Minolta, Canon, Epson, Adobe and others – traditionally the providers of so-called ‘peripherals’ like printers, copiers, scanners and add-on software – to provide specific solutions which improve productivity and problem-solve; addressing SME owner manager challenges directly, without being hyped on coolness or horsepower.
Because of their solutions and productivity focus, the enhancement can just be a specific benefit, like the ability to sign off on documentation, online, which provides a competitive edge over the opposition. Or a complete system transformation; possibly more useful to a large organisation.
It has been estimated the average office worker uses one sheet of paper every 12 minutes and spends between 20 to 40 percent of their day manually searching for documents. The tricky part is converting these paper documents into a format that can merge seamlessly into digital workflows.
By now you will appreciate that document management is not about basement loads of paper being pointlessly stored until the company moves or closes, but is all about the proactive assembly and accessing of bread-and-butter documentation, which is the glue in our commercial world.
Nor is it about persuading you to go digital – unless you want to.
For a word from the wise, if you are considering making a dynamic shift, you need only to turn to Barry Carruth, CA, MBA, of Probity Consulting, a man with more than 18 years field commercial and management experience.
“When it comes to ‘change’, we frequently encounter the same roadblock – the natural human inclination to fear and resist it. In theory, the idea of moving away from paper towards a more e-centric system is attractive; it simplifies processes, reduces the risk of error and misplacement of information, and saves money.
“But in practice, implementing change isn’t as simple as creating and installing a new system that is less dependent on paper. There is an emotional and psychological element to change, and our role often involves bringing people (maybe just two or three, a couple of dozen or more) to the point where they can adapt to the idea and reality of giving up the paper documents they’ve always used and adjust to a greater use of a computer screen and automation in handling that information.”
Probity’s action slogan is: “When abandoning a paper-based system, “Think of the People”.
The threat to productivity
Konica Minolta’s focus is on the real bottom-line where their CIO, Neal Ross, reckons an SME document management strategy can deliver up to tens of thousands a year in efficiencies. Can any SME resist that?
“With Facebook and Twitter so entrenched, along with the Internet and personal emails,” says Ross, “some companies go so far as to restrict Internet access, preventing employees from visiting popular sites such as Trade Me, while on company time.
“However, there is another widespread business threat to productivity and revenue that many CIOs don’t even realise they’re missing: the absent company strategy – one dictating how documents are managed.
“This relates to the workflow of documents; the integration and extraction of data from documents to utilise within a business; how documents are accessed and stored; along with the policies of printing,” says Ross.  
Konica Minolta estimates, based on the large and diverse client businesses it serves, that by implementing a document management strategy and tools, or simply implementing a scanning and digital storage solution, an SME can potentially save up to $40,000 a year.
“We have learnt over time that a tailored approach delivers greatest value. A cookie cutter approach to business process improvement and document management efficiency doesn’t work. Every client, irrespective of size, requires in-depth consultation and analysis,” says Ross.
“The journey may result in the implementation of a single piece of software or a multitude of software applications, in conjunction with the creation and application of a document policy,” he adds.
A document management strategy starts with understanding the process of a document, then identifies what data is needed across the business, and how information and data is extracted, validated, shared and stored. Thereafter, from the moment a document is created or received (for example, an invoice or statement) it enters the business with a clear process that minimises handling, duplication and manual intervention, delivering optimal efficiency.  
A key outcome is a document management policy. This looks at how a business treats documents: how items are shared, print function authorisation, document tracking, and storage and disposal.
A recent case study shows how Konica Minolta helped its client, ATS Pacific, implement a document management system to optimally handle hundreds of thousands of invoices annually and account for sizable seasonal peaks and steady growth.
“Previously it was taking three staff a total of 20 hours a day to process invoices during peak period,” says ATS Pacific’s financial controller. “Now it only takes one staff member a total of eight hours a day. Add to this the significant reduction in printing costs due to invoices never having to be in hard-copy form. Love the savings!”
“We have found too,” Ross says, “that the recent natural disasters have prompted more businesses to seriously review how they manage documents. Many of the clients we’ve helped had been spending hours filing documents in large cabinets, or sending and retrieving documents from storage facilities. Now they scan documents quickly; enter key meta data; then store and retrieve them electronically, either on a server or in the cloud.”
He points to accounts payable teams manually entering data and collating information as another disaster waiting to happen. “It’s a time-consuming and error-prone approach.”

Solution builder
Competitor, and arguably the industry leader right now in the SME sector, Fuji Xerox naturally claims to be able to deliver similar solutions and savings.
Paul Prouse, GM Solutions and Services for Fuji Xerox, is cock-a-hoop with his company’s SolutionBuilder offering.
SolutionBuilder was initially designed by the local Fuji Xerox operation – “we have a team of very creative and lateral thinkers” – and is now being further developed in conjunction with Fuji Xerox Japan, who in turn have released it to the wider Asia Pacific region.
He describes it as “a toolset allowing the creation of document management solutions which link MultiFunction Devices (MFDs) to critical IT infrastructure, through a series of highly customisable connectors.”
“In simpler terms,” says Prouse, “SolutionBuilder is widely recognised as a best-practice solution, allowing SMEs to unlock information; leverage existing IT investments; and, most importantly, save time-and-money.
“Professional services such as legal and accounting are well-known for heavy paper usage, especially when it comes to compliance regulation, whereas, the health industry is seeing an increased focus on data digitisation.  
“As a company we recognised the intricacies of these requirements and have provided organisations with the ability to create bespoke solutions, tailoring SolutionBuilder to meet specific needs.”
Local law firm, Cooper Rapley has been involved with using the product since the initial stages.
“SolutionBuilder has enabled us to become more efficient with scanning of client files into Infinitylaw. Because it’s a one step process, it reduces the need to search for or retrieve documents from our off-site storage facility,” explains the practice’s Sandy McDougall. “This has saved us considerable time and money.
“Recently Fuji Xerox took on the suggestion of SolutionBuilder going the extra step and being able to ‘read’ the footers in our deeds documents. This has made life so much easier for the person scanning documents, reducing time and the chance of error significantly.
“We can see SolutionBuilder giving us the ability to meet the new discovery rules put in place at the High Court. This will add value to the MFD and significantly alters our perception of where it sits in our technology mix,” says Steve Barter of Barter & Co Limited.
According to Prouse, most scan-to-server systems are static by nature. The simple process of electronically storing a paper-based document can take up to 14 manual steps at both the multifunction device and workstation.
“Because SolutionBuilder links to critical back-end applications such as CRM, ERP and EDMS, organisations are able to condense and speed up this lengthy process. All they need to do is pick a destination, scan the file, and the tool automatically assigns access permissions and populates metadata to the scanned file.”
Claire Arkell, Financial Controller at Hayes Knight NZ Limited saw another benefit of the SolutionBuilder technology. “After the Christchurch earthquakes we reviewed our business continuity plan and recognised we weren’t using our SharePoint solution effectively enough. The difficulty lay in getting documentation into the system – our previous solution hadn’t made that easy. When Fuji Xerox showed us SolutionBuilder it was obvious that this was the sort of technology we needed.”
Prowse again: “Our team is also thrilled that customers around Asia Pacific are also recognising benefits, in the form of increased solution flexibility, simpler filing processes and improved productivity.”
And in terms of functionality and connectivity, try this for a list: juniorPartner, InfinityLaw, Lawbase, eDocs, iManage, eDiscovery, SharePoint, SMB, Xero, Acclipse, XPLAN and Palace.

Creativity with the cloud
I have a soft spot for Adobe, AVG, Spamfighter and others who provide more than useful products free of charge. But there is a danger that you take them for granted and don’t explore their other offerings.
And just in case you are as out-of-date on Adobe as I clearly was: no more disks or downloads only; they now provide cloud-based services for local SMEs. Indeed, New Zealand and Australia provided the pilot program for ‘Adobe’s transformation to the cloud’.
Earlier this year saw the launch of Adobe Creative Cloud, with a new membership option tailored for SMEs. That gives you the much-desired Acrobat, as well as Adobe Muse, Acrobat XI, Lightroom 4, Edge tools and services, plus admin for centralised license purchase and management, increased storage capacity, and expert services – all designed to ‘make it easier for workgroups to create and collaborate’.
Richard Barrie, Adobe’s document services business manager, points out that Adobe Creative Cloud for teams builds on the tools included in the individual membership. There are desktop tools, online services for publishing and file sharing, and upgrades/feature updates when they are released, plus 100GB of cloud storage per user (versus 20GB for the individual Creative Cloud offering).
“Our focus is on providing SMEs with Adobe creativity, with no minimum licence requirement, easy management, immediate deployment and automatic compliance, so they can improve efficiency while minimising their usage of paper – especially ink – and still comply with legal requirements.
“I wonder if SMEs appreciate that if you were to cost the ink in a typical printer it would be around $5,000 per litre?” says Barrie.

More functionality
If you are in a business where you are constantly signing contracts, for A$15-per-month, you can use Adobe’s EchoSign function which enables you to send a document to others for signing, keep track of who’s signed, and store signed contracts online. These documents are recognised in law in Australasia.
“Not only do you close deals fast, with average signature times of less than an hour, you are saving two sets of courier costs amounting to some $50 per deal,” says Barrie.
Sharing big files just got easier too.
“With SendNow, you can upload virtually any kind of file, including audio and video. You choose who you want to share with, and SendNow will email a link – letting you know when the file is downloaded,” says Barrie.
The other bugbear, filling in forms, can be handled by Adobe FormsCentral which provides literally hundreds of smart, ‘fill-able’ formats which can be edited to suit.  
“Best of all, it will analyse the data provided, be it how many people want the chicken rather than the lamb at the final dinner, and how many need the XXXLT-shirts, without having to write a single line of code.”

Kevin Kevany is an Auckland-based freelance writer.
Email [email protected]