PREPARING FOR AN ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

Transcription

1 PREPARING FOR AN ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOLUTION Abstract A comprehensive document that provides understanding and a practical step by step guide to make the process of getting started with a document management solution a success. Author: Bennett Klein 0

2 Contents Introduction... 2 What is Electronic Document Management?... 2 How Can Electronic Document Management Help?... 2 The Real Issues... 3 The Persistence of Paper... 3 Improving Productivity... 3 Addressing Compliance... 4 Risk... 4 Getting Started with Document Management... 4 Conducting an Information Flow Audit... 4 Making document life cycle decisions... 6 Addressing Security... 7 Choosing the best electronic document management solution... 7 Important Considerations for an EDM solution... 8 Customizability... 8 Controlling the design... 8 User Adoption... 8 Document Retention... 8 Version Control and Audit Trails... 9 Business Application Integration... 9 Security... 9 API s Turnkey Solution for Electronic Document Management API OptiView Software API Services rd -Party Hardware API Cloud Deployment Bottom-line benefits of electronic document management About Advanced Processing & Imaging (API)

3 Introduction This white paper is designed to help you and your team understand how an electronic document management (EDM) solution also referred to as Electronic Content Management (ECM) will help your organization address many business challenges. It will help you evaluate the obvious and not-so-obvious costs of paper-based documents, forms and processes, and provide tools to calculate savings. You may be surprised at the size and scope of financial benefits that can be gained by replacing timeconsuming, cumbersome, risky and expensive paper processes with streamlined and efficient electronic document management. What is Electronic Document Management? Let s start out by defining Electronic Document Management (EDM). EDM solutions started out in the 1990 s as Document Imaging where paper documents were scanned for electronic storage and retrieval. Over time, these solutions evolved to include management of digitized information such as electronic forms and s. Eventually EDM solutions incorporated basic document routing and workflow to help organizations automate business processes. Today, EDM focus on the forms, documents and reports that drive day-to-day business operations across the organization. EDM solutions can integrate with business applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), salesforce automation (SFA), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Student Information Systems (SIS). Process examples include Invoice Processing, Employee Onboarding, Contract Renewals, Public Records Requests, Student Records Management, and Field Services. An EDM solution helps organizations accelerate processes and task completion, eliminate time, risk and cost associated with storing and retrieving paper documents and forms, and address regulatory compliance around document retention, security and availability. An EDM solution with document version control is also used for collaborative content creation like contracts and sales proposals. An EDM solution provides the ability to backup and protect documents and forms the same way you protect your data to address disaster recovery and business continuity goals. This is virtually impossible with paper stored on desktops and in filing cabinets and boxes in a back room, basement or storage facility. Another critical feature of EDM is being able to define a document retention period to address regulatory compliance and minimize risk. Again, this is almost impossible to do with paper documents and forms. How Can Electronic Document Management Help? Think about some of the things that keep you up at night. If you re an executive of a for-profit business, you re likely concerned about sales growth, profitability, risk and compliance. How productive are your employees? Can you even measure productivity across your organization? What is your disaster recovery and business continuity strategy and plan? Can you meet your industry or government compliance regulations? If you re managing a public-sector organization like City Government or a School District, your finances are scrutinized by the state and your constituents. Non-profit organizations must also maximize budgets and staff productivity. Public-sector organizations also have strict public disclosure and public records management compliance requirements to address. Whether you are a for-profit or non-profit executive, you re likely concerned with cost control and reduction. Managers and their staff also face issues that keep them up at night. Things like wasting time storing, retrieving and managing tens of thousands of paper forms and documents used across the organization. 2

4 Fear of losing documents that could be simply misfiled or even buried on somebody s desk. Having multiple copies of the same document and not knowing which is most current. Inaccuracy of critical systems because paperwork has not been processed. Even tedious data entry performed all day, every day transcribing information from documents and forms into the business systems used in HR, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Service and Support. And what about time-consuming and costly auditing? Sound familiar? An EDM solution can help you address all of these challenges! The Real Issues The Persistence of Paper Many organizations utilize paper as a primary form of information capture and retention. Although information technology initially led to predictions of paper s demise, in fact, according to The Economist, What actually happened was that global consumption of office paper more than doubled in the last two decades of the 20th century, as digital technology made printing cheaper and easier. Statistics from InfoTrends cited in this article estimated per-worker paper usage at 130 lbs. per year, or about 37 reams. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that each office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper per year. Other studies put daily paper printouts per worker at about 45. Number of Employees Monthly Paper Printed Monthly Paper Copied 3 Total Paper Produced Per Month Annual Cost 20 18, , ,000 $177, ,500 1,282,500 1,350,000 $664, ,000 4,275,000 4,500,000 $2,214, ,000 17,100,000 18,000,000 $8,856, ,700,000 51,300,000 54,000,000 $26,568,000. The Figure above indicates that for organizations of a variety of sizes, having each employee print on average 45 sheets of paper per day becomes a very costly concern. In this example, we show the monthly production level of paper by organization size as well as the extra costs in the information flow of organizations. Specifically, the average document is copied 19 times according to AIIM. This leads small businesses to spend an estimated $175,000 a year in producing paper alone, and larger organizations can easily spend upwards of $25 million per year. The costs of purchasing supplies and equipment and spending time at the printer or copy machine do not tell the whole economic story of paper documents. Loss of productivity and efficiency, duplication of effort, and reduced business agility and customer response are huge hidden costs. For example, hunting for lost documents and re-creating them when they cannot be located can waste a great deal of employees time and energy. Even simple filing and retrieval, and the costs of printing, faxing and couriering documents, quickly add up. As the knowledge-based business environment continues to require handling more data in less time, this situation quickly becomes unmanageable. The fact remains that future profitability and competitiveness will hinge on fast, simple access to and use of business information. Organizations can no longer afford to ignore this issue and be left behind. Improving Productivity How many different paper forms does your business or organization maintain to initiate processes and route documentation? Examples include forms for employee onboarding, time-off requests, benefits selection, expense reimbursement, purchase approval, office supplies, invoice approvals, petty cash requests, and on and on

5 How often do employees have to search, retrieve, and re-store documentation in order to complete tasks and business processes? How long does it take each time? What does staff do when documents are missing? How do they know if other employees have the documentation or it is misfiled? How many times does staff have to make copies of documentation so multiple people can work on a project? What does that cost the company in paper and printing supplies? And how often do documents have to be inter-office mailed or worse yet, mailed through the postal service? How does this affect staff productivity and operational cost? What about manual routing and distribution of documents to support processes? When staff hold forms and documents as work in progress on their desks how does that impact other staff work and productivity? After all this paper-swirl, then staff must spend valuable time entering information from forms and documents into a wide range of disparate systems. Even if you use a business-wide enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, staff must still perform a lot of manual data entry. Wouldn t it be great if you could automatically convert information from forms and documentation into electronic data that could be uploaded to your business applications and eliminate much of the manual data entry and the inherent risks associated. Get the picture? Addressing Compliance Most businesses and non-profit organizations like Government and Education face stringent regulatory compliance requirements. From information security and records retention to freedom of information and financial transparency, most organizations are required to meet a variety of compliance goals. Trying to adhere to compliance requirements when hundreds of thousands of paper forms and documents are stored on office desks and filing cabinets, in storage boxes in dusty warehouses and remote storage facilities like Iron Mountain make it almost an impossible goal. Risk Do you understand the risk associated with storing tens or hundreds of thousands of paper forms and documents across the organization and in remote facilities? The IT organization most likely backs up and protects your business data but all your paper is at risk to natural and man-made disasters, theft and unauthorized use. This could mean tens of thousands of dollars in recreating the documents, if it can be recreated, to millions of dollars in law suits just waiting to happen. Getting Started with Document Management Conducting an Information Flow Audit The need for document management is often so obvious that few organizations make a targeted effort to look at their internal stumbling blocks with paper. Through an information flow audit organizations can account for their inefficiencies in information flow and understand prior to selecting software how they would like to solve their enterprise-wide pains with paper. Such an audit also assists in developing a compelling case for the allocation of resources for an organization-wide project. The Figure below visualizes a typical information flow in most organizations. Some form or paperwork typically kicks off a business process in your organization. The core data contained in the document is manually entered into your business system (i.e. enterprise resource planning, financials, customer relationship management, student information systems, salesforce automation, etc.) through a slow, costly and labor-intensive data entry process involving significant human intervention and, therefore, 4

6 almost certainly fraught with errors and omissions. The physical documents are then stored in file folders and inside filing cabinets or even off site in boxes for future retrieval needs. As employees go through their day-to-day activities, they often need to retrieve original documents to verify, copy and forward or use the information to complete a task or process. Without a Document Management system, employees can spend hours each week manually searching for documentation. Often, documentation is misfiled, sitting on someone else s desk or stored offsite for archiving purposes. Time spent searching for and physically routing documentation affects business efficiency, employee satisfaction and even regulatory compliance. By understanding and creating similar workflow diagrams for your own departmental and enterprise processes, your organization will have a better idea as to the bottlenecks and issues involved. This research also helps to identify opportunities for cost savings in both supplies and labor. Step 1: Identify key information users. The best and most comprehensive way to begin an information flow audit is to start at the bottom and work your way up. Specifically, identify the key individuals in your organization who understand the workflow of various departments in need of an electronic document management solution. While it is important to get input from the front-line employees who conduct the processes daily, it is often better to delegate this task to each department head. This often also helps in getting buy-in from your employees once an electronic document management solution is decided upon. Step 2: Create individual information flow diagrams. Work with each department to create rudimentary flow diagrams regarding their current information flows. Place emphasis in the quantification of time spent and resources used. Even if these numbers are rough estimates, they will prove to be an important component in building your case for an electronic document management solution. Resources should include everything from time spent storing, retrieving and copying documents, printer/copier equipment leasing costs and supplies, to square feet allocated to filing cabinets, off-site storage and more. Essentially, anything and everything that costs you extra money to keep this information flow going should be listed. Step 3: Create a list of your current document inventory. Ask each department to generate a list of their current document types; for example: invoices, checks, purchase orders, engineering plans, work orders, records requests, etc. Have them provide estimated current quantities and a brief explanation of the method for filing these documents. Are they filed by a case number or by vendor number or just 5

7 by date? Also ask them to include the mandatory and recommended retention dates for each category of document. The following chart provides examples of some of the document information you should capture during this step. Employee Name Joe Smith Jane Doe Barbara Rose Department HR. Finance Student Records Type of Document Benefits Purchase Orders Transcript # of Records or Files ,000 10,000 # of Pages Per Record or File Total # of Pages for Document Type Who needs access? How often are they used? (daily, monthly, annually, other) ,500 20,000 HR. Staff, Employee, Auditors District Staff, Auditors Monthly Daily Weekly Retention Life time 5 years Life time Do the records have staples, paper clips etc.? No Yes No What is the paper size for the record? Where are the records stored? What is the condition of the records?(great, Fair, Damage) This document is created by who and when? Do we need to have it on paper? Is this a part of a process needing others to approve? 8.5X11 8.5X11 8.5X11 In HR filing cabinets In finance filing cabinets Student Records, PIEMS Cord. Basement Great Great Some Damaged HR Dept. when we have new hire AP dept., when we have to pay a vendor. No No No Yes Yes No When a student graduates Step 4: Create a list of the average wages per department and number of hours worked. Organizations typically find that using the average wage in each department is sufficient to produce an adequate case for an electronic document management solution. Making document life cycle decisions It is not uncommon for an information flow audit to raise some provocative questions about the way the organization currently handles paper. Understanding this process and identifying inefficiencies will help your organization make immediate changes to the information flow that will result in some direct efficiency gains as well as aid in a smooth transition to an electronic document management solution later. In your audit you may have noticed an issue common to most organizations the retention of documents that are past their expiration dates. The federal government, its agencies and most state governments maintain different legal thresholds for document retention. These are dictated by the type of document, vary from state to state and may change according to legislative activity. For example, the State of Florida states that invoices, sales records, purchase orders, personnel files of terminated 6

8 employees and many other categories of documents may be purged in seven years from their date of origin. In contrast, bank statements, most employment applications, expired insurance policies, sales commission reports and petty cash vouchers may be purged after three years of their date of origin. Other document categories vary anywhere from one year of retention to permanent retention as in the case of some K-12 student records, and some states even require pre-approval for the disposal of certain documents. Addressing Security Using an EDM solution helps organizations significantly improve information security across the organization. Not only can you control who has access to which documents, you can even redact information within individual documents, based on employee characteristics. Paper forms and documents stored in filing cabinets are vulnerable to unauthorized access, copying and even theft. An EDM solution lets you control access and also keeps an audit trail of use for compliance. Some organizations even use a very time-consuming and cumbersome system of having employees sign folders and documents out for use, just for tracking purposes. Of course your physical data center and system hardware and software will have their own security making protecting your information even easier. Bottom line, as you perform your Information Flow Audit described above, you will need to determine access controls for all documentation. Choosing the best electronic document management solution Organizations that are armed with the proper tools including their own information flow audit and an understanding of their document life cycle policies are able to garner better information from an electronic document management solution search process. In addition, the following questions will help to highlight the advantages and drawbacks of different solutions. Can it be implemented quickly? Every day that your organization delays in implementing an electronic document management solution, costs money as you have learn from this article. The right solution needs to be comprehensive but easy and fast to install. Ask the vendor how long it takes for a typical implementation. Ask them to specify what is included in the implementation. Aside from the typical installation procedures, does it include both administrator and user training? Does it include a period for coaching and monitoring usage of the software? Is it easy to learn and use? Any software is worthless if it is not used by your employees. The ideal electronic document management software should be intuitive and require as little data entry and typing as possible. For best adoption results, is imperative to get user buy-in before making your selection. If your employees do not like the solution, it may derail the project altogether, along with any cost savings that had been envisioned. Change management is a very important aspect of an electronic document management solution. Ask your vendor how they have dealt with change management in other implementations. Will it be compatible with existing business processes? You ve now completed your audit and you know exactly how your organization manages its paperwork. The solution that you select must be able to accommodate your work requirements and not force your employees to radically change the way that they are used to working. The only thing that they should need to change is clicking on the screen instead of getting up from their desks to retrieve files and make copies. As you review demonstrations from various vendors on the use of their system, keep this fact in mind. Will it integrate seamlessly with our database applications? Your organization has spent thousands, or perhaps even millions implementing comprehensive business solutions to manage your accounting, human resources, sales, production and other business data. A critical component of an electronic document management solution is its ability to integrate smoothly with these existing systems. A truly 7

9 integrated solution will give your employees instant access to related documents without the need for extra searching or typing. The more seamless the process and the less training required of employees, the greater the benefit to your bottom line. Important Considerations for an EDM solution Customizability Today if you are in a paper based world, you have file cabinets. These file cabinets have folders in them and are stored in a particular way. A Finance department might store documents (contracts, W9 s, Quotes) for a vendor having a vendor cabinet with folders by vendor Name in alphabetical order. In a Human Resources department they will be storing employee files (Annual Reviews, I9 forms, Applications, Training certificates) with a file cabinet for all employee files where the folders are stored by Employee Name or Employee Number. A document management system should provide your organization the flexibility to design your electronic file cabinets in a way that works for your departments. It should also be flexible enough to be used in all departments throughout your organization. Controlling the design If you have cabinets for your paper documents today, would you allow someone to come in and add another cabinet or folders without your approval? The answer should be no. It may have taken years to design the way documents are stored today. Should someone be able to come in and just add another folder structure just because they were too busy or lazy to adhere to the one that is already in place? The same holds true with an electronic filing system. Have a defined committee from each department determine how their electronic files cabinets are going to be created and how the documents are going to be stored in those file cabinets. Once that design is in place, if someone wants to change it, they will have to get the committee s approval for the change. Be careful because some systems allow users to create any number of folders on their own without the committee s approval. Also some systems are built on a folder based system that looks similar to Windows Internet Explorer. If you are simply going to put your documents into a system like this why spend the money? You already have Internet Explorer, you can just use that. But again, anyone can store documents anyway they want making it very difficult to find them in the future. Structure and consistency is the key to a good electronic file cabinet. User Adoption When reviewing systems make sure the system is easy to use. During a demonstration companies might show a multitude of features but are those features ones that your teams will use? Is the system easy to use? There are many systems where users must type a lot of information about the document in order to store it. Through experience, I can tell you that these are the systems that fail. Users don t have time to fill in a lot of criteria about a document in order to find it later. If it takes longer to store documents electronically rather than in paper format you will have a struggle on your hands. Make sure the system of choice is easy to use, easy to store documents, easy to retrieve documents and will allow users to adapt to it in a timely manner. Document Retention What is retention? Retention allows the system or users to add an expiration date to the electronic documents. In paper format, employees come to work in their jeans at the beginning of a new year, go up in the attic or down to the basement and leaf through stored paper files looking for documents that have met their retention period in order for them to be shredded. They do this to help be compliant with state and federal records retention regulations. Did you know that if specific document 8

10 types are mandated to be destroyed after a set period for time, let s say 7 years, but aren t and you are called to court, those document can be used against you because they are still available. Taxes for instance, the Federal government regulations state that you must keep your tax return information for the last 7 years. If however you continue to save the paperwork for 10 or 12 years and you are audited, the auditor has the right to audit you for every year the paperwork is available. Retention in the electronic system is a must even if you don t turn it on right away. It needs to be able to give you a report showing the documents that have met their retention dates in order for the records manager to get sign off from the departments to actually electronically shred the documents. Also a report showing the names of the deleted documents and when that occurred. Should a system automatically delete documents when the retention period is met? Not necessarily, what if a document has met it s retention but you are in the middle of a workers comp claim and need those documents for legal purposes. You wouldn t want them to be deleted automatically. You want to be able to put them back into the system for an extra period of time. Version Control and Audit Trails The Uniform Rules of Evidence (US to ) - "The Uniform Rules of Evidence", has been adopted by the United States federal courts and 34 states. The Rules of Evidence allow a duplicate to be admissible in evidence "to the same extent as an original" and defines a duplicate as a counterpart produced by any technique "which accurately reproduces the original". If properly done, courts have upheld that imaging and scanning are just as legally binding as paper documents. Audit trails are recommend and are used to prove that a transaction was properly processed by the organization. With Audit Trail, you can instantly know every time an electronic document has been viewed or manipulated. Audit trails help insure document integrity and prove that the image is a true representation of the original - reducing exposure to risk. When Version Control is used, every time someone wants to modify a document they must check it out of the system. This creates an audit trail and report showing who has checked it out for modification. Also when a document is modified or edited either using electronic annotations or through its original program, another version of the document is stored keeping the original intact. If there are multiple versions of the document be sure the document retention portion of the program deletes all version of the document. Business Application Integration Integration can save your users a lot of time when storing documents. You have a front end system where you store information about your vendors and your employees. You have spent a tremendous amount of money purchasing the system and time training your employees how to use it. True integration from the document management system intuitively watches what you are doing on the front end system and presents you with the electronic documents associated with the record being displayed on the screen. Integration captures index data automatically from the front end client following you through your ever day processes. With integration, users don t have to spend a lot of time entering information about a document being stored and allows users to have stored categorized documents at the touch of their fingers. No more spending tremendous amounts of time looking for paper files. Financial Audits can take up to a third the amount of time using a proficient document management system because Finance employees aren t searching for checks and invoices associated with an entered record. They are all right there being automatically presented to the viewer. Security Security is very important. Who has access to what file types? In paper form, companies put confidential documents in a locked file cabinet drawer. Electronically, a system should give you this same flexibility. Build a cabinet to a departments requirements and then lock down different document types to allow only specific employees access to them. 9

11 Many ERP systems today have started adding an attachment button to their systems, mainly as an afterthought. The concept is to allow users to stored documents associated with a specific record. The idea is good however most of them haven t added any security for different document types that companies need to store. When storing documents into the ERP, normally, anyone who has access to the records can see any and all documents associated with that record. Legal documents for instance should be locked down to allow only certain employees to be able to view them. A good integrated document management system adds security to document types in order to allow only authorized employees to view confidential documents. API s Turnkey Solution for Electronic Document Management Advanced Processing & Imaging (API) has been helping businesses, government agencies and K-12 school districts accelerate business processes and eliminate the cost, time and risk associated with using paper-based forms, documents and reports. API OptiView is a comprehensive and cost-effective electronic document management software/cloud solution that together with professional and technical services and offsite software hosting make it easy to answer yes to all of the above questions and more. Following are the components of the API Solution API OptiView Software OptiView, API s electronic document management software, enables you to capture, manage, retrieve and distribute incoming information (scanned paper documents, electronic documents, , and audio and video files) as well as reports from Windows systems in document format. With OptiView, users can incorporate new information into the system and access archived materials anywhere Internet access is available. OptiView offers a long list of features, including drag and drop importation of materials, an electronic file cabinet, flexible search functionality, annotation and redaction of records, full records management, and the ability to , fax and export documents. OptiView not only provides significant cost and efficiency advantages to your organization, but also solves the traditional challenges associated with conversion from a paper-based system by minimizing the learning curve, providing seamless integration with other business applications, and delivering returns quickly. In fact, employees can learn the basics of the system in a few minutes, helping to encourage adoption ROI is typically achieved in under a year. OptiView is exceptionally intuitive and versatile, offering users many ways to search for and work with a document. It provides a number of unique capabilities that set it apart from the competition. First, compared to other solutions that charge separate fees for specific functionality, OptiView is an inclusive offering. Also, it is intelligent by design the technology appears to read your mind by anticipating which documents you might need when working with a particular application and proactively making them available. This powerful solution manages, stores, secures and retrieves documents, audio and video files, images, drawings and s, and can easily be scaled up to accommodate large volumes of material and additional users. API Services To enhance its product suite, API offers professional and technical services to customers. The company s in-house consultants or Platinum channel partners can work with you to design and implement your API solution, and provide training and ongoing coaching and monitoring to make sure you are deriving the greatest benefit. A dedicated technical support team is available by phone and to provide instruction and guidance on features and functionality so that customers can optimize the value of their API solution. 10

12 Support representatives can also install upgrades, as well as troubleshoot issues. API offers customers a Web-based remote support tool for faster service. In addition, API provides ongoing training webinars for both administrators and users alike. These webinars are designed to assist organizations with continual education on API products. 3 rd -Party Hardware As part of its complete offering, API s services team can supply, implement and support scanners from the leading names in hardware, which have been selected to optimize the performance and reliability of API electronic document management software. API Cloud Deployment Organizations that prefer not to maintain their own server, storage and software infrastructure, or want the extra protection of a robust disaster recovery and business continuity solution, can choose API s OptiView Cloud service. This software-as-a-service (SaaS) makes API s software and your documentation available to your users over the Internet from a secure, fully redundant, Tier 1 Category 5 facility. API s Cloud data center delivers: Stringent compliance with o SSAE 16 o SOC2 and SOC3 o PCI o Safe Harbor o HIPAA o ITAR o FIPS o ISO and LEED 99.99% Uptime Guarantee Replication and high availability for disaster recovery and business continuity N+1 or greater redundancy to maintain service continuity (Power, Servers, Internet, Networks) Geographic diversity for back ups Geo Replicated secondary and tertiary data centers Biometric security controls Bottom-line benefits of electronic document management By replacing paper-based processes with an electronic document management solution from API, your organization will achieve measurable return on investment (ROI) in less than 12 months, and reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in both hard and soft cost areas. Cost savings are derived from reduced usage of paper, ink, toner, copiers, faxes, file cabinets, offsite storage, mail and courier costs, power consumption and transportation. Benefits include faster task and process completion, increased employee productivity and satisfaction and improved customer service and support. Still another benefit area is the ability to comply with regulatory requirements and audits. And electronic document management is an important component of a disaster recovery planning strategy Rapid return on investment (ROI) and low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) are key benefits realized from API s EDM solution. In fact, API s customers typically achieve ROI in under one year sometimes in only a few months and save tens of thousands of dollars annually. 11

13 About Advanced Processing & Imaging (API) For nearly two decades, Advanced Processing & Imaging, Inc. (API) has been helping Small & Mid-Sized Businesses, City and County Government Agencies and K-12 School Districts speed business processes, increase productivity and reduce operating costs through more efficient business execution and reduced reliance on paper-based forms, documents and processes. API s OptiView document management solution streamlines the storage, retrieval and distribution of the documents required to power daily business operations. The company s mpower business process automation solution automates existing business processes and presents information and documentation relevant for the task at hand without having to manually search. For more information visit 12