Seven Ways to Cut Costs with Enterprise Content Management

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a generic term for working with unstructured information -everything that is not considered to be data – in a better way.

“Many independent reports agree that over 10% of knowledge-workers costs can be lost on searching for and manually processing information, and some claim 25% of employee time is frittered away in this pursuit.”
Graham Robinson, ProcessFlows.

As the recession eases for commerce, but as the government bail-out costs begin to reduce the budgets for public sector bodies, these inefficiencies are to be avoided for both markets.

Despite the ECM technology being mature, offices still abound with paper and manual processes, but managing the change and being confident of the benefits are sometimes factors hindering the use of ECM. Some ECM projects have failed through being overly ambitious causing suspicion on adopting such methods.

Organisations can be put off by the word ‘Enterprise’ since this infers change across the entire organisation. This may be the ultimate goal, but not the way to start out.

Using the components of ECM, as illustrated below, it is better to take a phased approach to implementation.

• Build the ECM solution in well defined projects, with measurable benefits, so that one can clearly see progress and build confidence in the new methods
• Engage with stakeholders at all levels, since ECM can impact all roles in the organisation.

1. CAPTURE

If there are documents arriving as paper in the mail, or being printed out from faxes and emails, then you are perpetuating inefficient working.

A hard copy file cannot be retrieved or processed in any other way than manually – keying in data from it, moving it from one place to another, photocopying, filing, retrieving the file, making it a record, sending it to someone else as an email by scanning it or using the internal post – are all slow methods.

Moving from paper based working to electronic is the single largest change that will be caused by investing in ECM. Paper-based working is firmly embedded in many business processes which have been used for a great many years. This change is fundamental to more efficient working, and so must be undertaken with care and consideration for those affected by this change.

CAPTURE includes converting paper copies into scanned images, NOT printing out faxes and emails, and where appropriate uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to automatically extract the data contained in the document for entry to another process, e.g. Invoices, Application Forms, correspondence.

One customer recently quoted that whereas it used to take 10 minutes for each document to be processed they can now process 10 documents per minute using an automated capture solution.

• Valuable TIME is saved by NOT manually processing from paper
• Valuable COST is saved too: by using far less paper, not copying, less filing cabinets, freeing up office space, less postage, less files, and all the associated labour costs.

2. SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL

Unless you make multiple copies you can only file a document in one filing classification, whether it is an electronic file or paper.

Let’s take a simple Invoice that has been received. For example we can file it under:

• Purchase Order Number sequence
• Date order sequence
• Alphabetical by Vendor Name sequence
• Alphabetical by Product Type sequence.

So how do you find all the Invoices received from a particular vendor, for a particular product, over a given date range? Or how do you find all the PO’s that have been raised for a particular product? Such questions that are asked every day for management information or to resolve a query, take personal knowledge of the filing conventions used and time to answer (much time sometimes).

You either make multiple copies for each filing classification or spend time rooting out the files you need and then sometimes photocopying these to save losing the original copies.

Within an ECM database one single electronic file (formed either from scanning or imported from an email etc) can be given multiple classifications. This means that you can search for “all the Invoices received from a particular vendor, for a particular product, over a given date range”, with just a simple query and then given precisely all the files that match those criteria immediately.

• NO physical searching
• NO copying
• NO lost files,
• NO re-filing
• NO TIME taken
• NO MONEY is spent on searching, paper and photocopying.

The effort to place documents into an ECM system on arrival is trivial compared to the effort of not doing so.

3. FILING AND RECORD KEEPING

Who takes care of the archives in your organisation – you, a third party, the office administrator, the company archivist or no-one?

It is not uncommon for paper files to be moved to a remote place for ‘safe-storage’, once the filing cabinet space has all been used up. A construction company stored all its paper archives in the roof void of the offices they occupied! Others send them to commercial organisations for long term storage, and there have been occasions of major fires in these paper-filled warehouses with the consequential loss of very valuable records.

Records are documents and files that need to be kept for a given length of time and then destroyed, or reviewed for further retention. Some may be kept for many years. Some Records Managers wish to destroy as many records as possible, to save cost and effort!

Events normally trigger the declaration of a document as a Record. An employee leaves the company; an Invoice is paid; a contract is agreed; etc. Without some automation Record Keeping can be:

• Very inconsistent
• Inaccurate
• Basically ignored.

In the case of the latter, companies can be in breach of the Data Protection Act 1988 by keeping records of failed job applicants for more than seven months and for ex-employees for more than seven years.

ECM takes away all these issues by controlling the processes in the business using workflow and when a key event takes place then Records are made at that point automatically and reviewed and/or destroyed at times set by the record keeping rules used in the business. Furthermore, compared to paper archives, there is much higher security for document access provided by ECM, since all files are electronically protected and are audited for every access.

Some organisations are afraid that electronic files may not be legally admissible in court. This is not true, since many records only ever existed in electronic form.

• So TIME is saved by not having to ‘make’ records, transporting these to offsite locations and managing these records
• COST is saved by not having to pay third parties, or occupying office accommodation that can be better used, and by instant access to corporate Records when and if you need to.

The same benefits apply to any form of electronic information /media type used within the organisation.

Note: it is not recommended that all historic paper archives are converted by scanning to image, only those which need to be freely accessed. The historic physical files can be referenced within the ECM system and retrieved/destroyed as required.

4. DOCUMENT VERSIONING and NOTIFICATION

Whether they are compliance rules and regulations; contracts; proposals; procedure manuals or any other important document, it is common for such documents to be changed, either during their development or as a result of legislative or corporate directives.

But where are these documents kept and how are they managed; on a corporate network drive, in a filing cabinet, on your laptop/desktop computer?

The problem is that inadvertently one might use an out-of-date version of a document that can result in either a minor or serious error.

In 1988 it was a contractor working on the Piper Alpha Oil Rig referring to out-of-date instructions and drawings that caused the explosion that caused 167 rig workers to lose their lives.

In another example, it can also be a challenge to make sure that annual contracts are reviewed regularly to make sure that they are either re-negotiated or cancelled before they automatically renew themselves by default.

• ECM can provide strict version control of documents ensuring that only authors can see multiple versions and other users always being automatically only presented with the currently authorised version
• ECM can notify communities of users to alert them to the change in a key reference document and ensure that they take note of this change
• Additionally within a Contract Management regime, alerts can be placed on documents to review them in time to make changes if required
• Thus TIME and COST are saved from inadvertent use of out-of-date information.

5. DATA PROCESSING SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

You can’t integrate a paper file with a computer system, but you can with ECM.

If we take the example of a supplier invoice, which is being managed in paper form, then when the Accounts Clerk is reviewing the posting on the ERP/Accounts system for that purchase and they need to see the copy invoice, they have to physically locate the document and then return it to its file location/paper tray after use. By comparison the same Accounts Clerk has instant retrieval of all the data for the posting from the ERP.

Why do we allow this massive disparity of speed when an electronic version of the same invoice can be brought to the user’s workstation as instantly as the data?

• In some Accounts Departments they scan invoices to image after the transaction has been completed
• This gives small benefit compared to scanning the Invoice as it arrives in the organisation, before the transaction, to enable the electronic version to be viewed instantly, integrated with the ERP solution and instantly sent to approvers for review and sign off
• TIME is saved by removing the need to physically find the documents and COST is saved from reduced labour costs, removal of paper, faster processing and query handling and better management information.

Integration can also take place with other departmental and corporate solutions e.g. CRM, HR, Purchase Order processing, legacy databases etc.

6. WORKFLOW

Competitive and financial pressures force organisations to do more with less, and this tends to mean higher productivity from staff.

• Workflow helps to take the inefficiencies out of business processes, giving staff more time to spend on value-added activities compared to administrative chores – like searching, photocopying, filing, archiving, distributing, etc
• ECM makes workflow feasible for all information types. Whether it is a web form, hardcopy application form, photograph, email or any other object, ECM enables the workflow to homogenize all these information forms to enable users to able to view, comment, approve, forward, review etc., with the same level of high efficiency irrespective of the media type
• TIME and COST are saved by faster processes, more productive staff, better compliance and auditing, increased customer satisfaction and better management information.

7. REMOTE WORKING

With the ready availability of Broadband and high speed voice networks, and with the use of ECM, it is now feasible to be fully productive when not sitting at your office desk.

Historically many staff required ready access to paper archives and files to be able to fulfil their job role. This means loss of flexibility, weak resilience for holidays and sickness and loss of productivity for employees who need to travel as part of their work duties.

• ECM, where all necessary information objects are electronically managed, coupled with today’s high speed networks, enables staff to be fully productive at any location where they can connect to the corporate network
• They can also retain an electronic copy of any files that they need on their Laptop/PDA. A typical 80 Gb Laptop drive can securely hold over 1m pages of documents
• It is also feasible to ‘check-out’ a batch of documents to be conveniently available on a user’s laptop for off-line access and update, and then on reconnection to the host solution have any changes automatically updated to provide a consistent document and data set
• TIME is saved by being able to conduct tasks and access ECM managed information irrespective of location and COST is saved by reduced travelling, faster processes, more resilient working and simple delegation in cases of holidays and sickness.

SUMMARY

ECM does not necessarily mean that every part of the Enterprise is using electronic working.

This was the vision some years ago, when the ECM technologies were originally marketed, but it has been often found that such projects are too large to be successful.

However the principles of ECM are very sound where these methods are deployed for specific applications, such as:

• Invoice Processing
• Purchase Order Requisition approval
• CRM workflow tasks
• Order Processing
• Recruitment
• Online Applications etc.

They do SAVE much TIME and COST, and the return on investment can be just a few months with good planning and execution.

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