Workflow

All too often, we hear and even use terms assuming others know exactly what we mean. One term used in the document industry is workflow- but what does it mean?

According to Wikipedia

A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations...

The flow being described often refers to a document that is being transferred from one step to another.

A workflow is a model to represent real work for further assessment, e.g., for describing a reliably repeatable sequence of operations. More abstractly, a workflow is a pattern of activity enabled by a systematic organization of resources, defined roles and mass, energy and information flows, into a work process that can be documented and learned. Workflows are designed to achieve processing intents of some sort, such as physical transformation, service provision, or information processing. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow )

Everyone knows how bad the economy was this past year and this downturn caused many companies to put their IT strategies on hold. Others however, saw this as an opportunity to be proactive and begin implementing automation and moving forward with new ways of getting the job done. As we head into the New Year, look at these strategies to think about re-organizing and working smarter.

1. Be proactive! While companies need to react quickly to industry trends and changing economic and world environments, they also need to formulate strategies for the future. Think about creating a team who will think ahead and make sure the company will get where it wants to go in the next few years.
2. Follow a business strategy roadmap. Don’t just jump blindly expecting the technology to magically work for you. Build a business strategy that will clarify and outline the issues you’re trying to solve. Be sure that your company is starting with a good foundation for their infrastructure that can be further built upon.
3. You don’t have to implement everything at once. In fact, it is much more practical automate your business according to a strategic plan—focus on what needs attention first. Look at your industry specific government regulations to see how they expect a company to handle information management.
4. Don’t wait to “play it safe” and have other companies experiment with new technology. If you stand back and wait for another company to make the first step and prove automation as a valuable investment, the next generation of technology will already have hit the business world. Your company will remain one step behind other innovating companies and will lose competitive edge.
5. Think about your return on investment (ROI). If you’re worried about staffing and hiring issues, realize that once automation is implemented, people used to working manually with documents can be re-deployed to other valuable tasks. While automation still needs staff to run it, the amount of personnel can be greatly reduced. This feeds right into the ROI. Create a flowchart and see how much faster your product can hit the market with new technology. That’s savings.

Today there are millions of MFPs populating workplaces in every industry. Organizations find MFP scanning appealing because they can combine scanning, copying and printing all on one device. These all-in-one devices allow companies to save money by getting rid of unnecessary technology, increase productivity because of higher page per minute output, and provide a way to add hardcopy documents into their electronic workflows.

With the growth of MFP scanning come questions about how best to utilize and how to take advantage of all the qualities a MFP can provide. Here are a few pointers to take the stress out of implementing an MFP into your document workflow.

· MFPs are not restricted to small-size documents! The MFP document feeder may restrict you to 50 or so pages, but by hitting the “scan more” button you can continue scanning for any number of pages.

· Scanned images from MFPs will not be larger file sizes than images from scanners. MFP scanning software includes image compression so even color pages can be reduced to as little as 200 KB per pages while retaining sharp text and good image quality.

· You can create searchable PDFs with MFP scanning. MFP scanning software allows you to create and save PDFs that are then available for text searches within documents and network folders.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has made great progress in the fight for paperless offices. It’s become a staple component in just about any document management software.

So what is OCR? Wikipedia offers this definition: “…the mechanical or electronic translation of images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text (usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text.” (2008)

Fundamentally, a computer reads the document and creates a library of searchable information. This type of application allows an EDM solution the opportunity to build a database of text, making the search for usable information within and across documents much easier.

While many argue the accuracy levels for OCR engines can reach 98 or 99 percent, small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) may find this hard to achieve with most commercially-available software. Many variables can affect the accuracy levels of output, ranging from document condition to readability.

Where problems can begin to occur is when OCR is not applied to the text contained within the scanned document, but used to lift index values themselves (e.g. customer name, number, etc.). This becomes dangerous if there are no quality assurances or stop-loss measures in place. If that is the case, it becomes likely a document will be misplaced due to a character being off here or there.

Distributed capture has evolved with today’s business processes to incorporate paper-based information into digital workflows. Document imaging technology gives businesses the advantage to increase the amount and quality of information included in critical business systems. The integration of multifunction peripherals (MFP) have made document scanning available for the average office worker.

Whether a business wants to utilize a new distributed capture system or making improvements to its existing system, there are four key ways to ensure scanning processes are optimized to meet business needs.

Work with Your Existing Office Infrastructure.
With today’s emphasis on reducing environmental impact and cutting economic costs, it has never been more important to utilize existing IT investments in new ways. Businesses can significantly increase the value of existing systems by eliminating the need for paper-based workflows and file cabinet document storage.

In today’s society everyone strives to become the boss whether it’s the manager, president or CEO. People tend to discount the little people like the secretary, assistant and file clerk. These employees are essential for making sure every-day tasks are completed smoothly and efficiently, yet businesses insist on making life harder for them by keeping with a paper-based office.

Take for example a department assistant at a state university. He or she organizes everything from adjunct teacher files, instructor contracts, course schedules, money orders and background checks. For each type of document there are separate filing storage cabinets.

Also take into consideration the issue of employee manuals. Every task required for a job is provided in the inconvenient form of a 4-inch binder categorized haphazardly in a conglomerate of miscellaneous information.

When you have one or more groups in an enterprise, utilizing a document management system will provide storage, easy access and control of large information caches.

As workgroups grow larger, the data in the system continues to grow with it. In document management systems, different sets of data are stored in different styles and fonts. Document management solution companies work on systems so anyone within a workgroup can access information.

Good document management software is judged by the accuracy, simplicity and availability of the information access methods. Most systems have a login that will not allow people without proper authentication to view the data. If the data is stolen, the system should be able to restore the lost document without losing format or information.

Since the 1960’s, barcode technology has been used in business industries including the identification of railroad cars.  Today you can use the same barcode technology grocery stores and inventory systems do to streamline your business processes like invoicing and collection.

Barcodes allow critical business information to be processed quickly and accurately. 

For an example consider invoices.  Convert the invoice number to a barcode and printed onto the payment remittance stub.  When payment is received, the check and the remittance stub are scanned in to the system.  The payment is thus recorded and a digital copy of the check is stored.

Has your business upgraded electronic invoices yet?  Send your invoices by email instead of mailing them and get faster delivery, shorter collection times and reduced printing and postage costs.  Best yet, technology exists where you won’t have to change your existing accounting software to send your invoices by email.

Automatically Generate Your Invoices

As the system prints invoices it will automatically look for customers who have provided an email address in their customer record.  The subject and body of the email are preconfigured to let the customer know about the invoice. 

Scan to email is one of the most convenient forms of scanning today and can provide the greatest efficiency improvement in any organization.  Your customers are progressively expecting to receive documentation via email. You can effectively meet this critical business requirement through the use of devices like multifunction systems (MFPs).

MFPs feature high speed scanning that allows documents to be converted to common digital formats like PDF, .jpeg or .tiff formats.  These files can be sent to email addresses  or directed to a network folder.