Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

The case for actively managing policies and procedures

// April 15th, 2013 // No Comments » // Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Healthcare UK // Steve Rudland

A friend of mine works as an administrator for a school.  One of the tasks her team faces every year is  updating the school’s policy manual.  Each teacher has one; it’s a lever-arch file that documents the policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that they need to observe and adhere to in their daily work.

Annually, the administration team collects all of the manuals, removes the contents, and replaces them with the revised documents to be used for the next academic year.  The manuals will then be placed in the teachers’ pigeon-holes, where the teachers will collect them.But how does the head of the school know that the teachers have read the new policies?  How does she know that they are implementing of the new policies?  How does she know that they understand the new policies?   She doesn’t, but the manual has been issued, a box has been ticked, so all is right with the world.

I visited my GP recently.  He and his colleagues are required to keep their Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG, formerly Primary Care Trust) updated to show which processes and procedures they are current on.  This is usually accomplished with a paper note handed to the Practice Manager, who sends an email to the CCG.

But how does the CCG manage the email?  Do they simply search the inbox whenever a question arises?  Or does someone have the job of transcribing from the regular emails from 20+ practices, and maintaining a list – probably a spreadsheet?  And, once again, how does the CCG know that the staff understand the policy or procedure?

If an organisation cannot be certain that its staff know its policies and procedures – basically that its staff knows what to do – then that organisation will be, at best, inefficient.  Staff will waste time checking with colleagues to determine correct procedures, or will act incorrectly.  At worst, the organisation will be a danger to its patients, customers, pupils, or passengers.  Inefficiency and risk are unnecessary expenses that can be minimised by an active approach to policy management.

Active Policy Management enables organisations to:

• Collaboratively develop and revise policies;
• Maintain reading lists of relevant policies for groups of workers;
• Inform workers of new and revised policies in their reading list
• Require staff to read and acknowledge new and revised policies
• Require staff to demonstrate understanding of new and revised policies
• Audit acknowledgement and understanding to identify laggards and those in need of training or coaching

Enterprise content management (ECM) software such as OnBase provides Active Policy Management capabilities like electronic document management (EDM), workflow, reporting, electronic forms, and audit.  Customers as diverse as ambulance services, local authorities, and engineering manufacturers  use the OnBase policy management capabilities to improve staff efficiency, customer experience and reduce risk.

The current climate in the NHS, combined with rapid evolution of procedures makes it essential that staff is fully cognisant of the policies and procedures they must follow to enable a safe, high quality patient experience.  The implementation of Active Policy Management takes them a  a step close to the paper-free NHS.

Document management and accounts payable: 3 reasons to go there

// March 28th, 2013 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Government, State and Local Government // Terri Jones

Turn paper piles into electronic files

As government begins to turn the corner on budget woes, local government has a golden opportunity to transform their processes and position themselves for quick return on investment – and a conscious movement towards the government that our future constituents will want and expect. It is, at times, overwhelming to look at the potential IT solutions you could implement. But it helps to look at the core processes of government and target your attention, your technology to make these processes more efficient.How do I define efficient? Pretty simply, I see it as taking staff less time to complete processes. Even more importantly, looking see it as ways to reclaim staff time by using technology to eliminate tasks that were previously necessary because government had to rely on paper to get things done.

Document management is a key piece of technology for government. But I often get asked, “Where should we start?” and “where does it make sense to expand document or ECM solutions?” My answer - accounts payable.

Why start in accounts payable?

My first answer is the massive volume of paper processed by accounting departments. But it really comes down to how the paper slows the process of paying all those bills. And it only gets worse if you have been forced to cut some of the staff that works in your accounting department.

My next answer is the speed of retrieval. Your accounting staff needs to find critical information, answer phone calls from vendors or colleagues, figure out whether a bill should be paid and determine whether the goods or services have been received. With the hundreds of thousands of transactions that agencies do every year, finding these answers by going to the file cabinet or going through an inbox or inter-office mail envelopes is not sustainable when your budget and your staff have been cut.

These are reactionary reasons. How about something that will position you for the future?

The best reason to use ECM for AP is transparency and self-service. By digitizing the documents, you not only solve the two dilemmas above, you create internal and external transparency. Internally, the process is entirely transparent. Staff can find invoices and documents they submitted as well as where they are in the process of approval or payment. Managers and submitters can receive emails that tell them when they need to review and approve purchase orders or invoices and they can approve them right from Outlook.

Internal transparency certainly helps, but what if you also met growing constituent demand for transparency using the same solution that help with the challenges above? By digitizing documents, you can make them available online so constituents can see how money is being spent without having to travel to your office or make a public record request. This saves their time and your clerks time too. Some agencies are even using their digital documents and workflows to create vendor portals so vendors can view the status of their invoices without making a call to your staff – using self-service to keep them working on processing instead of answering the phone.

Using document management in your accounting department creates that rare moment when the same investment can solve today’s challenges while also answering a future need.

Super Ready for the Next Super Storm

// February 28th, 2013 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Back Office, Credit Unions, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Human Resources // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

Hurricane Sandy. You don’t have to be located on the East Coast to shudder at the thought of it.

That’s why a well thought-out document management strategy is a key part of planning for your financial institution’s operations to continue when faced with a devastating storm, natural disaster or emergency. Unfortunately, there’s no designated “disaster season” which you can prepare for like a run up to college basketball’s March Madness. Depending on location, tornado season runs from March through August. Hurricane season spans June through November. Wildfire and flood seasons vary by state.

Is your organization ready? Will customer and member information be safe? And accessible?

Disaster preparedness and business continuity plans are especially important for financial institutions because they house public assets and information. When developing an effective disaster recovery plan, keep in mind paper is inefficient and inherently susceptible to damage. Relying on paper as a record for important documentation leaves your institution vulnerable.

Especially during a disaster, when the risk of your paper documents becoming damaged, lost or inaccessible increases dramatically.

That’s where document management – also called enterprise content management (ECM) – helps. Document management solutions strengthen your organization’s disaster recovery and business continuity processes by ensuring you automatically back up and store documents within a protected system. Additionally, you can choose to store all your data in an online data center – which itself should be backed up – giving you access to data from remote locations in the event of a disaster.

Document management prepares you for disaster by:

• Capturing paper as secure electronic documents and content
• Allowing you to access your electronic documents and content during disasters
• Securely storing and protecting your electronic documents and content

Though every financial institution is unique, they should all be able to answer one question: How long can we function without data if our system crashes?

Even if you are not located in a typical “storm zone,” the size and extent of Hurricane Sandy is a stark reminder for every organization to take disaster preparedness seriously. Being prepared for the worst will better enable you to provide consistent service in light of any disruption, such as power outages, snow closures and network failures.

When they find your financial institution has weathered to the storm and is up and running with instant access to data, your staff, customers and members will thank you.

Driving change within your organization: Dream big, but start realistically with capture solutions

// October 25th, 2012 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Document Management, Enterprise content management, IT // Jeff Welan

After recently attending the Institute of Finance and Management’s (IOFM) Accounts Payable Conference & Expo, I realized one of the reasons users attend – they get great ideas about solutions for their organizations. Between training classes, keynote speeches, vendor solution demos and networking opportunities, it was easy to leave this conference confident your organization can achieve all that others have accomplished.

While this drive to optimize your business is essential for creating change, it’s also important to be realistic in your pursuit. For a successful implementation, you must create a comprehensive plan that takes into account your financial and talent resources. For instance, if your goal is to eliminate paper across your organization, it’s unlikely you’ll digitize all of your documents and processes at one time. Not only is it fiscally irresponsible (you’re not sure your implementation will be successful in one department, let alone the company), it’s also difficult to achieve while staying on top of day-to-day business processes.

To ensure your company makes smart business decisions that increase efficiencies and provide a return on investment (ROI) almost immediately, it’s important to start with projects that will help your organization optimize business processes. That’s one of the benefits of implementing an enterprise content management (ECM) solution – it gives you the ability to streamline processes in one department and leverage that success across the enterprise as your time, goals and budget permit.

One of the easiest points of entry for an ECM system is to begin with a capture solution to quickly digitize, ingest, and classify documents and files. Data can be lifted and validated from these documents and automatically passed to mission-critical applications for knowledge workers to perform their tasks, improving efficiencies and lowering your operational expenses.

For example, an ECM solution has the ability to streamline AP processes, such as invoice approvals. Once you receive invoices – whether they originate as paper, fax or email attachments – you can extract, validate and append them with information from the purchase order and other related documents, helping you make pay decisions, faster. The same can be done in other departments, such as human resources. While your team focuses on evaluating applicants’ resumes and applications, your ECM system automatically sorts and distributes this information to the right people for review.

With a capture solution, organizations also:

• Improve document  data accuracy and allow users to focus on exception processing and more valuable tasks
• Reduce traditional bottlenecks caused by manual document indexing
• Expedite the entry of critical documents and data into your business processes

By starting small and implementing your capture solution in one department, you’ll be able to focus on the impact it has on specific processes. Once users, as well as your organization’s decision makers, see its ROI, it’ll be easier for you to leverage its success in other departments and business processes. Then, you can unleash all the great ideas you learned at that conference.

Building a Core of Internal Champions for Your ECM Project

// September 27th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Credit Unions, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, IT, Lending, Uncategorized // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

Your organization is buried in paper. And if it’s not negatively impacting the service you provide your customers or members, it will be soon. But you’ve come up with a solution: use enterprise content management (ECM) to electronically capture documents and the important information that surrounds them.

Not only will it decrease your reliance on paper and speed up your processes with instant access to information, it also saves money on shipping and storing all that paper. Plus, it gives you the ability to proactively comply with regulations. You can even integrate your ECM platform with the systems you rely on every day so information is accessible from the applications your employees use every day.

With a quick return on investment, it should be an easy sell, right?

Now comes the tricky part: getting other people in your organization on board. Here are my top five best practices to help share your vision with other decision makers.

1. Start with paper-intensive processes that affect customer and member service
The best places to start looking for internal champions are where paper-based processes affect service. For example, many financial institutions store information like IDs and signature cards at the branch where customers or members originally signed up. When they visit a different branch, they’re forced to wait while their information is faxed over. Do you really want to make them wait hours or even days for paperwork?

Providing exceptional customer or member service is a great way to differentiate your organization, so this is a great area to look for champions. People who interact with customers and members will understand how immediate access to information is a huge benefit, both internally and externally.

2. Identify your core of internal champions
The higher up you go in the organization to find evangelists, the greater influence those people will have with the executive team. Show these people how capturing documents and information electronically gives them increased visibility into processes and empowers them with real-time information.

Find experts who can help others understand how inefficient, paper-based processes can be optimized and how the solution can be expanded across the organization to share information to further increase speed and accuracy. Be sure to find out what return on investment these individuals expect. The more questions you can anticipate and answer, the more likely you’ll be able to give the ultimate decision makers the answers they’re looking for.

3. Develop your core of internal champions
Find out what pains your influencers are experiencing and schedule a short session to teach them how an ECM solution can quickly solve their issues. Show your advocates how capturing and storing documents and information electronically lets employees instantly access them, so they take care of customers or members immediately, instead of making them wait.

Demonstrate how ECM takes their cumbersome day to day processes and automates them – minimizing their workload, increasing their efficiency and providing consistency. Once your champions see the positive changes an ECM solution brings, you’ll have a team full of believers.

4. Respect that change is challenging
Manage your project with the knowledge that many people like paper because it’s tangible – they can hold it in their hands and feel connected to the information on it. Gently remind them that paper isn’t secure. It can be lost, accidentally thrown away and it’s always going to be susceptible to disasters like fires or floods.

Focus on the impact on what ECM does for them. The more you help them understand how an ECM solution helps change their daily life for the better, the more likely they’ll be to jump on board.

5. Engage your champions to evangelize to the entire organization
Effective internal communication about an ECM project can build momentum and have a positive effect on morale and culture. Set up training classes for the “new, better way” to do things. Come up with a way to make the proposed changes a positive push, instead of a negative adjustment. The more people talk about making information available with the click of a mouse, the more the idea will seem like a no-brainer.

Unite people to make your project a reality
People will have an easier time joining your cause when you show them how decreasing your dependency on paper increases speed and accuracy, cuts costs and helps provide superior service. Then you can move on to show them how you’ll be able to proactively comply with regulations like Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure forms.

Going into the process with these tips in mind, you’ll set yourself – and your organization – up for success. The trick is unleashing your most important assets: people. The more people you can get on board and the higher up you reach, the easier it will be to initiate an ECM project that everyone will thank you for. Just not on paper.

Live at OTTC 2012: 5 Ways OnBase Makes Your Life Easier

// September 20th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, Mobile, OTTC, Workflow // Tom Tennant

Before we say goodbye to another OnBase Training and Technology Conference (OTTC) and start planning for OTTC 2013, let’s take a moment to check-in with some friends, our OnBase users and administrators. They’ve spent the week learning from and networking with industry peers and OnBase experts from all walks of life. And they’ve had a chance to share their experience with our enterprise content management (ECM) software solution.

What we wanted to know, though, is how OnBase has made our customers’ lives easier. So we asked. And we got five great answers.

1. “It’s helped our company reduce and, in some cases, eliminate paper.” – John Anderson, senior software application developer, Noridian

We hear this one a lot. After all, paper, by way of applications, resumes, receipts, work orders, invoices, bills, and more, consumes time across an organization because of the way the company interacts with it. Human resources, accounts payable and receivable, facilities management – even the holy grail of all business, customer service – are all affected by the way paper is handled. Slow processing, difficulty retrieving files, incomplete information, duplicate work – all are productivity killers and customer service nightmares for a business just trying to stay competitive. A smart, easy-to-use document management solution can seamlessly collect, organize, and index the multitude of documents and content into a single 360-degree view for smart decision making a streamline process.

2. “We wouldn’t always know where information was. It could have been on anyone’s desk. We had to track down paperwork. Now we scan it, send it to OnBase, and can see right where information is – and where it is in the process.” – Teresa Rayburn, materials coordinator, Flexco

That’s the other thing about paper. It gets lost. Easily. And when it gets lost, so does the information it carries. And information is the lifeblood of a company. A strategic ECM solution should bring clarity to all of your data, electronic and otherwise, and allow for easy tracking of critical documents. That solution should allow for complete document life cycle management, from input through destruction. Documents that are centralized, searchable and, with the right solution, automatically linked to the appropriate account, customer, patient, employee and so on.

3. “I like OnBase so much it’s hard to come up with one example. It’s made our AP process much more efficient. Not only has it streamlined our process, it’s streamlined other processes across the company at the same time.” – Sharon Ricci, finance manager, FM Global

Ricci further explains that the speed and efficiency, with which her office can capture, approve and process invoices extends to her internal clients who would otherwise be waiting for a slower, paper-based process. OnBase automates that business process so that files are shuttled from office-to-office. It’s all accessible with the click of button, and it’s easy to see where information is in that process.

4. “Hyland Software is so passionate about training its user base and is so transparent about the technology.” – Eric Lohr, senior programmer, Sharp Healthcare

Last year we talked a lot about how training and education might be the single most important software investment you can make. That’s why a robust training program, one that encourages customer involvement and customer connection, is vital to the longevity of any technology solution. It also allows companies to become vendor independent – even promotes it – so that a company can attack a solution on its own with confidence and expertise.

5. “OnBase makes my job harder because there’s so much it can do it makes my to-do list long!” – Kim Dale, senior project manager, Northwestern University

A surprising answer, we have to admit! But trust us when we say that Dale’s answer was given with good humor. What she’s talking about is how OnBase offers a wide range of functionality in one core product. Functionality that isn’t cobbled together from separate, disconnected products and doesn’t require custom coding and services costs to grow the solution. It’s tailored for departments but comprehensive for the enterprise, designed to give you what you need today and grow with you over time.

Live at OTTC 2012: Codeless Forms Creation? Yep, That’s Right

// September 20th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, OTTC // Tom Tennant

One of the highlights of the 2012 OnBase Training and Technology Conference was Wednesday’s general session, during which Glenn Gibson, Hyland Software’s product marketing manager, and Colleen Alber, a Hyland Software product evangelist, squared off in a mock debate about the benefits of OnBase 12 to a packed house of Hyland customers, prospects, partners and employees. OTTC is Hyland Software’s annual user event, attracting OnBase users from around the globe to learn, talk and share experiences about all things OnBase.

The session generated scores of laughter – and not just at Gibson’s spectacular kilt. It also produced a fair amount of ohs and ahs, especially when Alber talked about Unity Forms.

Unity Forms in OnBase 12 simplifies the creation of electronic forms. Without any HTML or programming knowledge, you can create forms with advanced functionality in a matter of minutes that, previously, would have taken hours, days or weeks with custom programming. Features such as required fields, data validation, calculations with instant results (such as quantity multiplied by price), and the customization of the form’s look and feel can all be configured in an easy-to-use form designer.

“I’m not a developer and I can rapidly create full featured electronic forms that provide a positive user experience without programming,” Alber said. “It’s that simple.”

It’s not just about ease for the user, either. Those whose job it is to create forms – who have the skill set to code an e-form and do it regularly – benefit from the new functionality as well.

“For example, implementing a simple time-off request form, something with some field validation, field level security, dynamically added fields and calculations, would have easily taken a developer a full day or more to create in the original e-forms product,” explained Alber. “With the Unity Forms designer, he can do the same form in 15 to 20 minutes.” And with OnBase 12, as many as 80 percent of forms can be created in Unity Forms.

The information had folks clamoring to learn more. The Unity Forms session, held in one of the largest session rooms at the conference, was standing room only.

With good reason. Beyond ease-of-use and the time saved creating forms, the new functionality eases a customer’s upgrade path as well. Janet Jenkins, senior business analyst with Cobb County, Ga., noted that on Twitter. “Unity forms doesn’t involve programing. This will make upgrades easier! No need to test forms,” she wrote.

Live at OTTC 2012: CEO A.J. Hyland Shares His Thoughts on Maximizing Your IT Investment

// September 19th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, Mobile, OTTC // Tom Tennant

One conversation that continues to pop up on the show floor at the 2012 OnBase Training & Technology Conference (OTTC) is how companies can maximize their technology investment. And not just their investment in enterprise content management (ECM), but their entire technology investment.

Earlier today, we had the chance to chat with Hyland Software President and CEO A.J. Hyland on the topic. Hyland shared his thoughts, as well as the importance of choosing the right product – and the right partner – to help enhance your tech investment and solve business issues.

“A lot of people invest in a technology that they think is going to get them 100 percent of the way there and realize that it gets them only 70 percent of the way there,” Hyland says. “What they need to do is look across their business applications and determine where those gaps are and if there is something that can make those systems work better together.”

In terms of finding that product, Hyland says it’s important to search for a solution that fits within your IT infrastructure and meets the standards that you’ve set for your company.

“It’s also important to look for a vendor or product that has open standards,” he says. “The more closed they are the more difficult it’s going to be to extend your solutions.”

When searching for a partner to help realize those business goals, partnership is where it’s at, says Hyland.

“Are you at a comfort level with the organization that you feel you’re going to be there with you shoulder-to-shoulder?” he says. “As things change in your organization, is this someone who’s going to grow and innovate with you?”

Hyland also says to reach out to a potential vendor’s customers to learn as much as you can about the company.

“Make sure they feel the same sense of partnership you’re looking for,” says Hyland.