Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

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.

Get Lean and Improve Quality with Enterprise Content Management

// July 10th, 2012 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Uncategorized // Becca Toth

In a recent Industry Week webinar, JHP Pharmaceuticals discussed how it digitized its work processes. There were many reasons JHP took the digital plunge. Externally, regulators were calling for records digitization, increased process control and predictive analytics while customers demanded faster and easier communication with the company. Internally, JHP needed to increase operational efficiencies while reducing costs.

In addition to those important business drivers, digitizing processes gave the drug manufacturer the ability to:

• Distribute products globally by complying with regulations
• Access information instantly for faster, more efficient production processes
• Reduce human errors and the need for continual retesting
• Improve product quality, consistency and safety

Reduce your reliance on paper to positively affect the bottom line
Enterprise content management (ECM) solutions electronically store the information you receive every day – like scanned-in paper documents, emails and faxes – so you can analyze and optimize your business processes. By automating processes, you reduce your reliance on paper, saving your company money on storage and shipping costs.  

You can also increase your operational effectiveness and profitability by optimizing important business processes like those in Accounts Receivable. For example, ECM helps decrease days sales outstanding (DSO) by automatically forwarding loan documents throughout the process and notifying necessary employees when information is missing. By automating AR processes, companies are able to:

• Measure performance
• Quickly follow up on disputes and late payments
• Identify why customers pay late

With an ECM solution, companies get lean while improving business processes that can have a positive impact internally and externally. By automating tasks, you speed up processes and provide all employees with instant information access so they can focus on customers, and ultimately increase revenue.

Healthcare Reliability Part 3: User Access

// June 25th, 2012 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Back Office, Enterprise content management, Healthcare, IT, Mobile // Susan deCathelineau

Previously, we discussed the first of three key components of a reliable enterprise content management (ECM) solution for healthcare: system uptime. Without system uptime that meets healthcare industry demands, you take away easy access to your organization’s content, which is why you sought out an ECM solution in the first place.

And we must define user uptime by something more than how often the solution is down. While a system may be up and running it serves little purpose if it cannot provide the content clinicians and staff need, when they need it.

So we have to look at new ways to define reliable user access. First, can the ECM solution retain the content types your organization depends on? If not, how will users access it?

This is where a vendor with a large and diverse customer base becomes important. That signals experience with a number of content types and the likelihood that the solution can handle each. It also suggests that new content types – images, video and the “next big thing” – are already on the vendor’s radar.

Next, look at a solution’s ability to integrate with other applications and systems throughout your organization. Your electronic medical record (EMR) and accounting and billing applications are crucial to your everyday processes. Connecting each to allow instant access from any system eliminates the need for your users to switch between screens. This speeds processes and creates a stronger user experience – even if users never know they’re working in two systems at once. So finding an ECM solution that can integrate with the everyday systems you use the most goes a long way to improve user access to your content.

You also need a solution that can integrate with future applications as well. As your healthcare organization continues to grow, you want your ECM solution to grow with you. Otherwise you could quickly outgrow your solution, shrinking user access and eroding your technology investment.

Measuring user access is not limited to the four walls of your organization. Mobile access to content is also important. Supplying your clinicians and staff with access to the information they need via mobile devices while in the field and at home – whether they have internet access or not – allows them to complete tasks more quickly. Without it, work takes longer to get done, costing you time and money. That means finding an ECM solution with flexible mobile options translates directly into the speed of user access you require.

To have true control over your enterprise’s content, it needs to be accessible at any time. So keeping in mind what content you use, your integration needs and a solution’s mobile offerings is crucial to choosing a reliable solution with the user access you need.

In the next installment of the reliability series, we will talk about how IT maintenance plays into a reliable ECM solution.

DreamWorks Busts Roadblocks with OnBase Workflow Tools

// June 22nd, 2012 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Human Resources, Workflow // Tom Tennant

Remember how DreamWorks saved a third of its contract management business cycle time using HP and Hyland Software’s OnBase enterprise content management (ECM) solution? And how a smooth, efficient and fast contract management process can reduce a company’s administrative costs, provide better accountability and compliance, improve financial forecasting and, in many cases, ensure happier customers?

There’s a crucial component to the process that facilitated that time savings: workflow management. And with this final post in our DreamWorks series, we’ll take a peek behind the curtain to see why automating its workflow made DreamWorks a more efficient company.

What is workflow and why do I need it?
Workflow is the term we use to describe the steps it takes to complete a task. In a way, workflow is like a recipe. Certain actions must be taken in a predetermined order to successfully achieve the desired outcome – say, bake an apple pie. A misstep in the process – no apples, too much salt, over baking – creates a roadblock that can, at worst, derail the project altogether. No one wants burnt apple pie.

In most companies, workflow is a complex “recipe,” one that includes many people, multiple programs, several processes and a lot of information. For some organizations, there are as many workflows as there are people and programs. And those workflows can vary in complexity, overlap and work in cyclical fashion. In other words, ample opportunity to burn the pie.

For DreamWorks, that was a contract management process that consisted of a lot of manual processes and paper trails that would shuffle from person to person to person, from office to office to office. Teams of employees attempted to review and approve more than 200 contracts a month through that process. Bottlenecks abounded – lost documents, multiple versions of the same document, information tucked away in a box in the basement, you name it – and those bottlenecks affected workflows all across the company.

But smart workflow solutions automate the complex routing of documents, tying together multiple programs, people and processes. Done right, a strategic workflow solution is easy to configure and maintain, saving time and money by decreasing dependency on paper and manual processes. And without digitally transforming its workflow process, DreamWorks may never have realized its reduction in contract management cycle time.

Higher employee productivity
If saving time and money isn’t enough to compel you to digitize your workflow process, consider your employees as another reason to make the move. Removing the usual bottlenecks found in a manual process – or, rather, the things that keep people from getting their jobs done – makes your employees’ job easier to do.

That ease often translates into both higher productivity and more attention to detail. Automated workflows can even help promote that productivity and attention to detail by providing employees with the information they need, when they need it.

But the thing to remember throughout all this is that, even though a smart, strategic workflow process is built from a sequence of well-defined steps – multiple steps completed by different people - it should be flexible, adaptable and responsive to shifts in the company and as the company grows. Achieve this by choosing a workflow solution that is easy to configure, can start small and evolve with the company.

That was DreamWorks goal. And now the company is considering new ways to leverage its workflow solution across the enterprise, from accounting and purchasing to trademark and copyrights.

In other words, get good at baking the apple pie first. Once you’ve done that, you can open up the bakery.

Workflow: Squeeze as Much Value as Possible from Existing Systems and Resources

// May 18th, 2012 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Back Office, Credit Unions, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Human Resources, Workflow // Steve Comer

Credit unions are more than thriving with the number of members and accounts shooting up and assets projected to reach $1 trillion by the end of 2012. Tremendous growth, though, doesn’t come without some challenges, too. It puts a lot of pressure on existing processes, systems and resources to keep up – and it means more competition to get ahead. Credit unions are evaluating how to meet these new challenges and squeeze out as much value as possible from existing systems and resources.

One of the first places to look for improvement is processes that rely on paper. Paper isn’t easily shared with other staff members, branches and software systems, it’s at risk for loss, misfiling or damage, and it takes too long to pass paper from person to person.

The only way to remove these roadblocks to efficiency is to turn paper into electronic files and automate paper processes.

Enterprise content management (ECM), also known as document management, is one of the most-effective ways to do that. By converting paper files to electronic documents, ECM provides a single, central place to hold information and easily access it.

Adding workflow to your document management strategy ups the value even more.

Workflow ties together multiple systems, people and processes and automates the complex routing of documents. These solutions are easy to configure and maintain and they save credit unions time and money by decreasing dependency on paper and manual processes.

Because of that, workflow has emerged as one of the most critical components of a successful document management strategy. It automates processes and the routing of documents, so credit unions work faster and more efficiently. It also eliminates documents from being caught in bottlenecks and silos, as well as “floating documents” lingering on desks, all of which significantly affect member service and business process efficiency.

Many credit unions have limited document-based workflow technology already built into their core banking system. While that solution is perfect for some scenarios like opening a new account, there are other business processes, such as in mortgage loan origination, that need a more advanced workflow solution. These core systems are also limited to assisting with only business transaction documents and can’t be leveraged across the credit union in other departments, such as human resources (HR) or accounting.

Document management workflow helps credit unions reexamine their traditional business practices in areas across the organization and implement process improvements. It’s similar to when credit unions began to turn away from batch processing and embraced online, real-time processing. Credit unions led the charge on this front.  Similarly, credit unions became one of the first types of financial institutions to realize the powerful impact of automated document retrieval and workflow systems, and are well ahead of the curve.

Workflow built into an ECM system also improves business processes through standardization and automation across the credit union. It prevents mistakes such as slipping up on an Office of Foreign Assests Control check, which could cost a credit union significantly, or HR losing an I-9. It also helps make sure employees can’t lose or bury invoices or incorrectly index a file which can trigger a chain of events and reviews from audit boards – all of which can eventually impact the interest rates on products that a credit union can offer its members.

Paperless workflows also have a direct effect on member service. Tellers on the front line view and process member-related documents and requests with a click of the mouse. Having instant access to member records and documents can typically save staff five to six minutes per transaction and provides an opportunity to instantly offer new products or up-sell these products to members at competitive rates.

Return on investment (ROI) from an ECM solution is typically realized in a year or less by way of reduced paper, saved storage costs and higher levels of member service. Workflow accelerates this ROI with faster, more consistent business processes across your credit union. It is arguably the most valuable component of an ECM system, allowing credit unions and their members to benefit quickly and significantly.

Blog post originally published on CUinsight.

Connecting Systems, People and Processes with Workflow – Part 3: Connecting Processes

// May 9th, 2012 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Human Resources, IT, Uncategorized, Workflow // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we looked at how using workflow to connect systems and people helps you reduce information silos and ensures stakeholders know the status of important processes. Now we’re going to take a look at how to use workflow to connect those processes.

Workflow isn’t just a way to automatically push documents through work queues – it also optimizes your processes. You do so by using a framework of consistent rules that efficiently route electronic documents without manual intervention. By presenting users with all related documents simultaneously, workflow facilitates business transactions. That means employees aren’t repeatedly asking for emails, searching through file cabinets or waiting for documents.

Workflow also gives you visibility into your processes, so you know exactly where things are and manage the organization based on real-time information. That’s the key to connecting your processes – making sure you’re sharing current information.

Ensure consistent business practices
Workflow increases your speed and accuracy by eliminating any variances in the way individual employees handle processes, therefore reducing any associated risks. Ensuring that employees always handle processes the correct way helps you stay in compliance with local, state and federal regulations. Workflow also shows you real-time document and process status, as well as historical data, which saves time and energy when preparing for audits.

From accounts payable to human resources and contract management, workflow expands beyond banking processes to eliminate paper across your financial institution. Here’s how it makes sure work doesn’t slip through the cracks:

• Automatic email notifications alert users when their participation is needed
• Configurable timers move documents through processes without manual intervention
• Role-based calendars and load balancing ensure documents are processed efficiently by available users

Integrate to tie everything together
An important aspect of any document management system is its ability to easily integrate with the core banking system you rely on every day. The short list includes FIS, Fiserv, Harland Financial Solutions, Jack Henry and Open Solutions. Integration ensures compatibility, so you’re automatically forwarding documents that are usable. That’s why the document management system you use should able to handle any document type or file format.

Connecting your systems, people and processes with workflow helps you move quickly and accurately without misplacing documents. That gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace, because your employees are empowered to focus on customers and members.

And that’s the most important connection of all.