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Document Processes and Workflows

by Cost effective printDocument ManagementSaving money

What will help your organisation reduce overheads and improve productivity? Well defined business processes with the ability to effectively store documents and control them in an automated workflow.

How do we know?

We’ve been implementing our document management system DocuWare long enough to understand how the solution can improve your business internally and for your customers.  We know what works and what changes can be made to enhance customer service and employee satisfaction.

A business process is a series of steps taken in a certain order that once complete, achieves a particular goal. A workflow however describes the automation of these processes and the tools or software used to oversee the sequence of tasks.  A company runs on processes across all departments, but making them work as efficiently as possible is where our solutions can help.

At DWS we will work with you to understand every step of your processes and use our Workflow Manager to connect each step with an action. These actions are based on employee decisions and your business rules.

Well Documented Processes

Well documented processes are perfect for transferring into a digital workflow. If a process already has defined steps, these can be replicated in DocuWare with the same rules applied.  A document can be easily tracked throughout its lifecycle and archived when it no longer needs processing.

If you need some help in determining your processes, we can happily go through this with you using our process planner.  To get the most out of automated workflows it’s a good idea to have everything properly planned out before you make the move to digital.

Workflow Management

With workflow management, complex processes are mapped and managed. A variety of scenarios can be included for processing tasks, with information added from different sources.  If a task is assigned to a member of staff who is on holiday, a number of other employees can be added in as the next in line to complete the task instead.  You decide which conditions are applied to each task, such as an invoice for over £5,000 must be directly routed to the Head of Finance, rather than the Finance Assistant.

Capture

Accurately capturing the data that’s entering DocuWare is vital.  For a workflow to function well it relies on processing information, so making sure the data is correct from the beginning is an important step. DocuWare’s Intelligent Indexing automatically captures data from scanned documents and uses it to populate index fields.  These index fields are how a document is described and classified to ensure it can be found and assigned correctly.

Tasks

Tasks are those parts of the process assigned to an individual or team to ensure the workflow can be completed.  With DocuWare, tasks can never ben missed when they are automated and included in the workflow.

Example

1. An invoice is received and is added to the digital cabinet for incoming invoices.  The workflow is triggered.

2. A digital task has been created and DocuWare checks the invoice against a previously stored purchase order.

3. The invoice is forward to Accounts Payable.

4. The invoice appears as a task for the Accounts Department, is checked and if correct, assigned to a cost centre and then moved on for approval.  If incorrect, a task can be created for another team member to investigate further.

Documents are important to all organisations, each having a part in your processes as well as triggering tasks to be performed.

How Well Do Your Processes Work?

Do you have trouble with lost documents, mis-paid invoices or lost orders?  All this can be avoided by implementing a document management system with automated workflows.  Your processes will run more smoothly, the data will be more reliable and employees will be more efficient.

Our clients see a Return on Investment almost immediately with the biggest gain being time to invest into more productive areas of the business, rather than chasing missing invoices or managers for approval.

Can your business afford to carry being inefficient with no transparency?  Or do you need to make change today?


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Digital Mailroom

Process Improvement Ideas: A Digital Mailroom

by Digital documentsDigital MailroomDocument ManagementDocument Workflow solutionDocuWarePaperlessSave on printing costsSaving moneyWorking from Home

Digital Mailroom


A digital mailroom is the effective and digital (believe it or not!) way of managing all incoming post. Sorting electronic and paper mail in a timely manner to ensure they reach the right department when needed.

Remember when receptionists could sit for hours each day, opening the post with a letter knife and walking around the office delivering mail to the right person? I do, as it used to be me!

That may still partly be the case for some organisations but these time consuming processes cause delays and affect how businesses communicate with customers and suppliers.

A digital mailroom provides a pathway to change by reducing paper use, limiting the need to print and efficiently organising information.

Think about amount of inbound data your business receives; in the post, via email, phone calls, web orders and then how it’s organised and by who. Is everyone following the same system and is information being stored in the same way?

If the answer is no, things could be getting a little hectic and during busy times, your existing processes could buckle under the pressure.

A Digital Mailroom and Document Management

Digital Mailroom

Digital mailroom solutions mean your incoming post is dealt with and stored in the same way by everyone no matter what format it is received in.

With a Document Management System, paper documents are scanned in while emails can be automatically stored from an inbox. Whether it’s a supplier invoice or a contract with a new customer, all incoming data gets stored in one central and secure location.

Only authorised users can use the system and access to documents can be strictly controlled, for                                    example HR are the only employees able to view staff records.

Integration with Internal Systems

Integration with Internal Systems

With DocuWare’s Connect to Outlook functionality, the system can integrate with Office 365 and automatically store emails from your inbox, making email management simple.

It can remove shared mail box headaches by monitoring a watch folder and when emails meet a certain criteria defined by you on implementation, they are pushed into document trays to be dealt with accordingly. Any incoming post marked as urgent for example, can be immediately forwarded to management.

Once a document is in DocuWare users can choose whether to trigger a workflow. If they select yes, a task is generated for the relevant person in the process. Whether it’s an invoice to be approved or a CV to be read, once the task is complete, a digital stamp can be applied to the document.

Intelligent Indexing

In order for any digital mailroom to operate successfully, accurate data, captured at the start of a process is vital. If incorrect information flows through the business, whether it’s from manual entry or missing information, problems will occur.

Once a document is in DocuWare, Intelligent Indexing runs on it to extract the most important pieces of information that are relevant for the organisation– dates, names, reference numbers etc. This information then becomes the document search criteria, bringing results back                                                              in seconds.

Intelligent Indexing is based on machine learning and with each scan, begins to remember where to find the most valuable information on a document. Any manual corrections are learnt too, continually increasing in speed and accuracy.

DocuWare can be linked with any business system. An invoice can arrive, be processed, stored and pushed to a Finance package without any manual intervention.

GDPR Compliant Software

With so many data protection regulations to follow it’s important to ensure any incoming post containing personal data is dealt with efficiently and compliantly.

The penalties for a GDPR infringement can range from a warning from the Information Commissioners Office to a maximum fine of 4% of an organisation’s annual global turnover.

With this in mind, any system used to process personal data needs to be GDPR compliant. DocuWare can help – it is quick and easy to locate any personal data stored within documents. It can export, correct and delete personal data while ensuring this data is protected for as long as it’s in the system.

The Benefits of a Digital Mailroom

A digital mailroom can be tailored to suit business processes and requirements. By automating incoming mail from receipt, through to capture and storage, organisations can benefit from a reduction in postage, print, physical storage and staff costs.

Adopting a digital mailroom will also help to reduce paper use, increase customer satisfaction and give staff more time to focus on other tasks away from the admin of processing mail.

Information coming from a variety of sources is electronically captured and classified meaning it’s readily available and accessible at any point in a process. Management can easily see where an invoice or a customer order is up to, as well as any tasks that haven’t been complete.

From experience with our clients using document management software, we know this level of automation works and they see the ROI.

If you’re thinking about implementing a digital mailroom, we offer free process assessments that can help.  We will chat with you about how you currently work, understand the challenges you’re facing and explain how an automated solution will streamline your processes.

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The Pandemic will bring changes

by Digital documentsDocument ManagementDocuWarePaperlessSaving moneyScanningWorking from Home

It is nearly a year now since the UK went into lockdown, although we have had a few breaks in the summer where restrictions were loosened, we are now back to where we were before, with the hope that the vaccine will give us hope that life will return to normal around Easter. However, realistically most medical experts believe the summer will be a time when normality may start to come back.

The big question is what does this mean for business? At the start of the lockdown companies reacted as best they could. Employees were instructed to work from home and the government gave help with a wide range of support including notably the Furlough scheme and bounce back loans. This position has been extended but will business be the same when normality begins to take place.

Predicting the future is difficult especially when the business environment is turbulent. Many companies are on their last legs and others are planning how they can gradually manage to restore their position with the years ahead. Will the office look the same? will people start to go back to work from the office again on a full-time basis?  do companies want to retain large offices? and how are business going to work in the future, all leading questions that need to be considered.

Looking at how many people have adapted to working from home it looks like there will be some long-term changes even if we do return to some form of normality in the summer and this is where we need to consider making changes now to manage the position in the future. A strong competitive business has the ability to communicate internally and externally effectively and one area since this pandemic has taken place is the issue of communicating internally. With all the business processes from the accounts department, human resources, sales, order processing, sharing information across different departments, working on projects together collectively, storing information and accessing documents has been difficult. Yes, the Cloud has been a great help, although the biggest issue is finding all the information in one place, working on projects together, sharing and accessing information. Another area that has become a headache is compliance and security and although information is held in the Cloud it does not mean that the information is secure and compliant.

With the cost of running the business and survival being of utmost importance many companies are now looking at ways to reduce operating costs whilst maintaining productivity and having a competitive edge in the marketplace. Investment in the IT infrastructure has never been more important and many companies are looking at a Document Management system to streamline the business to make it far more competitive, as well as linking all their systems together, meaning information is available at a touch of a button, business processes are streamlined, ensuring that business processes are speeded up and the requirement for office space and employee resource is reduced, cutting the costs dramatically for the business and making the company more competitive with plenty of room for controlled growth in the future.

If you would like to look at ways of streamlining your business, whilst improving all your internal business process, then perhaps its time to look at our Document Management software it will put your business back in the driving seat for now and especially the future.