Force Multiply YOUR Capture Investment

By Bill Johnson

We all know one of the easiest ways to save money and increase performance is to leverage existing processes and procedures rather than having to reinvent or replicate them. We should always be looking for ways to combine, eliminate, and simplify steps or processes; reduce redundancy; and to pair down the number of platforms and providers in our environment to the extent practical.

While we typically think in terms of what’s inside our own domain: If we extend this thought process beyond our internal boundaries out to our persistent business partners, then new opportunities present themselves. In more cases than one might imagine, opportunities for cooperation with business partners exist so that each party can take advantage of businesses operations (and efficiencies) the other has created.

Enterprises large and small will find they do a majority of their business transactions with a relatively small percentage of their customers or vendors. Oddly enough, or maybe not, the 80/20 rule applies (approximately) in most cases. You will also find that many of your major business partners have an electronic document management (EDM) or imaging capability of some kind. Most of these systems, capture and content, typically have an import/export capability.

From a technical standpoint, it is often not very difficult to incorporate their work effort into yours when the relationship is strong. When your partner is creating or storing a document or transaction in their own system that will ultimately go to you (AP/AR, Insurance, Confirmations, Orders, Instructions, etc.) they can set up exports, dual releases, XML transmissions, or other methods of interaction to get the images and metadata to you. You would have a process established to recognize the arrival of these packages or poll a directory for their presence and process them according to your rules when they arrive.

In the case where your partner is “lower tech” you can show them how to facilitate a simple “Scan to email” or “Scan to FTP” process where they use a multi-function device pre-configured with your instruction set that sends the documents to a prescribed landing zone you are monitoring with an import routine. This is better than fax import as you can incorporate metadata and images in the import process and it’s a much higher quality image.

It may even be worth it, depending on the nature of the business partner, to show them how to use interactive PDFs to create coversheets that contain barcoded index values.
 
In either in case you eliminate scanning and indexing of incoming documents as well as any error associated with handling and re-keying. And, you can effect the same situation going the other from you to your business partners. Think of it as EDI for imaging.

I call the concept “Hub & Spoke” and the methodology “Force Multiplication and Resource Optimization.”

So, how do we go about determining our opportunities?

The first thing I would recommend is analyze your business partners on both sides of the aisle (vendor and customer) and categorize them by total number of transactions per time period, dollar volume, and whether they have an imaging capability or not.

Start with a couple of partners in each category (high value, high transaction) who already have imaging systems and approach them with a proposal to implement a proof of concept prototype. Keep it simple and look at only one or two transaction types. Don’t bite off more than you can chew at the onset. Preferably you are looking for someone you have bi-directional traffic with.

Once you get your proof of concepts working you can refine the method then approach other partners with the early adopters as reference and subject matter experts to explain the ease and benefits of the process from their point of view.

One way to make this happen effectively and efficiently would be to involve your capture system integrator, provider, or a consultant in the process. It is likely you can create a revenue stream for them by offering their services to your partner community and it will help guarantee compliance to your environment. They can facilitate the webinars, presentations and follow-up relieving that burden from your internal staff and resources.

It’s a good deal for everyone, it’s easy and it’s not expensive. At the very least, it’s worth a quick look at for any low hanging fruit.

Bill Johnson has been in the process improvement field for over 30 years the last 18 at the helm of a successful EDMS Systems Integrator providing highly effective document imaging, ERM, Records Management & Workflow solutions to virtually every sector of the market. He has recently formed Result Oriented Solutions, Inc., (www.ros-inc.com) a consulting firm dedicated to the EDMS industry specializing in optimized capture solutions, application architecture & design, project management and opportunity/environmental assessments.