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31 Oct 2012GREEN: Going Paperless Can Save More Than Trees
Recent Gauteng Business News
The answer is to manage costs by managing content. Todayâs businesses, says Gerald Naidoo, CEO of Logikal Consulting, are drowning in a sea of documents. âIn the early days, the typical employee spent a lot of time on low-level information processing of some sort, like signing and filing documents, or organising a library of digital content. Today weâve managed to automate a lot of that legwork with Enterprise Content Management (ECM), which allows us to spend our time sharing knowledge and creating new ideas.â
ECM captures documents (in paper or electronic form) as they're received, extracts the data and stores both data and images in a secure data repository. Images and data are then linked to the appropriate application, and routed for processing or review. This not only offers the "green" benefit of using less paper, but can also significantly improve customer service and business processes.
âECM makes it easier to ensure records are maintained, stored and disposed of, in keeping with regulations, and ECM can be a crucial component of a business continuity strategy, eliminating the risk of losing customer and vendor records, and, in the case of natural disasters, allowing recovery efforts to begin sooner because key information is readily available,â explains Mahesh Chavan, Logikal Consultingâs CTO.
According to Forrester Research, the U.S. information management sector sees 66 percent of all projects fail, largely as a result of poorly defined processes and communications. The bottom line is that many of the observed project failings look preventable. This pattern seems to be even more extreme when it comes to Enterprise CMS projects.
According to Naidoo, this is mainly the result of the wrong choice of ECM technology. âWhich solution you choose will have a significant impact on how quickly you realise the savings an ECM system can provide. The solution should function across multiple business applications, so you can easily add more work processes as you roll out ECM; it should integrate with virtually any business application with no coding; and t should be easy to use, offering immediate, measureable improvements to business processes.â
The right ECM implementation can mean significant benefits and savings, including intangible benefits like enhanced collaboration and communication, as digital documents can be viewed simultaneously, promoting better communication among employees, resulting in better decision making. âDigital documents can be distributed instantly, significantly reducing costs for paper, toner, printers and photocopiers, as well as filing cabinets and supplies; and there is subsequently a reduced need for storage space,â says Naidoo. âBut the main benefit of an effective ECM solution is in increased productivity. Because documents are available in digital form, employees can focus on their key responsibilities, instead of spending time filing, transferring or searching for documents.â
Business News Sector Tags: Green|
