Your document management platform is installed and working to fulfil all the criteria specified at implementation. The employees have been trained and are seemingly getting on with the tasks at hand. Job done. Right?
Maybe. If your company is extremely fortunate to have a simple process and extremely conscientious users, then perhaps near 100% process efficiency has been achieved. In reality, there is probably still a significant gap from where you are (even after the document management implementation) to achieving the full benefits of process management and automation.
The thing is, nothing more probably needs to be installed, the tools are just waiting to be utilised to move your company process into the next stage of efficiency. The issue in reality is that these features were never in scope for the implementation and during training they were probably seen as a bonus (that no one really took seriously). In addition, following implementation signoff, a new cycle of analysis didn’t start (change cycle) to bring the next improvement in.
What if I said you could prevent an employee from losing >2 hours per day in less than 5 minutes?
An example based on a recent customer discussion:
The IT manager had been speaking to a member of a department who are some of the main users of their document management platform. It became apparent during their discussion that the process for submitting content received via email was a touch ‘inefficient’. It went something like:
Email received with attachment(s) → Attachment printed (occasionally with body) → Paper copy scanned into document management capture process → Document indexed → Paper copy handed to manager (in some cases) for review…
After a considered pause (picking my jaw off the floor) and a quick glance at their licensed options, I informed the IT manager that all the tools to facilitate direct email to document management platform index where in place, the client just needed to install the Outlook integration already available from the server. It would take 5 minutes including the time showing the user how to use it. The replacement process would go something like:
Email received with attachment(s) → user right-clicks and submits to document management platform → link to indexed content sent to manager (if required) from within document management platform to be reviewed.
If we just focus on the time difference between these two processes (ignoring the waste materials generated in the first one and the lack of audit for manager review…), I would estimate that:
Even this extremely rough estimate shows a 4.5 minute difference between the processes (the potential for a piece of paper not being found for 2 days on a desk vs the 1 hour to spot an email after a meeting is food for further thought)
The average office worker gets 121 emails a day. Let us presume 25% require processing of attachments - that would be a 2 hour 15 minute difference between the two processes. For 3 employees that is a whole working day between them - everyday.
Simply put, you could reap serious returns to review even the most simple of business processes and question if there is a more efficient way - if it feels ‘clunky’ then it probably is and a simple call to PacSol (as our IT manager friend did) could open a world of possibilities.
Toby Gilbertson, Director of Operations. May 2023
#PacSolUK #DocumentManagement #DigitalTransformation #BusinessProcess
