This insight piece from Exel…
The paperless office revolution, whilst it has undoubtedly seen some success, I’m not aware of anyone that can claim to work in a completely paperless office.
Even if your business is well intentioned and has eradicated paper from internal processes and transactions, some of your customers and suppliers may still send across a hard copy purchase request or similar.
For those that do receive documents in PDF format, hopefully now the vast majority, how do you store, manage and interrogate those documents? If you design products, how do you store and manage CAD drawings, designs and specification sheets? You might need to take a video of an installation site, or audio notes of a maintenance procedure, where do they go?
Having a comprehensive system for managing your documents can bring huge benefits; having one that is fully integrated with your ERP system – allowing you to access the required document from any relevant area in the system – is invaluable.
The Document Management module is available as part of the EFACS E/8 suite of products and allows secure, controlled and traceable storage and access to your business’ documents, with full revision management.
Combine this with Workflow and the full benefits can be realised. Key documents can automatically be circulated for approval and revision. If, for example, you have a product specification that has been circulated, the latest version can be accessed via the documents tab against the product, with options to view previous versions.
Invoices arriving from suppliers via email can automatically be picked up, analysed and logged against the corresponding supplier record. If checks need to be put in place, Workflow will email the document to specified staff members for approval. Not only does this make processes much more efficient, it vastly reduces the chances of mistakes occurring.
Exel has gone a step further in making life easy for those of you who still receive paper supplier purchase invoices. We have created a packaged solution where a high speed, wireless desktop scanner works in conjunction with workflow to present the document as a digital file saved in document management and is referenced against the relevant purchase invoice.
Simon Harre-Young, IT Manager for HV Wooding says of this combination: “The Document Management and Workflow modules particularly impressed. Given that we work with customer engineering drawings, 3D models, photographs etc., having all of these in one, easy to manage and access place, within EFACS E/8 was a real benefit.”
