New office printer for our client

Does your office printer think outside the box?

What springs to mind when you’re thinking about your next office printer or copier? Do you tend to focus on the aesthetics, speed, volume of feeds? Cost will always be something that is forefront too. However, isn’t it also important to make sure that the ‘box’ truly delivers and can also do a bit more, whilst keeping the costs as low as possible? Take a look at our recent case study from our client who wanted their office printer to do more.

 

Recent Office Printer Case Study

 

New office printer for a recent client The Request

 

Recently we worked with a new customer of ours. They were looking for a new office printing solution for their business. They required all staff members to have access to their office printers, with excellent security functionality. However, once we started the initial conversations we realised they also required support with document filing. This was creating a high cost to the business. Originally they had been scanning documents by hand and manually filing them. This was to ensure they had all documentation stored correctly for ease of reuse. This was costing the business hours of time every day. Staff were having to take time from their usual activities to complete the work. But, they didn’t have any other solution to their problem. 

 

The Solution

It was quickly established that our DocuWare package would be the perfect solution to their problems. We could combine this with the Xerox technology to enable them to have smoother running business processes. This would reduce time, whilst improving accuracy and efficiency. 

Both DocuWare and Xerox technology could be integrated to provide a powerful solution for their HR documentation and their accounts, bringing so much more value to the business. 

 

The Result

Our new customer was ecstatic with the results. 

They now have:

  • Bespoke one touch scanning buttons which feed documents into the Accounts and HR DocuWare workflows automatically.
  • Documents are split from multi page to single pages at the touch of a button, saving time for their busy accounts team. 
  • Invoices are sent through an approval process and matched with purchase orders, providing easy sign off, cross checking, visibility and with full audit trails.
  • HR records such as training certificates are filled with automated alerts for when certification needs updating.

Implementing the new printer and DocuWare software has given them the automation they required. They new now able to ensure their business processes run much more efficiently. It has also provided extra support with automatic alerts which they didn’t have before. This has enabled them to work less manually, have more effective processes and gain back more time for their staff to focus on their main job roles. 

New Office Printer for a recent client

 

 

 

It is brilliant to have a beautiful shiny, new office printer – but, could it be doing a lot more for you?

 

 

 

 

Find out more about the services we offer here.

 

Contact us for more information and/or a full audit of your current processes.

 

Digital Mailroom

Process Improvement Ideas: A Digital Mailroom

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

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.

Cloud computing concept. Cloud with computer icons

What headaches do you have managing documents?

Does this sound familiar?

Incoming mail and information to the business

This is one of the most labour-intensive areas of the business, whether it is incoming mail, emails with PDF attachments or documents of any format coming from different departments or company subsidiaries. The information must be sorted, distributed to the correct recipient, managed, and filed for reference.

Filing and retrieval of information

There are so many ways people file information either electronically or hard copy. It is incredible to think, currently, we still have the same problems we had many years ago. Employees and departments all have their own indexing systems and a document can be misfiled making it difficult to find the information later.

Storage of information

In today’s business environment, many companies scan documents and save them electronically either in the cloud or internally on their servers. Many businesses also store most of their incoming email traffic on their server exchange without any thought about disaster recovery (if a record is deleted or lost because of a malfunction). There are still many companies that store hard copy documents in the office or at storage sites and this can be very expensive and labour intensive to manage.

Retrieval of information

This can be a very time-consuming exercise and stressful. Yes, it is easy to retrieve an email quickly if you know the content of what you are looking for and it can be fairly easy if the document has been filed electronically in the right electronic file. However, what if it is a PDF document? What if the document has been put back in the wrong file? What if the file has been taken out of the office or somebody else has taken it? What happens if the files are kept offsite from the office or in different software applications like CRMs and accounting packages? What time is wasted in retrieving the information and what is the cost?

Compliance and Security

This has become more of an issue today than ever with cyber crime growing in our society and company regulation being implemented on a daily basis, it has become very hard to manage and police within the business What is worse, companies not only lose money via the cyber crime, they are also under threat of financial penalties for non-compliance.

If you wanted to find the magic answers to the above and we can show you how this can be achieved.

Call 01444 462 980

DWS_Managing_Documents_AW_digital

Working from Home

DocuWare as the Ultimate Lockdown Tool

 

With the present situation meaning more people are working from home than ever before, the need for offices to go paperless has become an urgent issue.  Doing this efficiently can, not just allow people to work from home more easily and protect the environment by reducing wastage, but also help people access the documentation they need quickly, easily and in a way that protects all the important data from prying eyes or identity thieves.  Our DocuWare system not only makes homeworking much more efficient and productive, it has the following benefits too:

Enabling Teamwork

Working together while you’re apart is always a conundrum for businesses with people working from home and now that everyone is working from home, it’s a problem that simply has to be overcome.  With DocuWare, it’s very easy for the whole team, no matter where they are, to have access to the same documents without the need to email files which isn’t very secure and often ends up with different version of documents flying around and everyone getting in a pickle.  Documents are just there for everyone to use when you go paperless with DocuWare.

Saving Space

Because DocuWare is cloud based, you don’t just save space in your office by not needing to have lots of filing cabinets to store your paper documents, you also don’t take up space on your servers by storing them on your own computer network.  This means they’re quicker to access and you don’t risk slowing down your network with people downloading documents from it.  By switching to a cloud based system like DocuWare now when everyone is forced to work from home, you get to keep these benefits when the lockdown is over so you can save money on storage space for paper documents and servers as everything is getting back to normal.

Smoothing Processes

Being cloud based means there is no work you need to do to maintain or repair any issues with DocuWare.  There are all kinds of redundancies worked into the system so it always runs smoothly and you don’t have to worry about updates etc.  It also helps things to run smoothly by incorporating features like an app that allows members of your team to scan documents very quickly with their phones and add them to the system.  Additionally, DocuWare has electronic signature capacities which are very handy for contracts, quotes, etc. when it isn’t possible for contacts to be there in person and the postal service is too slow and unreliable.  Having all these features doesn’t just make things possible that would otherwise be difficult in the current situation, it improves efficiency, data security and productivity all round.

The ability to put everything together at a time when everyone is being kept apart is what makes DocuWare so useful at the moment but it can also help businesses to run more smoothly, save space, time and money and be more secure in their processes when things are back to normal.  Implementing this type of cloud based systems during lockdown could be one of those things that helps you to drive forward into the future with your business when it’s all over.  To talk to us about how DocuWare could help your business, call 01444 462980 or email info@dwsl.co.uk.