How Vital is Document Management?

A new report out of England today verifies once again that a comprehensive document management program is one of the best ways to increase business productivity, reduce costs and actually increase your bottom line. The actual report itself runs seventy five pages and costs around thirty dollars here - but the description provides us with the important core facts. Document management services are too important to not take advantage of.

From the reports description:

The business model used in this report is an excellent place to start if considering the implementation of a 'true' 'Document Management Service Programme' or while evaluating an existing programme. Remember, when run properly a 'Document Management Service Programme' positively affects the companies 'bottom-line' in a very positive way, you save an enormous amount of money and become more efficient and effective in operating your business.

Visit GRM's website to see how we can improve your business from the ground up.

IMDS

Manufacturers' Monthly has an article on their website about businesses who have failed to convert their business processes and suffered because of it. The problem, which the author refers to as Information Management Deficiency Syndrome (IMDS) focuses on many of the reasons that strong document or records management systems are important to every type of business.

From Manufacturers' Monthly:

With all the information being created, shared and stored by manufacturers, problems inevitably arise in the managing of that information. Whether driven by regulation, technology or customer demand, these problems have become so pervasive that an identifiable organisational malaise has taken hold across several different markets, one that we have labelled Information Management Deficiency Syndrome (IMDS).

The Stimulus and Medical Records Management

Around the time of our recent Presidential elections, I mentioned that one of President Obama's campaign issues was the state of our medical industries records management programs. Obama assured supporters at rallies that this would be an important part of his agenda, and it seems like he's staying true to his word. There's a significant portion of the newly-passed economic stimulus package that sets aside billions of dollars for hospitals, doctors offices and medical clinics to upgrade or introduce their electronic records management.

According to an article on MedPageToday.com:

Specifically, physicians who demonstrate that they are "meaningfully using heath information technology" would be eligible for $40,000 to $65,000 through Medicare and Medicaid. Likewise, hospitals that demonstrate similar information technology-friendly practices would also qualify for incentive payments. The incentive payments would be phased out over time and eventually a stick will replace the carrot so that physicians and hospitals not using an electronic system would be paid less by Medicare. Health centers, rural health clinics, and children's hospitals would also be eligible for information technology funding through Medicaid.

Myth of the Paperless Office

An environmental news website - Grist - has a feature on their website about environmentally trends that picked up speed in their industries because in addition to saving resources, they also help vendors safe time and money. The first example used was a more effective piping system in Shanghai carpeting manufacturers. The second, is the paperless office. The author points out many of the ideas I've discussed here at the GRM Blog - that EDM can save your company money, increase productivity and cut back on wasted time and energy - referencing specifically a book that highlighted these concepts particularly well, The Myth of the Paper Office.

From the article:

Deployed properly, document management software may not create a paperless office, but it can create an office that uses less paper, and do so as a side effect of improving productivity. It does this because developers now understand that computers can improve retrieval, sharing, and collaborative work on documents, but remain an inferior medium for reading long documents from start to finish. Computers are better for collaborative markup, but worse for editing by a single person. While they are better for retrieval based on key words, they are worse for intuition-driven searching through key documents.

Image Enabling and EDM

Immediately following the launch of our new digital division, GRM EDM, we discussed a number of their services here at the Document Storage Blog. Since today was a slow day in industry news, I thought it would be helpful to provide our readers with information on another EDM service I haven't already had a chance to touch on - Image Enabling.

Through GRM’s Image Enabling solution, organizations are able to achieve tremendous improvements in productivity and enhance the value of their imaging applications. By linking documents directly to transaction records from ERP, CRM and other systems, companies are able to leverage the investments they have in software, databases, and other infrastructures. For example, if a customer service representative was speaking with a customer on the phone while accessing their financial records in an accounting system, they would be able to link to the GRM Online Records Center™ and view invoice images at the same time. Image Enabling takes document imaging to another level, saving time and countless resources by adding the ability to view documents from existing application systems.

It's an extremely helpful service, and I strongly suggest that all of you look into how it would work at your respective companies.