A successful ECM implementation means credit union staff must find the software easy to use. An ECM application using the ubiquitous browser is a good choice for searching for documents. Who isn’t familiar with the Internet browser? This reduces the cost and time to train employees, especially in positions with high turnover.
As a contributor to the article, Wiessner made the following observations..., "To get a more accurate ROI, community banks should calculate both the hard and soft costs of their current operations and compare those with the costs and savings after investing in an imaging system, vendors advise. "The greatest ROI in deploying an ECM system today is in reducing labor costs by increasing the efficiency of processing and retrieving documents;' offers Alan Wiessner, chief executive of Integra Business Systems Inc., a document imaging provider in Safety Harbor, Fla.
"Banks often discount these soft-cost savings because they fail to recognize they can either eliminate or repurpose employees to reduce costs or to increase productivity, which is essential for growth:' Reducing or eliminating printing costs provides the best ROI in terms of hard dollars savings, Wiessner says. These costs include faxing, copying and distributing paper, estimated at 6 to 14 cents a page, depending on the printer, fax or copy machine used. "But banks don't always know the true amount of these costs because of all the shadow copies employees may be making;' he says. Those are the copies of documents that employees may be making;' he says. Those are the copies of documents that employees in the branches or other areas of the bank make so they don't have to take the time to retrieve documents from the bank's legacy systems in its centralized operations. Sometimes it can take days, but customers needing information off of those documents won't tolerate waiting:'
By potentially eliminating these shadow costs, the costs of hardware such as multifunction printers or scanners can often be easily justified, Wiessner continues. One example he gives: Desktop scanners can cost less than $1,000 for each branch. ROI should come within 6 to 18 months of implementation of an enterprise content management system, particularly if it's a Web based system.
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It’s time to put the brakes on government spending. The road to recovery lies with the success of small businesses, not with behemoth car companies and big labor. If we were going to bailout anyone, we should have bailed out the car dealerships and auto supply companies to allow them to remarket, retool and invest in new technologies. We should be growing our tax base, which is only going to happen if we fuel the small business private sector. Speaking of which, why are we not doing more to grow and keep promising small business technology companies and their technology jobs in the USA, where our best talent and our best jobs can remain right here at home?
"You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together." Henry Ford
We have Bill Gates and Microsoft, Larry Ellison and Oracle; and Eric Schmidt and Google, not to mention a plethora of phenomenal technology and software companies that started from nothing and today generate thousands upon thousands of high paying private sector jobs and tax revenues, all “Made in the USA.”
What’s more, most technology companies, in particular software companies, do little to harm our ecology (true green); they do not tax our ports, our roads, our bridges or our rail. This reduces our carbon footprint, while not adding to the tremendous and costly burden on the seemingly never ending and costly construction of our roads and our beleaguered transportation infrastructure.
Competition is increasing dramatically from foreign countries who wish to attract our talent, both foreign and domestic grads educated here in the USA, many getting their higher education with the help of US taxpayer dollars. The number of “propeller heads”, a.k.a., the savvy entrepreneurs and highly skilled workers “Made in the USA”, are leaving for a more favorable business climate or jobs overseas.
Our foreign competitors are offering much lower tax rates and hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives to technology business startups and to their highly paid - highly skilled employees. They are advertising a better quality of life, improved infrastructure and a lower cost of living. Our foreign competitors recognize what we increasingly take for granted, which is the huge tax and revenue potential from small business startups, in particular in the technology field; with their disproportionately high numbers and high salaries as it pertains to job creation. This is coupled with the minimal impact on their country’s costly transportation infrastructure.
The now and next generation of Bill Gates’, Larry Emerson’s and Eric Schmidt’s may find our politics too ambiguous, too costly and too unimaginative to breed success here in the USA. There are hundreds of thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs right now who are losing the battle against a poor economy accentuated by high taxes and ever increasing regulation. There are hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurial ventures not even born yet that will never pass the incubation period.
Where should we, the United States of America, concentrate our efforts to keep our existing technology gurus and attract the next generation of “byte heads?” We need to provide education and programs that offer immediate and future tax relief to small businesses and their employees, like a payroll tax holiday. To do this we need to elect government representatives who want less government, who do less for Wall Street, who care less about big government and big union.
We need tech savvy, forward thinking, feet on the ground, “been there, done that” politicians who have missed a few paychecks like the rest of us and who want to do more for small businesses and the working class. Get started by offering existing small businesses and their employees, tax relief with a payroll tax holiday of 6 months or more. Offer new business start-ups, especially technology and software businesses who are Made in the USA and who are 1) less impactful on our transportation infrastructure; 2) provide green technologies; and 3) provide the high end wage earners, which is our future tax base, lower taxes and less government to stay and grow their businesses here in the USA.
"What's right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity - intellect and resources - to do some thing about them."
Henry Ford
You can save a tree and save money! It’s true. Eliminate paper and you’ll improve the bottom line. It’s also true that if a vendor says they’ll get rid of every scrap of paper in your office you should run the other way!!! “Document nirvana” aside, there are many things your organization can do right now to cut costs, manage compliance and improve access to critical information by eliminating paper from each process.
This is a comment from one of our customers, "How did we ever do business without the ability to retrieve at the stroke of the keyboard every record in our operation instantly without worrying about looking through file cabinets and charts that were outgrowing the space we had in our office? And we had a great filing system compared to other medical operations!”
Document management has been around for years but often people think of it as just scanning checks or old paper archives. In fact, many folks implement a new system but continue to do everything else exactly the same as before. The only difference is that documents are now located inside electronic file folders instead of traditional ones. While that makes it a bit easier to find something, a true document management system is capable of so much more in the drive to become paperless.
Another comment after going paperless, "The purchase of their system has allowed us to no longer store the voluminous amounts of paper that is indigenous to a medical practice. We estimate that the use of the identifi.net system has allowed us to store and instantly retrieve in excess of 1.5 million page equivalents. In the past, we needed 1 full time FTE plus ~1000 sq. ft. of filing/storage space plus the necessary supplies to create tens of thousands of file charts, etc. Additionally, there were immeasurable man-hours in pulling charts/files, looking through them for the applicable data and then copying the information needed. Today, we are able to administer our entire system with 0.20 FTE, no significant material costs, and instantaneous retrieval from every work station in our office. Additional hard disk space was one of our few other costs. We still have a number of lateral files that we would be happy to sell at fire sale prices!" Jeffrey Grossman, KG Health Partners
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