Many times, business leaders think of an ROI simply in a financial or hard cost term. The reduction of paper, toner, hardware, postage or storage space are their primary focus, but in reality those are just the tip of the iceberg.

Over the past several years the industry has seen an increase in demand for Electronic Document Management. While some simply want to end the frustration of the hours wasted looking for that paper file, e-mail, or letter that they saved somewhere on a drive, many companies are coming to truly appreciate the benefits such as reduced administrative costs, improved efficiencies, and reduced risk that is inherent with paper.

However, the question inevitably becomes, “How much is it, and what am I going to get out of the money I spend?” In other words, give me a solid Return on Investment, or ROI. Many times, business leaders think of an ROI simply in a financial or hard cost term. Questions regarding the reduction of paper, toner, hardware, postage or storage space are the primary focus of the conversation. These are valid questions, and are always taken into account. In many cases this is enough to justify the expense of the investment in EDM. However, upon implementing EDM, many organizations find that this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Perhaps the biggest savings comes in the form of increased employee productivity. Studies have shown that while professionals spend up to 15% of their time reading material, they spend up to 50% of their time looking for the materials needed to do their job. EDM allows for instantaneous and concurrent access to a document or documents. Features such as indexing or full text searches over a library allow for a professional to retrieve the desired e-mail, letter, or other document in a matter of seconds. Put another way, it gives them more time to do their job, resulting in more work getting done.

The second area where we see big gains is in improving business processes and workflows. Very often approvals are manual, and time consuming. Using Fisher’s as an example, we traditionally approved the payment of invoices after the responsible manager received the paper copy, had time to review, and approved or rejected as appropriate. However, the problem that we ran into was that an invoice could sit in a mailbox or on a desk for any number of days, and sometimes the document could even get lost. The result of this was that invoices were not getting paid as quickly as possible and would cost at a minimum discounts for early payments. 

Since implementing EDM, invoices are entered into the system, and routed electronically to the responsible manager. After a predetermined time, if the invoice has not moved along to the next step, the system generates an e-mail prompting a response. The next day another e-mail goes out, but includes the next level manager as well. Perhaps most importantly, there is transparency in the process. At a glance, our AP coordinator can view the document progress along with the notes made by individuals. As a result we have improved the turnaround time for paying invoices, and enjoy the discounts that we may have previously missed.

One area that can be hard to put into financial terms, is the area of document security. This encompasses many areas. It is not only the security of controlling access to sensitive documents. That can be accomplished with a locked door in many cases.   Rather it address the question of what is the backup to a paper document. In the event of disaster, fire for example, how do you recover? Documents are the collective intelligence of an organization. Without them, a company can be dead in the water. Implementing EDM, scanning hardcopy into electronic format, ensures a greater level of control to view, it also incorporates what was once paper into your backup routine. EMD allows the establishment of retention schedules, as dictated by many governing agencies. Finally, EMD can answer the question of compliance with e-discovery. In times of litigations, the time spent retrieving documentation can be extreme. With EDM you can be assured that you have what you need, when you need it.

There are many other reasons to consider implementing Electronic Document Management. It’s important to remember, it’s not all about the hard dollars. Securing and controlling your information is worth more than the paper it’s printed on.

Jason