eMerging News
Avoid the excuses that hold back your ECM progress
By Bill Ozuk,
President of eMerge
"There are only so many hours in the day". Likely everyone reading this has uttered that statement at one time or another. But there’s also the saying "There's no time like the present". At eMerge, we believe that using the latter as the mantra to get things done can be a difference maker. For organizations considering ECM (Electronic Content Management) technology or those that have made the commitment only to find that progress has stalled, here are a few things to consider that make sense:
- ECM is too expensive. We can't afford it right now. - There are pricing options available that you may be unaware of (no matter what your size), such as a monthly fee based on usage. The options available allow costs savings to continue to fund the initiative. And between the cost savings and the cost avoidance you achieve from ECM, your ROI can "eMerge" very quickly. ECM may seem expensive; but when was the last time you calculated the cost of not implementing ECM? How much are you spending on paper, file cabinets, copier click charges and the labor to chase the paper in your office? Shifting those costs to a solution that eliminates them makes great business sense.
- ECM is too complex. - In truth, it's simplifies things. Consider where your business processes would be if you hadn't made a transition to email. Or to a contemporary computing system. At some point, you made an investment in time, hardware, and possibly training in order to take advantage of advanced technology. Do the same with ECM and it too will be a powerful impact on your business.
- We tried to implement ECM previously and we weren't successful - It's best to learn from your failures, and then move on. Find a vendor who takes the time to truly understand your business processes and can help you with implementation. Without help, the problem becomes that you don't know what you don't know. Technology is constantly moving forward and a good vendor will align you with solutions that leverage that technology.
- We don’t want to make any dramatic changes to our current business processes. - It's comfortable to stay with the status quo. Fear of change can be a powerful deterrent. But don't fear ECM. Fear a volatile economy that may affect the spending habits of customers. Fear your competitors, who most assuredly are going to take advantage of this technology. Fear the inefficiencies and slowdowns that are inevitable results of prolonging a transition. Change is good, possibly a little scary, but embracing it means your future stays bright!
- I don't really WANT an "ah-ha" moment. - Success has arrived when an ECM solution delivers what it promises at the exact time it's needed. When a customer is on the phone and "needs their invoice copy ASAP", when the boss "needs the Miller contract NOW"; when those needs are met efficiently in the normal course of daily business, the "ah-ha" moments will continue to happen and be a welcome change from the "information chaos" that many organizations without ECM continue to struggle with.
Make sure your company isn't sabotaging its own success by relying on excuses for not implementing an ECM system. Just because your company isn't ready to make the transition, doesn't mean that your competitors haven't already. Stop standing in the way of your own success. eMerge can help you get started or can elevate the impact that your existing ECM initiative. Call us! If you’re not happy with where you are today, we can help.
The Elusive can be found – With OCR!
By Bill Ozuk,
President of eMerge
Being able to easily search, access, store and share information is a vital part of any office workflow. As an organization grows, so too does their content. Complicating this further is the fact that searching and accessing documents takes time, which is only becoming less abundant.
eMerge helps organizations easily locate vital business information by adding OCR (Optical Character Recognition) image processing when providing outsource scanning services to our customers. Index-based searching is important and useful for most scanning projects, but it can also be time consuming and subject to human error. In most cases, OCR processing takes index based searching which is "good" and escalates it to excellent. And a combined search using both index field and OCR searching simultaneously can most often take you to the "one document" that needs to be located – ultimately what ECM is intended to do.
For a modest investment per image, OCR technology converts scanned document images back into searchable text, allowing specific key word searching that greatly reduces the time to locate documents and move them through day to day business processes. While any documents can certainly be OCR'd, specific document types lend themselves to being more "OCR Friendly" and will deliver significant time savings back to the business. Documents such as board minutes, contracts, and mortgage and insurance documentation are all prime targets. Whether it’s forms processing, paper transactions, records keeping or document archiving, there’s a huge need – and opportunity – for OCR.
In a real world example, working with paper based board minutes from an organization, a person on staff may take hours to sift through years of documents by request of the CEO to "find the meeting when Mr. Hazelmeyer attended and outlined the new pension plan". Contrast that significant effort with typing in a key word such as "Hazelmeyer" or "pension" within an ECM system and within seconds having the documents presented for review and emailing to the CEO. OCR delivers responsiveness to business that takes performance to new levels.
Talk to your eMerge representative or contact us. We'll help you explore how OCR technology can improve your business and deliver information precisely when and where it’s needed.