Business Process Improvement & Document Imaging
When identifying the problem is hard -
but the solution is surprisingly easy!
"Alright," you say, "I'll bite. What the heck do you mean by
'Business Process Improvement'?"
Back when I got out of college, we used to call this job,
"Productivity Specialist," and I'm sure a lot of people still
think of hiring a consultant when they think of Business Process
Improvement. But in the context of my industry, we think of it
as the ability to improve any process within a company through
the use of document imaging tools.
Tall order!
Why? Because when you start to explore where in a particular
process the "pain" is, you frequently find that it is gross
miscommunication about expectations within the different layers
of a company. Case in point: I once visited a manufacturing
company wanting the accounts receivable department to reduce the
amount of paperwork associated with collecting revenue. I found
that they were making three copies of each invoice: one for
sorting by vendor name; another sorted by plant; and yet another
by vendor invoice number. The IT director was in the meeting and
asked why they didn't just go online to quickly search for
invoices by any of these index values. You would have thought
the earth missed a rotation by the looks on everyone's face. I
finally asked what I was doing there, to which they sheepishly
answered, "I guess we solved our own problem."
The point I'm trying to make here is that many times, we tend to
make problems more complicated than they really are. And the
hardest part of process improvement is identifying what those
really are, and where they actually lie within the process. For
example, are you spending too much time looking for documents?
Are you losing proof of delivery tickets-to the point that you
can't collect the invoice? Do you have disaster recovery for
your records (another topic all by itself)?
These are the types of business process that can be improved
using document imaging solutions that are surprisingly easy.
Yes, using document imaging tools, you can apply workflow rules
to seamlessly move paper and electronic records throughout your
system. You can scan and capture all images, emails, Word and
Excel documents, then easily store, search for and find them
again using special application software. Some of document
imaging's greatest strengths are processing data contained in
structured documents (like forms) and unstructured documents
(such as incoming invoices or orders)
Think of your own business processes, and then ask yourself this
question about document imaging solutions: "What's in this for
me?" This will help you start to identify where in the process
your problem lies. For more information about how document
imaging can help you improve that business process, email me at
mzecy@americanmicrokc.com.