Network Services Southern Maryland

A new report by Datamonitor argues that many organizations waste 10% of their staff costs because employees can not find the right information to do their jobs. Over 50% of staff costs are now for employees performing “information work”. But the employees are suffering from both information overload and information underload, and as a result they spend up to 25% of their day searching for the right information. Datamonitor argues that this why some organizations could be frittering away as much as 10% of their staff costs on wasted effort. The report goes on to say that ineffective search and discovery strategies are hampering business competitiveness, impairing service deliver, and putting companies at risk.

I addressed a similar survey from Accenture in my previous post "Cost of Retrieving Information", and it is nice to see that both Datamonitor and Accenture are now saying the same as we have been arguing for years…

By Atle Skjekkeland.

This article was originally posted on AIIM Knowledge Center Blog.

Southern Solutions offers document and network management solutions to Southern Maryland and Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's Counties including Great Mills, Helen, Hollywood, Loveville and Mechanicsville. continue reading...

By James True

The Small-to-Medium (SMB) business segment may be one of the most misunderstood markets ever. Vendors erroneously assume SMB is a large, undifferentiated market that is easy to sell into, especially compared to large enterprises, where big brands and massive corporate sales forces are needed to get a foot in the door.

In fact, SMBs vary substantially in their technology needs. The smaller prospect is very different than the larger mid-sized firm in terms of the technologies they can use as well as how they buy, support and implement these technologies. The differences between small and mid-sized companies are well-illustrated by their document management technology needs. In particular, integrating electronic document management technology with the business applications commonly used by the small enterprise poses a special challenge.

Let there be little doubt: SMBs, in common with their enterprise corporate counterparts, can and do benefit by going paperless. All companies can take advantage of streamlined workflow and improved business processes, while saving money on physical storage space and associated costs. However, in order for SMBs to fully gain all the advantages of an integrated electronic document management solution, the following differences between small and mid-sized companies must be recognized:

• Smaller firms typically have no IT departments, so ease of use is important along with out-of-the-box functionality;
• Smaller firms have strictly limited operating budgets and will only sign on if there is clear and compelling value;
• Mid-sized firms tend to gravitate to Value Added Resellers (VARs) for advice and customization of a solution specific for their market segment or have internal technical staff assigned to such tasks.

An example of document management solutions tailored to different types of SMBs can be found in Cabinet NG’s products. Cabinet NG’s CNG-SAFE (Shared Access Filing Environment) is an automated document management and workflow software platform that gives the SMB everything necessary for successful document management in a single package. This includes advanced data protection, intuitive user interface and the ability to integrate with most third-party applications.

Integrating electronic document management with third-party applications must align with the differences between small and mid sized firms’ resources. For the small firm, Cabinet NG’s Retriever™ works with virtually any Windows- based program to allow access to CNG-SAFE documents and document management functionality from within an existing application. Behind the scenes, Cabinet NG’s Synchronizer ensures index data, between CNG-SAFE and the 3^rd party application, is up to date. Synchronizer easily connects to any ODBC/OLEDB compliant database to automatically create and update data used by CNG-SAFE. As growing firms upgrade or replace existing 3^rd party applications they can continue using CNG-SAFE in the new environment and extend their investment and use of document management with Retriever and Synchronizer.

Mid-sized firms needing to go beyond the productivity benefits offered by Retriever and Synchronizer can use the Cabinet NG Application Programming Interface (CNG-API). The CNG-API allows developers to integrate other software applications with Cabinet NG’s document repository and workflow processes. CNG-API’s set of program methods and classes is the preferred approach to meet the custom needs found in most mid-sized firms. Resellers, OEMs or clients developers using the CNG-API are able to increase end-user productivity with seamless integration to the businesses existing core applications.

Retriever, Synchronizer and the CNG-API all share the ability to offer SMBs these benefits:

• Tying CNG-SAFE document management functionality to existing business applications;
• Increasing productivity by performing document management functions from one application;
• Streamlining and automating business processes from a single interface, and;
• Preserving existing application investments and maximizing return on investment.

The SMB market is unique, and within it are yet more unique needs. Effectively supplying SMBs of all stripes with all the benefits of integrated electronic document management requires a range of technologies with varying degrees of plug-and-play functionality.

Southern Solutions offers Document Management and Network solutions to Calvert County, Maryland. Cities served include Dowell, Lower Marlboro, Port Republic and Sunderland. continue reading...

From ScanGuru

The Capture Applications on the market today are outstanding when it comes to automation. For any organization that has a large scanning project, or requires minimal time and maximum efficiency from its scan operators, some level of automation is a necessity. So what does automation mean when we are discussing capture applications

Below are some key feature that will minimize the time and effort required to scan and process documents:

Document Separators – with most scanners, if you have 10 documents to scan, you will need to run each set of pages through the document feeder, and save them off individually to your repository. Applications that allow document separators provide a means to place separator sheets between each of your document sets, place the entire pile into the document feeder, and let the software split the stack into individual files. This is a huge time saver, even with a small number of documents.

Intelligent Separators – these take the concept of the separator sheet a step further and add “intelligence”. For instance, a barcode separator could contain important information, such as a vendor code, invoice number, etc. This information is read by the system, and assigned to the document, and can be used in a number of ways: for search, in file naming or folder creation.

Database Lookup – Indexing, or data entry on documents can be a painstaking ordeal, especially if the information has already been entered into another system. The database lookup function provides the ability to retrieve information from another system based on some key value. So you could enter, say, an invoice number, and the application could go to your financial system and bring all the information associated with the document. This minimizes the data entry step, and provides consistency of data across applications.

Document Routing – There are applications on the market that will route documents based on coversheet information. Just scan the document with a barcode cover for a particular destination, and the system automatically routes the document to the right folder for let’s say, a particular customer.
Form Recognition – The ultimate in intelligent applications on the market today can recognize forms from a stack of paper that has been scanned, and intelligently process them according to features within each document. For example, an application form can be recognized, and the data harvested off the form for automatic entry into another system.
These are just a few of the automation features that can help with the efficiency of the scanning process.

This article originally appeared at the ScanGuru.

Southern Solutions offers network and document management services to Faulkner, Ironsides, Issue, Malcolm, Marbury, Morgantown and Mount Victoria, Maryland. continue reading...