Seven benefits of electronic document workflow for better business process management.

People work in processes. They create, receive, route, review, and approve content, documents and information. Automating the flow of content, and how people interact with each other in processes, streamlines business operations. Errors are reduced, productivity is increased, and the company is rewarded with greater profits.

Smart businesses are deploying Business Process Management tools like electronic document workflow to achieve higher margins from existing operations. Document Locator’s® integrated Document Workflow improves the bottom-line through business process automation… improving the way people, processes and content interact.

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1 – Consistency and Repeatability

Automating steps in business processes using document workflow ensures that each action will be optimized for consistency and repeatability. Confusion and guessing are eliminated, while trust and accountability among stakeholders and managers is increased. The need for manual intervention or management over individual process steps is diminished.

2 – Employee Efficiency

Paper-based, manual processes have high margins of error caused by delays, interruptions, duplications and user-influenced inaccuracies. These processes are also difficult to manage for accountability and control. Document workflow increases the efficiency of worker productivity by automating processes and improving how people interact with information. Workflow regulates the dynamic and complex flow of information as it is shared among people, reducing operational labor costs, and increasing the quality and accuracy of work.

3 – Eliminate Paper-based Processes and Costs

Pushing paper around the office, and shipping paper among different locations, is an inefficient and costly practice. Beyond the cost of paper itself, the cost of storing, handling, and shipping paper can add a significant burden to a company’s bottom-line. Electronic document workflow eliminates hard-copy costs by managing the flow of documents among people electronically.

    • Over a document’s life-cycle, the cost of handling, storing and shipping a single sheet of paper can cost up to $30.
    • The average office worker uses a sheet of paper every 12 minutes, over 10,000 sheets of paper a year, and disposes of 100-200 pounds of paper annually.
    • 15% of paper files are lost.

4 – Faster Cycle-times

Time is money. Whether measured directly in employee labor cost, or indirectly in time-to- market or time-to-service losses… the amount of time spent on each step in a process builds to a significant cost factor. Electronic document workflow reduces cycle-times by automating steps in business processes so they occur faster and with greater predictability.
Workflow Examples

    • Yes / No approvals with conditional branches based on value.
    • Time-outs with notifications or reassignments based on schedule.
    • Quality control points for review of defined samples of workflow instances.
    • Team-based workflows that permit team members to complete steps.
    • Custom process actions that integrate and interact with third-party systems.
    • Manual process steps for scheduled pauses or non-system actions.
    • Role-based workflow security prevents unauthorized access to events.
    • Notifications and schedule reminders via email and/or Document Locator.
    • Folder level user and group defaults configurable for workflow steps.
    • Visual workflow diagrams integrated with Microsoft Visio.
    • Notification templates customizable with logos, confidentiality statements, legal messaging, etc.
    • Document Locator Workflow Examples

5 – Compliance and Regulatory Requirements

Business records and processes that are governed by regulatory requirements must be properly managed to avoid financial liability and risk. Where processes are regulated, document workflow allows you to define business steps in compliance with rules, laws and internal standards like ISO so that you can avoid the often severe consequences of penalties, fines, or legal actions.

    • Automate review and approval steps.
    • Record actions and log an audit trail.
    • Secure information electronically.

6 – Continuity

A catastrophic loss of information can have a severe impact on a company’s ability to operate. The speed with which a company is able to recover can be the most critical factor determining the business’s ability to resume operations. Recovery of business processes is as critical to a successful re-start of operations as are the recovery of documents and content. Electronic document workflow provides the ability to back-up and retrieve company processes so that your company can quickly recover and return to normal business operations.

    • As much as 70% of businesses would fail within three weeks if they suffered a catastrophic loss of paper-based records due to fire or flood.
    • Odds of a catastrophic loss are: 1 in 4.

7 – Continuous Improvement

Business processes are not one-time events; they evolve over time. Defining steps in workflows allows you to continually improve operational processes, to optimize them for cost, quality, service, and speed. Continuous improvement is a systematic approach involving feedback, analysis, auditing, and corrective action that makes your business run more efficiently. As demonstrated in the Kaizen, Just-in-Time and Lean manufacturing business methods, it is an approach that allows you to cut the cost of operations, produce higher quality products at a faster rate, reduce waste, and build competitiveness.

Resource One, Inc is an approved reseller and implementation partner of Document Locator. Article and content provided by ColumbiaSoft Corporation.