Selecting the best processes for document imaging

When implementing a document imaging solution it is very important to select the processes that will bring the maximum ROI. Not all processes are suitable for document imaging. So we need to evaluate each process carefully in order to select the most relevant ones. Business needs will definitely vary from one process to another and a single product may not be able to cater for all requirements.

Lets look at an example. Assume that your objective is to reduce the usage of paper. It could be because you need to minimize the cost of printing or you have a sustainability initiative to reduce the usage of paper. It is not possible to reduce the usage of paper in all business processes. So we need to analyze and then identify the best few processes for this. To do this we need to identify the document types involved in a particular process and estimate the number of physical copies being used. When you start doing this sometimes you may be surprised to note that there are multiple copies of the same document being printed. There was one project where we discovered that a particular document being printed for 6-8 times by different teams.

You can follow these simple steps to identify such processes;

1. List down all the processes that generate paper documents

E.g. 

1. Accounts Payable

2. Petty Cash reimbursement

3. Work Order process

2. For each process identify the associated document types;

E.g. For accounts payable process

- Invoice

- GRN

- Inspection Report etc…

2. For each document type estimate the daily volume / transactions and the number of copies from the same document. 

Document Type	Daily Volume	No. of physical copies
Invoice	1000	2
GRN	600	2
Inspection Report	800	3

3. A process with a high number of physical copies is a good candidate for Imaging.

Once identified it needs to be further discussed in details in order to identify whether it is really possible to reduce the number of copies.

• How many copies of a particular document is printed?
• If this is just 1 copy then is it practical to reduce that to 0?
• Do you still want a physical signature?
• Can the finance team accept only the electronic copies? Or are there any supporting documents being printed that we can reduce etc…

Categories: ECM, imaging