eBridge Solutions Blog

A matter of distribution

Though more and more documents are arriving electronically, paper is still a large part of most businesses. What are all the ways you share important paper documents with clients, employees and vendors:

• mail
• fax
• inner-office mail
• overnight services
• courier

What if there was a way to eliminate these methods and save some time and money in the process? One way businesses nationwide are changing the way they handle important hard copy documents is by turning them into digital format.

Mail is too slow. Faxes are on the way out and waste paper. Even e-faxes need to be stored. Inner-office mail is slower than traditional mail and rarely makes it to the right person, plus you need to have a mail room.

Let's dig deeper into overnight services. A typical package costs about $25 to ship next day. If you are in a business that relies on signatures, you probably use FedEx or UPS on a regular basis. A scanned copy of a signed document, however, is considered a legal copy. So, you could e-mail documents to a client, have them print and sign those documents and then scan and return to you. In minutes, not hours, days or weeks.

Or, take it a step further. Set up individual file cabinets online for each client and allow them to scan their signed documents right in for indefinite storage. 

Why is that important? Well, how much more cost-effective would it be to e-mail documents instead of overnight them? How much clearer would a scanned copy of a document be than a fax?

Who can afford couriers these days? And isn't e-mail faster than any courier you could hire?

Look at the ways you distribute new and existing paper in your office. Going digital can speed up your way of doing business, making you more profitable and successful. As an added incentive, you won't have give your courier a holiday bonus this year.

Turning Regulatory Compliance Into A Business Advantage

No one wants to hear from their boss, CPA or attorney that they need to adhere to industry, state or even federal regulations or risk penalties. It's more red tape. More aggravation. And, let's face it, more work.

But, there are times when making an investment to tighten up your compliance gaps can actually improve the overall efficiency of your business. Especially when it comes to managing your records.

A document management and retention policy that follows best practices in your industry and meets regulatory requirements (HIPAA, SOX, GLB, The Patriot Act and more) has many benefits that translate beyond just compliance, including:

• Avoiding legal landmines. If you are ever called to court, having copies (date and time stamped, even) of important records could be enough to keep you from paying big fines or - worst-case scenario - going to jail.
• Improving customer service. Access to electronic documents, enables you and your staff can quickly and easily answer customer questions. No more digging for files or copies of invoices.
• Increasing employee morale. Not having to dig for files will make your employees MUCH happier. So will clean desks and being able to work from home occasionally.
• Lowering overall cost of doing business. By converting paper documents to digital files as part of your record retention strategy, you'll be able to reduce the need for paper, toner and other office supplies. You can also cut back on postage, couriers and overnight delivery services and reduce or eliminate on and off-site storage.
• Reducing security risk. Digital documents can be password protected and encrypted. It's much harder for files to end up in the dumpster behind your office if they aren't in paper format.
• Creating a disaster-recovery backup. Digital documents stored in the cloud can be accessed any time, anywhere. So, if your office burns to the ground or is inaccessible for a period of time, you can still conduct business. Not so if your file cabinets are six feet under water.
• Reducing need for in-house IT, servers and support. If your digital documents are entrusted to a professional hosted document management provider, you simplify the work for your IT staff, and eliminate the expense of servers or technical support. Someone else will do that for you.

By going paperless, you'll be meeting more of your regulatory requirements AND you'll realize some additional benefits that will make your business run more efficiently and cost-effectively. In this economy, being more nimble and streamlined could be the business advantage you need to be more successful than your competition.

Document Management Industry Of The Week: Death Care

Benjamin Franklin said it best: In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes. Could that be why CPAs and yes, funeral directors, are busy year round? Could it also be why they accumulate so much paper?

We love accountants, but this week's industry of the week is the death care industry, which encompasses funeral homes, cemeteries, pet cemeteries, crematories and the vendors that serve them. We've been to quite a few death care trade shows in the past year and you couldn't find a nicer, more professional group of people anywhere.

That's why it's rewarding to provide a service that can actually help THEM: our web-based document management.

Funeral homes, for example, have pre-need (funeral plans made in advance) documents as well as at-need (upon death) paperwork to manage. In most states, the record retention requirements for at-need documents are seven years after death. If someone makes plans when they are 45 and the average age of death is 80, you do the math.

Also, many funeral homes have more than one location. So centralizing records is a time and money saving proposition. The hours a funeral home operates -- truly 24 hours a day, 365 days a week -- also makes document management beneficial, since files can be pulled up on any computer with an Internet connection -- even at home while the funeral director is on call.

“With eBridge Solutions, documents on 'active', 'old', or 'pre-need' files will be at the fingertips of our staff… no matter where they are located… or what hour of day or night.” Bill McQueen,
Anderson-McQueen Funeral Homes

Cemeteries, on the other hand, have it even tougher for a few reasons:

1. They need to keep their burial records FOREVER. Think about it, if there is a cemetery, you're always going to need to know who is buried where.
2. Those cemetery maps and images may be oversized and difficult to store in paper format.
3. Some cemeteries in the United States are 200 years old and they have records dating back as far. Seriously. Some records are so old, they can't even scan them. Those burial record books are actually photographed page by page so the paper doesn't disintegrate.

That's why the death care industry is our Document Management Industry of the Week.

So you bought a document scanner. Now what?

The path toward a paperless office is a noble quest and typically begins with the purchase of a scanner. But, while a scanner will help you eliminate some of the paper in your office, it won't get your documents better organized, more secure or more compliant.

Yes, a scanner can help you convert your old paper files into an electronic format. Then what? What do you name the files? Where do you store them? How do you protect them?

File naming.If you're like most people, you try to name your files to make them easier to find. So, if you are saving a sales contract for Jones Manufacturing, you might name the file JonesManufacturingContract.pdf. or 2010 JonesMfgContract.pdf. That's about two pieces of information - who and what.

With a document management system, not only would you be able to identify the customer name and document type, but you could add the project manager assigned to the client, the date the contract was signed (or is up for renewal) and version number, if any. You can sort by those values as well.

File storage. After you've scanned your paper, you have a few options for digital file storage.

• Hard Drive
• Tape
• CD
• In-House Server
• Cloud-Based Virtual Drive 

While all of these are options, none offer the protection you'll find by scanning and storing your files with an online document management system. Hard drives and servers crash. CDs and tapes can malfunction. Some cloud-based drives are little more than a pretty web site. And, more importantly, you or your IT staff need to spend time each day/week/month/year backing all of the files up. This makes scanning and storing files in your office time-consuming... and a little dangerous.

File compliancy. Depending on the industry you are in, storing your documents unprotected and unencrypted on your hard drive might mean you're not complying with certain regulations. HIPAA, for example, requires that patient information be stored in an encrypted state at rest and during transmission to and from your office. The Red Flags Rule also requires that sensitive information be stored securely in electronic formats to prevent violations. Do your PDFs meet those requirements? Are you sure?

A scanner, like a treadmill, is a great piece of machinery. But, like the treadmill, if you don't have a trainer and a goal, your scanner will probably end up in the corner of the office. But, under a pile of paper instead of a pile of clothes.

eBridge Solutions jumps 500 places on Inc. 5000 list

Inc. Magazine ranked Tampa-based eBridge Solutions number 2093 on its annual Inc. 500/5000, an exclusive ranking of the United State’s 5,000 fastest-growing, privately-owned companies. Last year, eBridge ranked 2594.

"We are pleased with our continued growth and are ecstatic to be included on Inc’s prestigious list once again,” said Leslie Haywood, eBridge Solutions’ CEO. “Our intentions are to continue building our online document management subscription base while providing exceptional customer service to our clients and work-life balance for our employees. We wouldn’t be the company we are today without their faith.”

The 2010 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2006 through 2009. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by June 30, 2006. Additionally, they had to be based in the United States, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2009. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.)

The minimum revenue required for 2006 is $80,000; the minimum for 2009 is $2 million. Revenue figures given in the company profiles are for calendar year 2009, as are employee counts. Complete results of the Inc. 500/5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found on Inc.com.

Five signs that your office needs online document management

Everyone is talking about document management these days, but do you really know what it is and if it’s right for your office?

In a nutshell, online document management systems allow users to store paper and electronic documents together in a centralized, web-based repository. In the past, document management was more of a ‘nice-to-have’ software tool, but now it’s becoming a business imperative, because missing documents, slow response times and non-compliance with record retention and privacy regulations can make or break a company these days.

Still not sure? Here are five signs that your office might be ready for document management.

1. Your employees cannot answer customer questions while they are on the phone. A client calls in and asks for a copy of their contract. How long would it take you to find it? How long would it take you to e-mail (or worse yet, mail) a copy?

If your answer is more than five seconds, you need document management. By storing files online in an organized manner, you can quickly locate - using keywords or index values – the right document and then e-mail it out. All while the client is still on the phone.

2. You have lost business or potential clients because documents have been lost or ‘slipped through the cracks.’ Have you ever misplaced a copy of a signed contract? Or lost a customer’s quote request? When businesses have a document management system, new paper coming into the office is typically scanned in right away, so there is no chance you could lose an important piece of information. Additionally, electronic documents can be added to the online repository to put all documents in a centralized location for easy retrieval.

3. You open a file folder and find no less than five copies of the same document. This happens all the time. In fact, some estimates say more than 80 percent of information found in an office is redundant or unnecessary information. By scanning in paperwork and labeling it, you can immediately tell if you have duplicate information or what version of a document is most recent and delete the rest.

4. There is no room to add additional employees, because files and file cabinets are everywhere. If you have so much paper in your office that you can’t add staff or in some cases, you have to move to a new location to support your files, you need a web-based document management system.

Whether you start scanning in your old documents and whittle away at the piles or merely stop adding to the growing mountains of paperwork, document management can help you eliminate the files and file cabinets in your office.

5. You’ve had to move some documents to an off-site storage location. This is a biggie. If you or your staff have to physically get up and drive to an off-site location whenever you need a document, you REALLY, REALLY need a document management system. By scanning documents into your online file cabinet instead of putting them in banker’s boxes and driving them to the record storage center, you’ll be saving money and time by making the documents accessible from any computer with an Internet connection.

If any of the signs above sound familiar, you’re ready to make the move toward a paperless office. And, getting started isn’t as hard as you think. Sign up with a reputable online document management provider and they should help you come up with a plan of attack for your paper documents. Whether you scan in all of your old files or just start with new paper coming in, you’ll quickly see signs of increased productivity in your office after you add document management.

Can you eliminate postage with a document management system?

Maybe not entirely, but yes. Yes, you CAN virtually eliminate postage, overnight services and couriers by adding document management to your office toolkit.

How? Great question. Here's how it works:

You work in an office with two locations. You're in Office A. Someone in Office B needs a document. Instead of mailing it, driving it over, inner-officing it or faxing it (which is NEVER legible), you can simply scan the document into your online file cabinet. Once the document is scanned, anyone at Office B -- with the proper rights, that is -- can sign onto the Internet and pull up a crystal-clear version of the document.

And not to make this medical billing week, but eBridge Solutions' medical billing clients have saved THOUSANDS of dollars by adding scanners in their physician client's offices so they can end their daily or weekly courier trips to pick up their client's billing paperwork.

One of my favorite case studies is from long-time eBridge client, Professional Office Management Services (POMS). VP of Operations, Jeremy Evans, realized an unexpected benefit after they added eBridge in their office: a huge reduction in courier fees.

“Our courier fees averaged $5,000 a month, running back and forth from our clients offices on a weekly or sometimes daily basis,” Jeremy said.

eBridge Solutions' CEO, Leslie Haywood suggested that POMS buy their biggest client a scanner for their office. And they did!

"Now, clientscan their EOBs directly into our electronic eBridge file cabinet quickly and securely," Jeremy explained. "No more courier fees. No more fuzzy faxes. No more waiting three days for backup. It’s all online instantly!"

So, whether it's one piece of paper or an entire batch of medical records, by scanning and storing your records online, you can easily make them available to other people. Whether they log into your online eBridge file cabinet or you e-mail them the document, it's money you're saving on postage. And money saved anywhere these days is a good thing.

Just don't tell my postman. I want to keep getting my IKEA catalogs at home...

Eliminate file cabinets with document management

Do you know how much file cabinets cost? I spend a lot of time writing about why people should go paperless with eBridge Solutions' web-based document management. I often cite eliminating file cabinets as a reason. But, I was recently looking for some metal file cabinets for a video we're working on and got a big surprise: file cabinets are expensive!

Online, I found file cabinets that cost anywhere from $100 to $500 (and that doesn't include shipping). Then, I thought I would be able to find cheap ones at the used furniture store, but even there file cabinets were $40 or $50.

What I want to know is WHY? Why are businesses continuing to store their important documents in heavy metal boxes? Don't they know that putting files in file cabinets does not mean they are stored permanently? Nor does it mean those records are secure. (Who can't pick a lock these days with all of those CSI-type shows?)

eBridge Solutions' document management customers have all but done away with file cabinets. In fact, one of our favorite insurance customers, George Dakkak, was able to donate 15 cabinets to his local church after his staff finished scanning in all of his old customer files.

If you are getting ready to buy a file cabinet, stop. Instead, buy a document management system like eBridge. Scan the files you were going to store and then you can shred that paperwork. Documents scanned into eBridge Solutions are given a date and time stamp that allow them to be considered legal originals.

If you want to find out other ways document management systems can save you money, sign up for one of eBridge's online webinars.

eBridge for your iPhone? It's closer than you think.

In fact, it's here. We've been testing eBridge Solutions on various phones and hand-held devices at the request of our customers. And in most cases, the devices are able to open up TIFFs and PDFs stored in eBridge Solutions' web-based document management system.

Yes, you'll have to download a TIFF viewer specific to your device.

Yes, you'll have to zoom in real close to read your document.

No, you won't be able to scan or print using your phone... yet.

But, if you are on the road and a client calls up and asks you when their contract renews or what their final invoice amount was, you can use your mobile device to retrieve and view files. Depending on the phone, you may need to wait until you are back in the office to e-mail a copy of the invoice out, but you're still giving first-class customer service on-the-go!

Try it. Let us know what you think!

Your Documents Gone In The Blink Of An Eye!

A few months ago (well, I guess it was more like SIX months ago), I took the family to see ICE at The Gaylord Palms in Orlando. It was interesting, to say the least, and VERY, VERY, VERY cold. But, the kids loved it. I wish I could prove that to you, but one thing I didn't know about ICE before I entered is that 100 degrees below zero temperatures (or however cold it really was) will ruin images on a digital camera. My image card froze and I lost two days worth of photos.

Why do I tell you this? Imagine if you walked into your office one morning and all of your documents were gone. Everything that was there the day before has vanished. Erased from your hard drive. Missing from your file cabinets. What would you do? How would you work the rest of the day? Week? Year? How long would it take for it to be 'business as usual'?

That's one of the biggest benefits of web-based document management, specifically. With a document management system like eBridge Solutions', you actually would know how to work the rest of that terrible day. You could grab your laptop, run to the coffee shop, log into your online file cabinet and find the paperwork you need to re-start/recover your business. Now, document management will only benefit your business if you've actually started scanning and printing your documents into your file cabinet. You aren't protected if the files aren't online.

P.S. Documents are just one part of your disaster-recovery program. Don't forget your e-mails, phone systems, hardware and non-online software programs.