Posted by Stephanie Jones on Mon, Aug 30, 2010 @ 09:27 PM
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:
- 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.
- Those cemetery maps and images may be oversized and difficult to store in paper format.
- 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.
Posted by Stephanie Jones on Fri, Mar 12, 2010 @ 06:06 PM
After a brief showing at the ICCFA Convention in San Antonio this week, funeral homes, cemeteries and crematories learned a little more about eBridge Solutions and our web-based document management.
First and foremost, I'd like to thank EVERYONE we met there. The ICCFA staff, attendees and fellow vendors were amazing! Everyone was so nice and helpful. And seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say.
Our solution will be especially helpful to cemetery owners who need to keep certain burial records permanently. That is an even bigger challenge for our Northern friends, since some of them have records dating back more than 150 years. So the tricky part is the scanning. Some of those old records disintegrate when you pick them up. In that case, each page of the ledger is actually PHOTOGRAPHED and then added to our document management system. By specialists.
It was an eye-opening event. We learned a lot and met so many wonderful people. Can't wait to become even more entrenched in our new favorite industry!