eBridge Solutions Blog

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.

Five departments that can benefit from document management

Though the number of documents people only see in electronic format is growing, it doesn’t look like the world will be able to go completely without paper any time soon.  That is why it is important to plan out a strategy for managing your paper and electronic documents simultaneously. While every department can benefit from electronic document management tools, there are some departments that might appreciate it more.

Accounting: Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable, Tax and General Accounting teams will appreciate that invoices (paper or electronic), copies of checks and tax returns can all be stored in a secure, organized manner online. By having separate online cabinets or using customized index values, documents from different areas can be restricted from non-assigned employees.

Better yet, most document management systems can be integrated with accounting software packages to put copies of paper records with your customer detail. Easily manage documents like:

• Sales and Purchase Invoices
• Copies of cash receipts and payments
• Purchase and Sales Registers
• Cash and Bank Books

Human Resources: Mountains of paperwork continues to live in a HR professionals world. Resumes, benefit applications and W-2s are just a few of the documents human resource departments are required to keep for specific periods of time (lengths vary by document type, state and industry). By storing these documents in a searchable, organized fashion (think last name, first name, department, hire date and more) and making them simultaneously accessible, staff can bear more efficient than ever.

In addition, paper copies of personnel records no longer need to be stored on or off-site for a certain number of years. Once scanned, documents are considered legal originals according to The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA), as long as the date and time they were scanned is captured and the owner can prove that the document hasn’t been altered. Document management systems have audit trails that record the date and time and show who has accessed the document and from what location.

Sales and Marketing: While sales and marketing typically aren’t labeled as paper-generating departments, they do have information and correspondence worth documenting. It is important to have the final, signed version of a contract on hand should a legal dispute arise. Likewise, e-mail correspondence where the buyer/seller communication can be documented can be helpful if a customer claims a salesperson did or didn’t tell them about a feature or function (or lack thereof).

Can’t find the perfect graphic designer in Cape Coral, Florida? Hire one from London. Using online document management, marketing teams are able to bring in resources from around the world, since documents can be accessed from any computer with Internet connection – making collaboration easier.

Customer Service:  To better serve clients, put invoices, product information and contracts online so front-line employees can answer questions while the customer is still on the phone. And for added service, e-mail copies of those documents in a few keystrokes.

The call center manager for an online etailer is convinced that their document management system increases productivity and reduces its paper management costs significantly. “Instead of hunting for paper in one of twelve filing cabinets in response to vendor and customer inquiries, my staff can now pull up any document relating to that customer or vendor to resolve problems and inquiries, even viewing multiple documents on-screen at once if required,” she said.

Legal: Businesses must deal with a variety of legal documents such as government-related documents, franchise tax renewals, license renewal and reports of the company’s annual meetings. There are also legal documents relating to purchasing, leasing or renting of assets, processes of litigation and bankruptcy filing.  And usually there are multiple versions of those documents.  By storing them in a document management system, it is simple to see which version is the most recent and it’s easy to search for the right document with index values or keywords.

While all departments can benefit from better organization and fewer files lying around, some seem to have more documents to deal with than others. If these departments spend time and energy putting paper and electronic documents together in structured system, the company will definitely see a boost to the bottom line from time, money and space savings.

Five mistakes you can avoid with web-based document management

Everyone is talking about document management these days. And while you may know that it is a way to store paper and electronic documents together, you might not have considered how document management – especially web-based like eBridge Solutions' – can make your day-to-day tasks easier.

Let’s look at five mistakes you can be sure to avoid if you add an online document management system to your technology toolbox.

1. Losing a document that can be re-created. Have you ever lost an electronic document that was on your computer? Whether it became corrupt or I accidentally saved over it, I’ve lost a file or two – and usually at a critical time. By storing documents in a web-based document management system, you’re eliminating the risk of human error or computer failure. Any paper document that you scan into the system is captured permanently, so even if your computer hard drive fails, you’ll be able to access your records.

2. Losing a document that cannot be re-created. This is bad. Especially if that document you need is needed for a lawsuit or to meet industry record retention guidelines. If your company gets into a lawsuit, there’s a good chance that there will be some kind of discovery process, where you will be asked to produce all relevant documents relating to the issues in question. In recent years, courts have allowed plaintiffs to make major demands on companies with so-called “fishing expeditions.” And it’s not just Fortune 100 companies that have this problem.

It’s extremely important that corporate documents be readily and speedily retrievable. That’s a good reason why all your paper documents should be in electronic form and in searchable format, whether searchable PDF or TIF. The way to do this is by setting up procedures for identifying important documents and converting them into searchable electronic format, using scanners and software like eBridge Solutions’ web-based document management system, which will help you convert, identify and save the documents.

3. Misfiling a document. There is nothing more frustrating than filing a document in the wrong file folder. Especially when a customer is on the phone asking you a question about their contract, but you can’t find it. Anywhere. With a document management system, you should be able to do a keyword search of every typewritten document in your online file cabinet, so even if you accidentally mis-label a document, you can still find it. (And best of all, correct the mis-label.)

“I am so much more organized than ever before. If I am looking for something all I have to do is type it in and there it is. It’s so much easier than searching through file cabinets or on my co-workers desks for the files I need,” explained Angie Lehmann, accounting specialist at BTD Manufacturing, who began using eBridge Solutions in 2007.

4. Not having the most recent copy of a document. Sometimes, just one word makes all the difference in the world. You want to be sure you have the final version of a contract or sales agreement in your possession. Document management systems should use audit trails with date and time stamping to show when a document was added and by whom. So, you can always tell which version was the final document.

5. Unauthorized access to confidential records. For example, if you are a human resource professional and you have salary information stored in file cabinets in your office, there is the possibility that someone could break into them (or just pull the drawer open, if you don’t lock your cabinets at all times) and see how much Susie in Accounting is making. Or, if you work in a medical office and you store confidential information about your patients (social security number, birth date and credit card number), a disgruntled employee could have a field day with what they find in your chart room. With document management, you can restrict what documents users can and cannot see in your electronic file cabinet.

Not only can it help your business save you time, money and space, but an online document management system can help your employees avoid making mistakes – some costlier than others – in the office.

If you haven't seen eBridge Solutions' document management system in action, sign up for one of our online webinars or watch our online video.

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!

Reason 4: Document management makes it easy to bring your work home

Here I sit. 10 p.m. on a Thursday night. I'm watching the news (so depressing) and working. One of the reasons that I can work late is that all of my marketing documents (trade show applications, proofs of new collateral and more) have been scanned into our web-based document management system.

So, if I need to fill out paperwork or update the web site, it's easy to refer back to the original document I had to hand write.

If you work in a paper-intensive environment like the legal, real estate or collections industry, eBridge Solutions is the perfect way to bring your work home with you. In a few seconds, you can perform a search using the index values you set up OR by keyword.

I think about real estate agents a lot when it comes to this reason in our list of 52 reasons to love eBridge. Realtors often get calls before or after regular business hours. Rather than having to drive into the office, they can pull up client contracts or appraisals in eBridge and then email them off. Better customer service. Nothing added to their to-do list.

If you haven't seen what eBridge Solutions can do for your business, take a 4-minute tour here. Even if you're at home...

Top two reasons organizations seek out document management

A recent survey by The Association for Work Process Improvement (TAWPI)found that businesses add a document management system primarily for one of two reasons:

- Improved customer service
- Reduced operating expenses

We've been talking about time and money savings at eBridge Solutions forever, but it is nice to see that these truly are the biggest benefits of document management. At least among the 888 people who took this survey.

And, in the last two interviews we've done for case studies, both companies cited that giving their customer service representatives the ability to pull up client or patient files INSTANTLY while on the phone was their favorite feature of eBridge Solutions. If you can answer a question while the customer is on the phone, you're saving time (no walking to the file cabinet, pulling their file and calling them back) money (two minute call instead of two hour adventure in the file room) AND you're making your customer extremely satisfied -- depending on why they are calling, of course.

TAWPI is a professional membership association dedicated to providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities for practitioners, technology and service providers in payments automation, distributed capture, and imaging & forms processing.