eBridge Solutions Blog

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.

Finally. A Document Imaging Solution For Any Budget.

Document management or document imaging doesn't have to cost a lot. When you look at the savings you can realize, a document management system like eBridge Solutions' can actually SAVE you money.

We're working on a new calculator tool at eBridge Solutions to help prospects decide whether or not our $150-a-month subscription is a justifiable expense (yes, that's right - only $150 a month for 10,000 new pages each and every month, unlimited users and a monthly back-up CD).

Here are some of the basic calculations...

Calculate total employee cost per hour
Average Hourly Wage for Admin/Filing Staff	10.00
Employee Benefit/Burden %	0.25
Total	$12.50
(cents per minute)	0.21
Calculate monthly new document cost
Number of files added each month:	1500
Time required to prepare and file each (in minutes)	2
Total	625
Calculate monthly existing file storage cost
Number of four drawer filing cabinets	39
Square footage required for a single cabinet	8
Office space lease per square foot $	1.50
Total rental cost for on-site file storage	468
Total rental cost for OFF-site file storage $
Total	468
Calculate monthly document retrieval cost
Number of people who retrieve documents	5
Average # of documents retrieved per person, per day	5
Average time to retrieve each document, in minutes	3
Average workdays per month	20
Average labor cost per minute $	0.21
Total	312.50
Calculate monthly 'lost document' cost
Average number of mis-filed documents per month	2
Average time to find a mis-filed document (in minutes)	15
Average labor cost per minute $	0.21
Total	6.25
Calculate monthly courier cost
Number of documents sent via Fed Ex or UPS daily	1
Average workdays per month	20
Average cost of UPS/Fed Ex service $	8
Total	160
Calculate monthly supply and paper cost
Cost for supplies per 500 files stored per month =$200.00. This is paper, hanging files and manila folders, bankers boxes. Ex 1000 files = 400.00	200
Total Cost Per Month	1784.25

The math won't work here, but it will on our new web site. What do you think? Do you agree with the figures? Do you think this tool will help us convert prospects into web-based document management system users? Why or why not?

Reason #8 to love document management: eliminate couriers!

eBridge Solutions' web-based document management system is the most efficient way to share documents with your customers. Reason #8 to love eBridge Solutions: Let your customers scan documents into your electronic file cabinet and eliminate couriers.

By putting your trust in eBridge, you know your important documents are in safe hands. Your customer scans in their documents that you can then pull up in your own secure electronic file cabinet. This ensures your documents won't end up in the wrong hands, they won't get lost in the mail or accidently taken from the fax machine.

Even waiting just 24 hours for an important document to be delivered can feel like an eternity, by scanning your documents directly into eBridge you no longer have that down time waiting for the courier, overnight delivery service or snail mail. Once a client scans their document into their file cabinet, it will be available to you in mere seconds.

On top of all of that, eliminating couriers with document management will save you hundreds, if not THOUSANDS, of dollars a year. For one low monthly fee with eBridge Solutions you will reduce the amount of paper products you buy, virtually eliminate all postage, photocopies, fax machine and off-site storage.

It doesn't get much better than that. Visit eBridgeSolutions.com for more information and contact a sales representative today. Say 'Bye Bye!' to your courier and 'Hello!' to savings! 

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.