Author: i27 Solutions

Document management software (DMS) and enterprise content management (ECM) systems are extremely beneficial to businesses big or small. Being able to find, share, collaborate, archive or protect your organization’s documents is a huge benefit.

However, one area where businesses can benefit greatly from these systems is the ability to optimize the management of business processes and workflows.

Automating workflows and making information easily accessible to employees should among every businesses list of top priorities. Productivity improvements by leveraging workflow automation via an ECM (Enterprise Content Management) system means that employees follow a set process and that these processes are executed in more seamless, efficient way.Implementing an effective workflow system in place enables you to:

1. Assign and track assignments that have been made to employees
2. Receive notifications of any edits or modifications made
3. Make sure that important documents have the necessary approvals and signoffs required

Streamlining Business Process Management with M-Files

With the M-Files workflow engine, routine company tasks can be automated and assignments for company tasks can be assigned to the parties responsible – without any programming.

When a task is assigned, the person responsible receives notifications pertaining that task. Documents can have multiple people assigned, and conversely, an assignment can be tied to several documents.

Within M-Files workflows the state of a document (“draft,” “waiting for approval,” “approved”) as well as approvals can easily be defined by an administrator. Managers can then monitor progress made or approve any completed tasks.

M-Files can be configured for reviewing purchase orders, contract approvals, processing leave applications and a host of other use cases that need to be reviewed, edited or approved by several parties within an organization, and it keeps a full audit trail for the different use cases your organization needs.

Use Case Example: Invoice Processing

Invoice processing with M-Files is made so much easier. Invoice processing workflows in M-Files have various state options: “received,” “waiting for approval,” “approved,” “rejected,” and “paid in full”. These can be configured to your invoices, and you can also define who within your organization gets to change documents in and out of a certain state.

For instance, you can configure it so that only the managing director of an organization can approve an invoice, and only the finance manager can confirm if an invoice has been settled fully by setting the “paid in full” state option.

M-Files has additional properties such as “assigned to,” “assignment description,” “monitored by,” “deadline,” and “task completed”, but can just as easily be configured to suit the needs of your organization.

Anyone who is part of the processing chain receives an email during stages of the process that they are needed.

Looking for or viewing the invoices is just as easy within M-Files. Through invoice metadata, you can sort out invoices by the customer, by the date, by the state (i.e., approved, waiting for approval) or any other piece of information that defines that particular invoice.

Business Process Management for Non-Document Objects

Business processes do not always have to be centred around documents. M-Files workflow capabilities are also good for other areas such as projects, equipment/inventory management, maintenance tasks, etc.

For project management, a project can be restricted from moving to the next phase if a certain task is still incomplete. Member roles in a project can be defined, and tasks can also be assigned as part of a workflow with a deadline for each phase.

Mobile Workflow Management

Making use of M-Files workflow features can have a huge impact on how your organization’s assets and processes are managed. However, the M-Files mobile app delivers an even greater ROI from your enterprise content management (ECM) system. According to Gartner, in 2018, more than 50% of employees will be on mobile (tablets or smartphone).

M-Files thus provides a unique opportunity to have timely approvals within the organization for employees who are on the go.

The good news is that M-Files has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows Phones. This will let employees quickly approve documents, sign off on completed or pending tasks… All while using their mobile phones!

Picture the years passed… Picture that enormous filing cabinet in almost every corner of every office. Then came a shift and we began storing our data on physical floppy disks, diskettes, CDs, USBs, hard drives and lots of other storage devices. These devices were a huge step in the right direction. Unfortunately, they were limited in memory, some were not portable, and were prone to damage/destruction.

However, those days are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Many companies in Kenya and the world over are leveraging Enterprise Information Management software. This has translated into numerous benefits

Improved Productivity

This is by far the most beneficial reason for switching to an enterprise information management system: A dramatic increase in productivity.

For instance, when an employee needs to access a document, enterprise information management system lets them do this automatically and at any time. Searching from a the M-Files mobile phone app or a computer makes finding the document in question easy, and allows the employee to edit, share, collaborate or download the document in question.

Contrast this to a physical document that is stored in a location that is not immediately accessible. If lucky, the employee will need to find someone to sort through other documents to get them the document they need, and then email them.

This wait is not favourable if the document is needed urgently, and could be costly to your business.

Risk Reduction

Storing business critical documents in a single location increases your organization’s risk of losing everything through a number of factors such as natural disasters, fires, accidental deletion or misplacement.

For your business to thrive, document management needs to be the number 1 priority. The redundancy offered by an enterprise document management system means that the document is stored in different locations (remote servers) at the same time.

This exponentially reduces the risk posed by losing your company’s most valuable information, and improves your efficiency because the documents you need are where you need them, whenever you need them.

I27 Solutions is a leading IT services company in Kenya that is leading the paperless revolution. We upgrade your business, helping you be more efficient, more productive and save money.

For more information on the business services we offer, please contact us.

Your business has finally decided to go paperless. From today, all your records will be stored electronically thus doing away with all those unsightly file cabinets at the corner of the room.

But what will you do with all your paper records? Scan them! But should you do this work yourself?

Here are five reasons you should turn to a professional document scanning service to digitize your organization’s documents.

#1: Frees up your employees to work on other tasks

Having one of your employees set aside time to scan a batch of documents means that they have to set aside time to scan & categorize these documents.

Work that could have otherwise been done as opposed to this gets pushed down the list of things, and your employees have to spend time dealing with scanners.

Hiring our document scanning services means all your employees can stay on task, but the difference is that all your records will still get scanned, professionally.

#2: You Don’t Have To Invest in The Technology

Scanning documents when you own a bulk document scanner means that you can get the work done easily. What if you don’t have this technology? Most companies do not invest in the best bulk document scanners because they are not used regularly and are therefore a huge expense.

If you want to save on these costs while always having state-of-the-art bulk document scanners at your disposal, hire the services of a professional. I27 Solutions owns the best scanners on the market today.

If you want to save on costs while still getting bang for your buck, then let the document scanning professionals handle it.

#3: The job gets done quickly & hassle free

When digitizing hundreds of your old documents, you want a quick, hassle free experience. That’s the reason you should hire a professional who specializes in document scanning, and can get the job done in no time.

At i27, document scanning is our specialty. We offer quick bulk document scanning & digitization of your organization’s old records and deliver this to you in record time. No muss no fuss.

#4: Cost benefits to your business

Professional, high quality document scanning services save you money, time and effort. Compare the time it would take your business to do the work in-house (more so if you have to acquire all the scanners yourself) as opposed to letting professionals handle your document scanning.

The results are clear. Most businesses are better off hiring the services of a company that offers professional document scanning services.

#5: Quality Guarantee

I27 Solutions has years of experience and a strong client base. Because of this, we can ensure that any services that we provide for your business provide are professional, easy to use, reliable and affordable.

We stand by the services we offer and guarantee a hassle free experience.

These are some of the reasons your business should consider professional document scanning services. For more benefits, check out our Bulk Document Scanning services, or get in touch with us today.

M-Files is soon to release a new revolutionary way to manage your documents and information which reside in different silos. Learn more about the new features being release below:-

Repository Neutral?
What if it didn’t matter where content is stored, and you could use just one platform to access different information silos? Access Dropbox, Network Folders, Google Drive, One Drive and a Lot More via One Platform.

Artificial Intelligence
Imagine having metadata suggestions to ease adding content into the document vault. Adding content into M-Files becomes faster, more accurate and easier.

Expose Content To M-Files Features
Be able to utilise powerful product features of M-Files on your external content, such as workflows, permissions, notifications, version management, dynamic views, contextual tree views, offline availability, e-signing and much more!

Get In Touch for a Demo on This Revolutionary New Approach to Managing Your Content or learn more by watching this video:

Email sales@i27solutions.com or call us on 0702 272727 – we look forward to upgrading your business.

Small businesses and big businesses today process a huge amount of data in their day to day operations. From customer files to partner and supplier documents. Without an effective document management solution, business owners stand to lose a lot of valuable time looking for documents, which is often made worse by multiple versions of the same file, which can lead to numerous errors and duplication of work.

When it comes to managing such a vast amount of data, businesses cannot cope without an effective solution that makes it easy to search, share and keep vital information safe.

In addition to the sheer number of these files, they are stored across different applications, network folders and devices. Despite the number of “best” Information management solutions out on the market today, their limitations prevent them from being able to fix this issue on an organization-wide scale.

The ability to effectively centralize, manage and harness an organizations data at any time, from any where is essential to any businesses operations and success.

The Information Management Challenge

Businesses need to adopt processes that ensure consistency across the entire organization.

Additionally, it is important to enable your employees to work effectively by making it easy to find the exact content they need, regardless of whether it resides in the CRM, ERP or whichever other business application your business uses. This leads to  better decisions, faster results and improved collaboration.

Focus then shifts from finding information, to making use of this information to drive growth, value and innovation.

This article will show you how various business departments can leverage the power of M-Files enterprise information management (EIM) solution to help employees work better with their information and facilitate growth.

Finance: Automate Billing Processes

Finance is at the heart of  a business’s day-to-day operations. Ensuring accounts are billed properly and i n timely fashion is key to business success.

Businesses can benefit greatly by automating tasks such as invoice processing workflows and accounts payable. Automation eliminates the time needed to manually do the work, but eliminates errors which could be costly to an organization

Businesses can as a result do more with less and maximize on existing resources. Several businesses have reported reducing invoice processing times and the better process tracking.

HR: Streamline Hiring Practices and Collaboration

For the human resource department, managing employee records is simplified and made more secure by implementing an EIM.

An Enterprise Information Management also provides a centralized platform for managing all your vital documents from recruitment, training, onboarding, and performance management documentation.

Without a centralized system in place, tracking employee documents and completing employee paperwork can be both a time consuming and error prone process.

With the use of an Enterprise Information Management, HR staff can process documents faster, while optimizing optimizing the hiring process and fostering employee collaboration.

HR staff can also quickly access their data while still keeping it in a secure central platform that has a versioning system that keeps track of any changes to the document via timestamps.

HR staff can also automate repetitive jobs such as sending payslips, and streamlines HR tasks to improve the organization’s efficiency.

Legal: Simplify Contract Management

Managing contracts can be daunting especially considering all the different partners.

Today, some businesses use end-to-end business systems such as SAP, while others use Excel spreadsheets. Regardless of this, the benefit of using an Enterprise Information Management to simplify, automate and manage your contracts is undeniable

The M-Files architecture allows businesses to customize it to build a system that works for them, while solving the challenge of information sharing in most organizations (especially global companies with different offices and locations)

Employees can have access to instant to up-to-date versions of documents securely, and collaboration between clients and the business is made easier.

Security of this data is also guaranteed, with employees only having access to information that has been assigned to them

Customer Service: Optimize Accuracy and Response Times

Automating your businesses processes front and back-end through Enterprise Information Management significantly improves your customer’s experience.

When employees have quick access to the right customer’s information, issues can be resolved quickly, ensuring happy customers.

For banks for instance, document management automation through an Enterprise Information Management can mean the loan approval process does need to be manual. This helps avoid long loan approval cycles.

With M-Files, bank employees can have quick access to a loan applicant’s information which then means faster loan processing and quicker response to customer queries.

How to Get Started With Enterprise Information Management

Some of the “best” solutions in the market today are limited in scope. Only Enterprise Information Management has the ability to provide a centralized platform that spans across all business departments and benefits your whole organization.

M-Files gives you quick and easy access to all your information from any business software and from any device be it desktop or mobile.

Because of this, our Enterprise Information Management (M-Files) has high user adoption, meaning greater ROI for your business.

With flexible on-premises, cloud and hybrid deployment options, M-Files gives the user more power and reduces the demands on IT staff. Our Enterprise Information Management solution (M-Files) is used the world over by thousands of organizations because it supports information management and quicker workflow automation needs that are key to ensuring higher quality and business growth.

With increased ability to handle vast amounts of data, M-Files can help your business realize efficiency across departments ranging from but not limited to HR, accounting, customer  service, legal and customer service, improving processing speed and overall customer satisfaction.

To learn more about what our M-Files Enterprise Information Management can do for your business, please get in touch with us.

Having a Contract Management Solution helps your business in several ways:

• Ensure you receive or deliver what you agreed
• Mitigate risk
  • Missed termination / renewal terms
  • Missed obligations agreed in contracts
  • Committing to unfavorable terms due to contract inconsistencies
  • Regulatory compliance risk (access rights, security, traceability)
  • Optimize your agreements over time with insight in contract performance

Doing it with traditional tools leads to challenges in 4 areas:

• Visibility – We don’t know where all our contracts are, and we don’t know exactly what we agreed
• Processing – Pre-signing hassles or missing milestones such as a termination date
• Control – We dont know what we agreed exactly, we don’t know if we got or did what we agreed
• Usability – Our tools suck, I can’t even review / approve a contract with my phone or quickly compare two contract versions

M-Files redefines how to manage you contracts

M-Files essentially redefines how the customer can manage their contracts by:

1. Easy accessible – Any device, any location, any time… even offline
2. Discoverable – Manage contracts by any attribute
3. Find Instantly – Google-like searching power
4. Secure – Automatically maintained access rights
5. Instantly familiar – Works just like Windows
6. Integrated with back office – To ensure compliance and optimization
7. Supports the full contract life-cycle – From draft to record
8. Flexibly deployable – On premise, in the cloud and hybrid

M-Files offers control of each contract from start to end

Finally, M-Files also gives more control over the contract management process: Consistency of our contracts, Ensure the right people have access all the time, Ensures we comply with our contracts by integrating with our back-office systems, Ensures we fulfill our obligations, keeps us informed on important milestones and reminds us about them and it also ensures we comply with any regulatory demands by tracking everything and by automating the retention of contracts according to the right schedules.

Contracts are part of every business. They are core to every department/level of a business and are key to the day-to-day business operations.

Unfortunately, few businesses manage contracts the right way.

Often, contracts are stored in both electronic and paper formats. Moreover, these contracts are sometimes tied to several departments like Accounting, Purchasing, Sales and Legal. As a result, everyone from each of these departments stores a copy of their own resulting in mismatches, and version-creep.

With such a setup, many businesses have problems following up and meeting timelines, monitoring terms and conditions and a whole lot of less than desirable outcomes. These challenges have led many organizations to look to software solutions to automate and simplify their contract process.

Are you in need of contract management? Here are a few questions you may need to answer

Do you have difficulties finding contracts?

Many businesses still store contracts in paper form and track key milestones through spreadsheet documents. But how can you find all contracts set to expire in December? Or every contract with a certain company for the last 5 years?

M-Files gives a priority to WHAT files are stored where, rather than WHERE these files are. This is because with M-Files, your documents are already easy to find.

What does your contract workflow routing look like?

Is your response to this have printers and email somewhere in there? You should definitely consider using a contract management solution. Through the workflow, papers get lost/misplaced, emails go unseen or ignored… cue the anarchy.

With a solution such as M-Files, the contract review and approval process is automated. This way, there is greater accuracy and efficiency in terms of managing of contracts, making sure the contacts are reviewed and approved by the right people and in setting and meeting milestones.

Can you easily view and accurately report on your contract information?

Is your answer “no”? Not to worry. You aren’t too different from other organizations.

Many businesses have their disjointed data – Emails, paperwork, ERP data, and the not-so-reliable “mental note”.

M-Files directly addresses this issue because the information which is contained in different systems can be accessed easily in an easy to understand and report format, without having to worry about file duplication or version creep

M-Files contract management is an out-of-box solution that allows you to control risk and automate your organization’s contract management.

Are these issues your business is dealing with? Are you interested in learning more about how you can automate your businesses contract management? Get in touch for a free consultation.