#documanagement

Shared some thoughts on #documanagement and #SMARTdoc with the #HP R&D management at their IPG R&D Centre in Boise, Idaho, last week.

Our visit to the Hewlett Packard Imaging and Printing Group, Research and Development Centre in Boise, was an exciting and enlightening experience. HP shared in all openness their vision and product roadmap for the next few years.

The product roadmap is based upon both: proven strengths and technology enhanced with a clear vision on the customers needs and the position of the IPG-product lineup in the workspace. Exciting things are coming to us the next years, e.g. HP is closing the gap between #multifunctional devices (MFP’s) and the real document scanners.

HP states that the position of printing and imaging devices in the workspace is determined by cost. What is this cost? Why do people tend to use in- and output devices? It all has to do with documents and the business process in which those documents are used or needed, the total cost of a document. Every organization whatever is always looking to cut costs. When a CEO of an SMB (Small and Medium Business) is looking into cost saving, he or she may evaluate their business processes and improve efficiency. Much easier and cost-effective is digitize the existing processes and workflows. Each organization benefits from this immediately by efficiency, process turn around time, document-logistics, printing, copying… Each document is printed or copied 9 times on average (http://bit.ly/pQLXJd ). Studies show 3 main categories, where costs still can be cut (Sources: Gartner, ARMA and AIIM): - 10% of the cost is hardware infrastructure related: the design of the printing and imaging environment, the cost-effectiveness and reliability of the total infrastructure and paper handling. So changing your infrastructure strategy influences 10% only, saving capability. - 15% of the total cost that could be cut, is related to the management of the infrastructure: who can print, copy what, when, the use of consumables. Increasing productivity, by using and interpreting total print management tools, can make up to 15% savings. - 75% of the savings are workflow and business process related.  After you scanned a document or before you even consider reprinting a document, the tools you use -in automation or electronic document management (EDM)- are far out the most important to make money on.

And this is where SMARTdoc comes in: SMARTdoc is all about documanagement and workflow.

A tool like SMARTdoc, recognizes documents, fetches information and indexes out of these documents in a fully automated way. 
Based upon this recognition and the information fetched out of the documents; SMARTdoc can initiate workflows and processes the documents as well as the information related to them towards a whatever ERP, CRM or CMS platform you use. Instead of Electronic Document Management, at SMARTdoc we talk about “documanagement”: it’s all about documenting your core-business by storing, securing, distributing, disclosing and publishing the link between your documents and the information.
 Let’s go through it: -  the link between the information and the documents where the information comes from, or is described in, or based upon is important. - it’s clear you have to store it somewhere, preferably where you can back it up etc… take care about it as good father. -  of course you have to secure it! Not everyone is entitled to have access, to be able to read, print all information, make new versions from documents… security by groups of users, roles… -  distributing: some information, documents should be reviewed, read, known by everyone. -  disclosing certain documents, information and more specific the link between them is part of an information-document-workflow. -  publishing is purely communicating. But again, this becomes more meaningful when you publish the link between information and documents, their content -restructured or not- and the original form.