Do your customers spend too much time on hold? Are they waiting while your employees search for paper documents?
Most enterprises have online systems for customer relationship management, but even today, many of those systems don't include document management. This is particularly true of companies who have home-grown or customized software systems.

Is your enterprise suffering from the expense and errors caused by paper document handling? Misfiled documents, offsite storage, and just the sheer volume of paper can be a nightmare for both your employees, and your customers.
In the past, you may have looked at an online document management system with workflow, but decided it was too complicated and expensive for your needs. But now there is a new generation of software solutions available that are simpler, more affordable, and that integrate well with both packaged and custom software.

Everyone knows that paper documents are a constant headache. Paper documents are the sand in the gears of the successful enterprise. They have to be stored and retrieved by hand, they take up too much space, they get lost, misfiled, and anyone can have access to them creating massive security problems.

Document management systems let you store those paper documents in electronic form, usually as PDF. This gives you a searchable, sendable version of the document that can be stored in a secure database with the ability to automate the document processing cycle. This automation is called 'workflow'.

Workflow is a method for apply business procedures to electronic documents, to improve your service to your customers while increasing your own workforce productivity.

Typical targets for workflow automation are incoming documents and requests, such as purchase orders, accounts payable invoices, customer information requests, and collection efforts.  A document coming into a workflow system is typically assigned for initial processing based on a set of simple rules. For example, how much is the invoice for? What department is it for?

Some of the processing steps may be automated. Perhaps invoices under $1000 with a valid purchase order number are paid automatically. The document can be assigned to a person to evaluate, based on roles. The random assignment of documents can help prevent collusion or special dealing.

As each step or task in a workflow is performed, the document is routed to other person to process. If a document spends too long in a certain task status, it may be rerouted to a supervisor or special person for processing. This by itself can reduce a large source of customer complaints.

It becomes much harder for something to 'fall through the cracks' and as a result, your customers are happier.
A good workflow system can integrate with your other web, windows, or maniframe software. It may check values against your customer database, or 'screen scrape' values from your online applications.

Since documents are routed from person to person over the web, the people processing the documents have fewer delays and distractions, helping them stay on task and improving their productivity. More and more incoming documents are coming as emails and PDFs, and a workflow system can help you process these also.

While workflow used to be extremely expensive, the market has matured and software vendors are targeting the small to medium business in a way they have never done before. Web-enabled workflow systems integrate with your existing applications and are far more affordable than in the past.

You may consider either an in-house document management and workflow system, or the new Software As A Service model, where the workflow software vendor hosts your documents and you access them securely over the web, paying a set fee per month and per document page. A modern workflow system not only speeds up document processing, but it improves service to your customers and lowers your costs of servicing the customer.

There is no reason for your customers to be sitting on hold, when you can instantly retrieve and process the documents that will answer their questions.

Brad Jensen is the President of Electronic Storage Corporation, a software company in Tulsa Oklahoma that has provided packaged and custom document management and workflow systems for businesses all over the world. For more information about workflow software, or software as a service, visit http://www.laservault.com