- Does the solution have both on-premise and cloud options?
- Is there functional transparency across both the on-premise and cloud versions? (i.e., from a user perspective, do they work the same way!)
- Are there “preconfigured” business applications like employee onboarding and invoice processing to get you started?
- Is the solution easy to deploy? Really easy?
- Can you buy applications “by the drink,” or do you have to buy an entire monolithic platform?
- Does the solution work across applications? (i.e., is the content in one application available to other applications that might need it?)
I promised I would talk a bit more in my next post about these questions and how they relate to our new preconfigured, cloud-based solutions for Invoice Processing.
DocuWare Preconfigured Cloud-Based Solutions Solve Business Process Automation Challenges
One of the reasons we are so excited about DocuWare Preconfigured Cloud-Based Solutions is that they focus on a core problem that has confounded many users in the document management space for decades. And that is a problem inherent in ALL of my six content services questions – document management has frankly been too difficult for too long for too many organizations.
At DocuWare, we’ve always taken great pride in our efforts to buck this trend. This work is reflected in our “Best Ease of Use” Award this year from the independent crowd-sourced software review site Capterra. Take a look at what customers have to say; one of my favorite quotes is “Easy to implement and use. We were up and running in a very reasonable time frame.”
DocuWare preconfigured, cloud-based solutions take this commitment another step further to make implementation even easier. According to industry association AIIM, organizations want to modernize their information management infrastructure through solutions that are cloud-friendly, easy to implement, and can deliver the specific content management capabilities needed to solve a particular problem.
DocuWare preconfigured, cloud-based solutions replace manual, paper-based and error-prone workflow with fast, adaptable and automated processes that are designed from our expertise launching thousands of successful digitization projects. The Solutions can be implemented in just days, empowering you to digitize and automate central business processes such as invoice processing and employee management. These solutions are designed for the many organizations that previously thought, “Nice, but maybe not now” when it comes to document management.
All preconfigured, cloud-based solutions are architected to address each of the above six core questions you should be asking about content services. I want to focus on the third question – and help you understand how preconfigured process capabilities built on an extendable content infrastructure (i.e., content services!) are actually a better strategy than an off-the-shelf single process SaaS solution.
The first two solutions in the preconfigured, cloud-based solutions portfolio focus on business problems facing every organization: employee management and invoice processing. After working for years with HR and finance executives, based on that experience we designed these solutions in a cloud-based preconfigured package that is fast to deploy and fast to deliver value. As you think about a content services approach to employee management and invoice processing, here are some of the core business issues you need to make absolutely sure you address:
|
Employee management |
Invoice processing |
|---|---|
|
Recruiting and Hiring – Can you automatically handle the creation and routing of all the information involved in finding, selecting, hiring and onboarding employees – and do this securely? |
Information Capture – Can you capture incoming invoices from any device or source and extract key process data to drive automatic workflows – and then securely archive all of this information? |
|
Centralized Employee Records – Can you organize and store all employee records in a multi-tiered folder structure that differentiates access rights among HR, managers and employees — providing audit-readiness and compliance with EEOC, HIPAA, PII, GDPR and other regulatory requirements. |
Automated Processing – Can you automatically identify a valid vendor, extract and validate invoice information, and automatically route it? |
|
Performance Reviews – Are you monitoring each employee's performance, providing early assessments and conducting annual interviews in a structured manner, and how are you managing, controlling, and securing all of the documents associated with these key tasks? |
Exception handling – Can you receive instant notifications for invoices that cannot be automatically approved or routed and then automate the information flow to address these exceptions? |
|
Employee Separation – How can you ensure that nothing is missed and the exit process is completed accurately – and legally? |
System Integration – Can you easily integrate invoice workflows right into your financial application like QuickBooks, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP Business One or whatever your team uses? |
In the short-term using a single process SaaS solution to solve some of the above problems can look attractive to a business executive frustrated by waiting in a long IT development queue. But I am convinced that this single-process SaaS answer – which will further exacerbate the information silo problem that vexes many organizations – is not the right strategy.
The right strategy is an integrated content services strategy, delivered through a series of modular and configurable process applications. There is no better place to start on this journey than with DocuWare preconfigured, cloud-based solutions.
