A Different Perspective on How ECM Can Impact Workplaces
I recently was part of a team tasked with working on site to observe a client’s work process to determine what improvements could be made on this clients Process /Imaging system reduce end user pain points, help eliminate unnecessary redundant actions, and ways to streamline the workflow.
I don’t want to name the client directly, but I can say that the client that we are working with is a government agency that provides direct services to its citizens, and at this time they are flooded with citizen requests for services. Some of these requests are complex and require several different workers to evaluate the requests. Also they are on strict time lines in which to process these requests.
In working with both end users and supervisors, we were able to gather enough information and devise several modifications that can be implemented on their system for an immediate and positive effect. One of the most intriguing parts of working on this project was that growing up both of my parents worked for this agency. My mother was even doing the same type of work that we were looking to help streamline, but back in the early 1980’s. I recall the difficulty that this type of work entails and the amount of time it requires to do properly. Growing up and seeing how this agency use to have to perform their normal business duties gave me what I feel is a unique perspective on how huge of an impact implementing an imaging and business workflow system had on this agency.
While I was growing up, I recall the office that my parents worked in as being filled with filing cabinets, some of these cabinets always seemed to have people filing and finding documents required for request processing. If a request made to the agency spanned several regions or required several different departments in the agency to evaluate, there was a ton of lost time in sending documents back and forth. Plus there was also the risk of misplacing or misfiling documents.
A central image repository, with a well structured indexing scheme, for documents drastically reduces the time in accessing documents and also provides a secure location for document storage. With the addition of email, requests and the accompanying documents and almost instantly be transferred between the workers required for request processing. I could go on and on about how this type of system can positively impact a business and reduce costs, but there are already volumes of documentation out there to look through.
I’ve been working with content management and business process systems for a while now, but this was the one moment that the overall impact that this type of system can have really hit home. There was also a fair bit of gratification in the overall effect that helping implement this type of system with a client that directly touches so many lives.
Random McParks
Support Engineer
ImageSource Inc.
