Manufacturing Industry Groups

The fabrication processes for manufacturing companies create a series of paper documents that follow the request and delivery of services or materials from initial requisition to final delivery or fulfillment. These records have historically been recorded and stored in sales documents, contracts, purchase orders or PO s, payroll records, purchase registers, journals, vendor files, job cost folders, banking files, and cancelled check folders. Over time, these printed documents become more expensive to store and manage than they originally cost to generate.

To remain competitive, today’s manufacturing concern needs to implement document management technology that manages all transactions as electronic documents. This Paperless Office approach allows manufacturing firms to achieve a number of benefits that broadly lead to improved customer service and higher profit margins.

Scanning accounts payable paper documents into electronic format so that they can be managed as part of a paperless office system creates a streamlined work environment where…

* Wasted motion, in the form of physical movement, is virtually eliminated. No more getting up from your desk, finding the right file cabinet, then the right file drawer, then the right file folder (or worse, the wrong file folder) in order to save a transaction record or attempt retrieving one.

* Electronic documents are moved directly to the correct file, sometimes automatically, at the speed of your computer. This automated and therefore 100% accurate filing eliminates lost files and missing records. There is no physical movement just the entry of a document number and then a flick of the wrist to store the record electronically.

* Misfiling becomes a nightmare of the past. Automated filing procedures follow recorded business processes (Scripts or Programs) to insure that the document ends up where it belongs each and every time.

* No more lost files. A document can be borrowed or taken out without really taking it out. This means the record or document is always stored in the electronic folder even when someone else is reviewing it.

* Document retrieval is instantaneous. No file clerk in the middle to look for a document or record. The end user doesn't have to remember where everything is. Document retrieval is under the control of a cross linked index that can retrieve a stored document either directly or via a drill down procedure using search technology. This also means no more lost documents. No more misplaced documents or files. No more files or documents or records that someone has forgotten to return.

* Security is extremely strong. Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and other Federal security mandates are far easier to implement under the control of an electronic document storage and management system than via primitive, physical means.

* Document storage space savings are enormous. The contents of 160 full sized, 4 drawer file cabinets can be stored in less than 2 cubic feet of space. If you stood 160 file cabinets into 4 rows of 20 cabinets each back to back (40 cabinets per row) and allowed 4 feet of space all around, you would store those file cabinets in a 40 foot square room or approximately 1,600 square feet. At $2.00/sq ft per month, your monthly document storage savings would amount to $3,200. As of 2005, a single month's savings of $3,200 will pay for the disk storage of those 160 file cabinets with money left over. What you do with the other 11 months worth of savings is your choice!!