Archives for the 'Document Scanning' Category
Document Management in the NHS
With the large volumes of documentation that the NHS handles on a daily basis, a document management system which offers the ability to organise this is going to be of great importance. As part of this process, the benefits that individual NHS Trusts can accrue from a programme of document scanning and indexing can also be immense, both in terms of time saving and efficiency.
These benefits were some of the points that Preview looked to highlight in their “Document Management Healthcheck” presentation at the ASSIST event (Association of Informatics Professionals in Health and Social Care) this month. It also gave the opportunity to highlight some of the work that Preview has been carrying out at a number of NHS Trusts such as Leeds Mental Health.
The issues that many of the Trusts are experiencing tend to fall into 3 main categories which primarily revolve around the issue of accessibility of the records they require on a day to day basis. These issues are often compounded by the fact that the Trusts run several different sites across their region with documents produced and stored locally but needed to be accessed by all of them.
The issues most commonly highlighted are:
i) The ability to both locate the information quickly coupled and access it as easily as possible. Due to multiple sites involved, this could often result in a time consuming search for specific documents.
ii) With document being in constant demand, real ease of access also required that more than one person should be able to work with the documents at a time, something that was certainly problematic with paper documents.
iii) The need to store a constantly increasing mountain of files and documents was putting more and more pressure on space which was already at a premium. More filing cabinets and archive boxes would only compound this further.
In each of these cases, the digitisation of the documents by scanning and indexing them, would effectively deal with these issues at one fell swoop giving instant access to the information to all authorised personnel across the region, not to mention freeing up some badly needed space.
But what happens if you need a document while they are all being scanned and indexed? No longer are they sitting in one of the filing cabinets waiting to be found, they’re in Preview’s facilities in London! No problem – with Preview’s Scan on Demand service coming to the rescue, any document required can be processed and put online to be viewed easily and quickly.
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Document Scanning Triggers: Customer Service
In the eyes of most customers - and let’s face it we are all customers either as individuals or as businesses - the key requirements of good customer service means getting our questions answered and our problems solved quickly and efficiently. Most of the time, this happens over the phone and could involve us trying to solve an invoicing issue, following up on a general enquiry or simply requesting extra information on a product.
Somehow, no matter how entertaining the “holding music” is, being put on hold for minutes at a time while someone finds the information they need to give us our answers does not deliver the customer service level we expect in today’s electronic world. Yet we are faced with this situation time and time again. Often, this is a result of an organisation keeping their records in paper format – even a small organisation cannot hope to have all their paper files immediately to hand, particularly when even the best paper indexing system will still leave gaps.
So what’s the alternative? Well, with all of your company’s paper documentation stored electronically, you change the playing field entirely. There is no longer any time delay in finding the information that you need to respond to your customers’ queries - instead, by accessing their files or documents with the information they are looking for, you’ll be able to respond immediately. And with paper documents available online, alongside email correspondence, you have all the relevant information at your fingertips.
In fact, having this information available allows you to take it one step further, giving you the opportunity to focus much more clearly on the real reason for their question and take a more proactive approach. While at the same time, by being able to answer your customers’ service enquiries more quickly, you can also reduce the costs associated with, saving you money at the same time. A real WIN - WIN situation
So next time you are listening to “Green Sleaves” wondering when the person on the other end of the phone will return with the documents they need, make a mental note to get those key customer documents scanned and indexed and watch your customer service ratings soar.
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Loyalty brings success at Waterstone’s
Loyalty cards have become part and parcel of everyday life and are an increasingly important tool for businesses looking to reward customers who remain loyal to their brand. However, for the system to run smoothly, there is a great deal of work going on behind the scenes from the moment the customer completes the application form to when they use their reward points and the savings they bring.
After careful planning, Waterstone’s launched their own loyalty card, The Waterstone’s Card, in September 2007 giving their customers the chance to earn points every time they purchased books in their stores or online. The scheme also gave the cardholders the opportunity to take advantage of unique special offers, receive email newsletters and enter exclusive competitions.
To process all of the application forms being returned from their stores, Waterstone’s needed a partner able to manage this key part of the operation. The company would need the resources in place to receive and scan the incoming loyalty card forms before securely sending on the details. They consulted Careline Services, one of their trusted suppliers, who in turn was able to recommended Preview as the ideal partner to fulfil this role and a company they already enjoyed a successful working relationship with. Having some of the most comprehensive systems in the UK, Preview was well able to handle the requirements.
The national loyalty scheme is across 330 Waterstone’s stores in the UK and Europe, and on Waterstones.com. Customers were asked to fill out an application form, and these forms were then batched up at the end of each day and sent via Royal Mail directly to Preview from each individual store. Sending the forms straight to Preview meant that the process was significantly speeded up and allowed the customers’ details to be registered on the database as quickly as possible.
Upon arrival, the forms were verified and prepared for scanning. Once scanned, these images were forwarded to the CRM database where key information from the forms including name and address and email address were recorded. This all ensured that when their card was used in store, the points were added correctly, Waterstone’s knew which customer was shopping and could therefore track their behaviour, segmenting them into specific customer groups ensuring any communication to them is relevant.
The Waterstone’s Card has proven to be an overwhelming success and, as of the middle of August 2008 1,701,446 card forms have been scanned and the pace shows no sign of slowing which is good news for Waterstone’s and great news for the thousands of new cardholders joining the programme every week.
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Document scanning: PRODS will show you the way
Technology that we use on a day to day basis both at work and home is in a constant state of change. At home, having the latest and greatest (or at least a recent version) is often more a case of keeping up with the Joneses than anything else. However, in the business world, sticking to methods which have been superseded simply because they are “how we have always done it” offers your competitors the chance to gain a real advantage and can be tantamount to commercial suicide.
One such area is that of business documentation used within the company or as part of the interactions with suppliers and clients. In this area, paper documents have always been considered the safe option, but this is no longer enough. In today’s business environment, retaining information purely in paper format means that it can no longer benefit your company – indeed, it is undoubtedly now holding you back.
However, making sure that your information is available in electronic format is relatively easy to achieve, simply by ensuring that all relevant documents are consistently scanned and indexed. If you are unsure why this is important for your organisation, then just remember PRODS:
Protect
Scanning your documentation ensures that the information it contains is safe and secure. While paper can be inherently difficult to store securely while still making it accessible, digitally stored information allows you to maintain tight security as required while offering pre-determined levels of access to those needing it. Just as critically, by keeping backup copies off site, your data (and hence your business) remains safe and secure, giving you complete security and peace of mind in terms of disaster recovery.
Reference
Information is there to be used and referred to, so it’s important to make sure that wherever it is stored, it can referenced quickly and easily. By capturing the data once through a programme of document scanning, you then have the ability to refer to it and use it many times over in the different ways your business requires.
Organise
Information tends to be accumulated at an alarming rate in organisations of all sizes, so making sure that it is carefully organised and easy to locate when required is essential. Managing this process using filing cabinets and storage boxes is difficult at the best of times and finding information can be a nightmare, particularly if it is stored across multiple locations. With scanned documents, information can be indexed and organised for quick and easy location and access – in addition, you are not restricted to a single person using it at a time, instead many people can have access whenever required.
Distribute
Getting the right information and the right documents to the right people when they require it is difficult even when they are all located in the same office. Add numerous people across multiple offices who need to receive the information and the job becomes a logistics nightmare. With scanned documents, the task becomes as simple as attaching a document to an email and sending it to the relevant people – for non confidential information only of course. Alternatively, an online repository provides the secure access, while email or RSS delivers the means of letting the right people know where to find it.
Share
There is also the need to share information, whether this is related to an individual project or we are talking about a department or company wide programme. Having the ability to share the information between all relevant parties gives you a level of interactivity which means the information can be used even more effectively and the company can benefit from people sharing ideas and information quickly and efficiently.
The next time you are looking for a document or trying to access information that you don’t have available, give yourself a couple of PRODS and see if you could also benefit from having the information you need at your fingertips.
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We’d like to hear your Views!
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We have been running this Document Scanning blog for a while now and have primarily been using it to share information on what Preview Services has been doing, giving details on some of the solutions that we have been involved in with our customers as well as more general posts about some of the benefits that can be gained from document scanning.
What we would like to know is what you would like to read and see more of? Are you interested in ideas and advice on where document management could be of benefit to you and your company or how other companies have been using some of the solutions that we work with? Would more industry news be of interest or perhaps something totally different?
We’d appreciate your feedback, so please click here to use the comments box below and hopefully we will be able to incorporate your ideas here in the future.
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Document Scanning Triggers: an SED moment
Have you ever been sitting at your PC when an anguished howl from somewhere in the building floats through air followed by a light sobbing which you later discover was some poor soul whose computer had crashed before he had been able to back up the file?
That’s what I call an SED moment – a Somebody Else’s Disaster moment. It’s the time when you silently thank your lucky stars that it wasn’t you and vow to immediately (and always) make a backup of your files … though this would of course have been two minutes too late if you had just suffered his misfortune. I guess an equivalent from the news this week would be government officials once again giving a collective sigh of relief that they too hadn’t contrived to misplace folders of Top Secret documents on a commuter train!
But what about in your business? Well, imagine the problems you would face if you lost some or all of your paper files through fire or flood, possibly documents which you had often considered getting scanned and indexed but never quite got round to it. Without a backup or electronic copy in sight, then years worth of irreplaceable documents would quite literally have gone up in smoke forever.
In terms of disaster recovery, document scanning is always going to be a winner in these circumstances. With everything recorded and backed up, the business impact of something happening to paper files, or even the electronic ones, would be minimal. The information could be quickly restored and your business, together with the customer files and information it relies on, would be unaffected.
So next time you hear “Does anyone know how to retrieve a file?” wafting across the office, before you answer them, pick up the phone and arrange a chat about a document scanning service to back up your files. Then, if anything does happen and someone else looks over at you in pity, experiencing their own private SED moment, you’ll just be able to smile knowingly and get back to work.
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