Why you should integrate document management and ERP

Document management is not an easy task. Many organizations are struggling with the problems related with the processing and management of (paper) documents. A third party specialized in document management sets itself up as a lifesaver. Perfectly automated scanning, routing, storage, and retrieval of documents. But how do you combine this with your ERP system where you have automated (almost) all of your critical business processes? The answer is simple: make sure the document management system goes hand in hand with the ERP system.

Practical example

At a number of customers that I have helped, the field service department works with pen and paper. The written work orders are scanned and stored using an external document management system. The service invoicing is done in the ERP system. These customers would like to add to the service invoice (that comes out of the ERP system) the original written work order (stored in the document management system). Doing this manually would be a time-consuming and difficult process, but by integrating ERP and document management we have made the process much more efficient.

The written work order is linked to the work order in the ERP system and as soon as our customers want to print or e-mail the invoice from the work order in the ERP system, the stored scan of the written work order is retrieved from the document management system. Both documents are merged into a single file ready for printing or emailing. This way, ERP and document management go hand in hand.

One step further

Fully automating your field service department and thus a transition from paper to digital work order would of course make things even easier. Both for the efficiency of business processes as for managing your documents. But many companies have not taken this step (yet) for various reasons. However, whatever the situation is, there is in almost all cases a technological solution available to make life of all employees much easier.

Peter Conijn is Application Developer at Dysel and turns modern technology into practical and useful applications for customers.