Document management is not an easy task. Many organizations struggle with the problems of processing and managing (paper) documents. A specialized party in document management seems to be the lifesaver. Perfectly automated scanning, routing, storage and retrieval of documents. But how do you combine this with your ERP system in which you have automated (almost) all critical business processes? The answer is simple: make sure the document management system goes hand in hand with the ERP system.
Case study
At a number of clients I have helped, the field service works with pen and paper. Written work orders are scanned and stored using an external document management system. Service invoicing is done in the ERP system. For these customers, it is desirable to attach the original written work order (which is in the document management system) to the service invoice (which comes out of the ERP system). Manually, this would be a time-consuming and laborious process, but by linking 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 once one wants to print or email the invoice from the work order in the ERP system, the saved scan of the written work order is retrieved from the document management system. Both documents are merged into one file, suitable for printing or emailing. In this way, ERP and document management go hand in hand.
One step further
Fully automating the field service and thus moving from paper work order to digital work order would of course make it even easier. Both for the efficiency of business processes and for managing company documents. But this is a step that many companies, for various reasons, have not taken (yet). However, whatever the situation, in almost all cases a technological solution is possible that makes life easier for all employees.
Peter Conijn is Application Developer at Dysel and turns modern technology into practical and useful applications for customers.
