Less Paper – More Time The blog of the paper-less office experts – Click2Scan

The Electronic Mailroom (Part 3)

Here's the final part of my blog on the Electronic Mailroom.

So far we've been using the analogy of 'dirty washing' to highlight our process and bring it to a much simpler level of understanding for everybody.

In Part 2 of the blog we sorted the washing and washed it. In business terms, we worked out what the documents were and then extracted data. There are still two stages left for the washing: it needs to be ironed
and put somewhere ready for use.

The Ironing

We've completed the washing, it's all dry and the next step is to iron the clothes (after all, you wouldn't go out in clothes that were covered in creases!).  What we are doing here, hidden away in the corner of our software solution, is verifying our data (ironing out the bits we don't want to be there).  The documents are taken to other applications and databases and are checked to ensure what we have is correct.  Making sure, for instance, that a customer reference number is already in our CRM system or a PO Number is allocated in the accounting package.

There is a lot of complexity under the hood here and, from a user's point of view, you should be assured that the right system will gather all the relevant information from line of business apps and databases without any human intervention.  Meanwhile, we should remember that the dirt that was extracted is still sat in the machine and linked (invisibly) to the item of clothing it came from.

Putting The Washing Away

We're now ready to put the washing away in the right places, well, for the physical items/documents that invariably is a cupboard or chest of drawers.  Think of these as databases. You're better off having on large cupboard to store all of your clothes rather than a number of different places. It just makes things easier to manage.

All of our documents now wind up in their rightful places, but how do users get at them? That's where the dirt comes in: the dirt (extracted data) is used to cross reference line of business applications, databases and which drawer (document type) it came from. Essentially, the data is used by users to start internal business processes and to manage their archives.

Well, there you go, that's a very high level, very simplistic overview of the Electronic Mailroom.  This technology is here now. There are so many benefits to this type of solution and with the basis of understanding you have learnt from these posts you are now on the right path towards getting the most out of the Electronic Mailroom.  It's a lot more than just capturing a document as it comes into a business, there's a whole load of intelligence there behind the scenes.

Click2Scan Limited have been working in this sophisticated niche of the document management marketplace for some time now and our expertise is utilised by businesses from all walks of life, including charities, manufacturers and universities.

Recommended posts:

1. The Electronic Mailroom (Part 2)
2. The Electronic Mailroom (Part 1)
3. Is Document Imaging Dead?
4. Distributed Capture the Easy Way
5. Process Management On-the-Go with FileDirector