Business process management (BPM) is an integral part of enterprise content management (ECM) and enables an organisation to transform itself into a highly productive and efficient business operation.
"A comprehensive ECM platform should incorporate technologies that enable the design of innovative content management and workflow solutions for the industry, thereby placing companies at the top of their game," says George Smalberger, sales and marketing director at Ovations.
"Content management is the flip-side of document storage and is geared to converting a high-volume paper-driven organisation into a paperless digital storage environment, using integrated scanning and faxing technologies," he explains. "Thus, time spent researching and managing these files is significantly reduced.
"Should any changes be made to a document, versioning technology automatically updates the document and saves the new version in the repository. This enables proper version tracking and users can retrieve the original document at any time to view all subsequent changes."
According to Smalberger, the South African insurance and financial sectors in particular, generate enormous amounts of paper in their daily work cycles.
"Content management solutions provide employees with online and real time access to all company documents. Additionally, recognition fields set up in the content management solution allow the system to initiate appropriate workflow processes, while specific rules sets enable the documents to be routed to the correct user, supervisor and/or manager. This means employees no longer have to physically get up from their desk to take documents to their colleagues, or wait for work to come to them.
"Task processing is significantly improved and employees can now get through their volume of work sooner," he continues. "Because time away from the desk has been reduced, productivity increases dramatically and customer service levels are enhanced. This often leads to more customers and ultimately, increased profitability.
"IT is often unfairly seen as an industry that eliminates jobs rather than create them. Content management technology and tools, however, serve to reassure employees that their jobs will become easier - they will not only work faster, but also smarter," Smalberger adds.
"The next step in BPM is for companies to expose their information to external users and customers," he predicts. "Insurance policy-holders, for example, will be able to log on to the company network via the Internet to track the process of their claim in the work cycle. This will also improve customer service."
Smalberger says the biggest hindrance to this development is security. "Organisations remain cautious as to who is allowed access to their information, but provided their ECM solution incorporates a comprehensive security model, this should not pose a problem.
"The technology to provide this service is already available, it`s just a matter of acceptance among users - people take time to feel comfortable with technology and want to make sure it has been proven," he concludes.
Share
Editorial contacts