June/July 2009 Newsletter
WebDocs and Manufacturing/Distribution: A Perfect Fit
Many WebDocs customers have experience managing various types of documents within their environment that, to most vendors, would be seen as "standard" document management. These include scanning AP invoices, contracts and other types of paper documents. But many document management developers create more work for their departments by forcing them into the business process of scanning that is unnecessary and time consuming.
Many customers in manufacturing and distribution generate much of their own content internally from various Electronic Forms or ERP solutions to support the fulfillment process inside their business. This could include international shipping documents, MSDS sheets or certification documents for sensitive products.
Integrating WebDocs into your business environment allows you to dynamically create, capture and distribute information by automatically emailing or faxing documents without any user intervention. WebDocs can revolutionize customer communications by speeding up your distribution process, eliminating unnecessary steps and automating the delivery of information to the right people every time.
Please contact RJS to learn more about automating the distribution of your mission critical content.
Bill Whalen - Sales & Marketing billw@rjssoftware.com
Read RJS Success Stories in Manufacturing and Distribution
Stop Filling Out Paper-Based Forms
Have you ever wanted to take one of the paper-based forms you fill out by hand and turn it into an online form that can be easily filled out and reviewed? Better still, imagine being able to send a link to the document so it can be quickly reviewed, edited and approved by multiple people in your organization. Designing, editing, filling, organizing and automating all the forms that drive your business can now be done using any web browser.
With RJS WebForms, web-based fillable forms can be designed and deployed quickly and easily. Form designs look just like their paper counterparts and can contain information from other business systems, allowing forms to be tightly integrated with existing ERP and line-of-business applications. Forms like expense reports, engineering change notices, health care documents, purchase orders, insurance claim forms, invoices, government forms and HR documents are just some examples.
Call us today and challenge our team to help with your form needs by sending us an example of one of your critical business forms. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can transform your manual paper into web-based forms.
Richard Schoen - President, CTO richard@rjssoftware.com
Carisch Feeds Management Efficiency and Effectiveness
WebDocs helps to reduce costs by $250,000 through better document management
BACKGROUND
Wayzata, MN based Carisch, Inc. is a privately held company that owns 77 Arby's franchises in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana and Florida employing approximately 1,700 people.
CHALLENGE
Carisch buys a lot of goods and services for its Arby's franchises. That many purchases means lots of invoices. Managing all that documentation can be an expensive burden when it's stored on paper. Many of the services used at Carisch's Arby's restaurants, like garbage removal, snow plowing and pest control, are contracted locally. To ensure that each store gets the best value for its contract expenditures, Carisch compares the various local contracts to determine if they are out-of-line with the norms across all stores. Analyzing this data on paper is difficult and time consuming.
Employee record management was another challenge. With high employee turnover a norm in the industry, Carisch typically produces about 3,000 W-2 employee tax forms every year despite only having approximately 1,700 employees at any one time. Carisch needed a solution that would lower the cost of managing documents, while also providing a better means of analzying their data.
SOLUTION
Carisch looked to RJS Software and the Windows-based version of WebDocs to solve their document management concerns. Carisch looked at other software options, but what swayed the company towards WebDocs was ease of use and a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). While other vendors price their features “à la carte,” WebDocs from RJS features an all-in price.
Mark Gregory, CFO at Carisch, reports that managing WebDocs on a day-to-day basis is simple. "It's easy to set up users and tell WebDocs what folders each user has rights to use. For example, it's easy to say who can access the accounts payable documents and what invoices they can see. And, we can define those access rights down to the store level."
Today, invoices have barcodes placed on them prior to scanning. The barcodes are recognized which prevents any information from being manually keyed incorrectly. The accounting system also will not accept the entry of a new invoice unless it can find the related document.
Employee records are also scanned and stored into WebDocs where they're available only to authorized personnel, and can be found quickly and easily. Searching through filing cabinets is now a thing of the past.
RESULTS
Carisch adopted WebDocs with the expectation that it would pay for itself through the labor efficiencies that could be achieved through not having to file paper invoices. WebDocs fulfilled that objective and more.
Carisch noticed that some stores were spending $10,000 a year for contract services while others were spending $5,000. Gregory requested that all regional managers investigate the discrepancy by analyzing all the relevant invoices, which were stored and easily accessible in WebDocs. As a result of the investigation, Carisch was able to save $250,000 in strategic sourcing costs by selecting less expensive service providers.
Gregory also cites interactions with bankers as being much easier with WebDocs. Gathering documents like tax returns and financial statements now takes minutes and all these documents can be quickly emailed to the banker before even hanging up the phone.
"The more you use WebDocs," says Gregory, "the more uses you find for the software." We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
RJS QuickScan - Are Your Endpoints a Security Risk?
The majority of malicious cyber attacks today exploit security flaws that have a known solution, so companies invest significantly in security products to protect their networks. Despite significant efforts and corporate resources dedicated to combating these risks, most organizations continue to have significant vulernabilities and struggle to identify the holes in their defenses. In fact, in a recent test conducted by Sophos - a world leader in IT security and data protection - it was discovered that 81% of corporate endpoints tested failed a basic check. Some of the vulnerabilities that existed were missing operating system patches, disabled client firewalls, and even out-of-date or disabled endpoint security software.
RJS has partnered with Sophos to develop an assessment for corporate endpoints called QuickScan. The evaluation runs from a secure web portal and uses a dissolvable agent to scan and identify any computers that are not in compliance and may require immediate attention. The information collected in the QuickScan is then used to create a customized report detailing compliant and non-compliant endpoints.
The Services Team at RJS is here to assist your organization in the evaluation as well as the post-scan action plan that will ensure your endpoints are secure, in compliance and easier to manage. Contact the RJS Services Team today regarding your QuickScan assessment.
Adam Johnson - RJS Services Team ajohnson@rjsssoftware.com
When Should I Upgrade My Software?
The support staff at RJS Software is asked this same question quite frequently. At RJS, we pride ourselves in publishing fixes and product enhancements as soon as programming and testing are completed, rather than wait for a scheduled release some time down the road. The challenge for RJS is how best to communicate to our customers that a new version is available for the product(s) they own.
RJS publishes a revision history for each of our products on our support website including a description of the modifications or enhancements made for each revision or release. Customers can compare their version to the newest releases and decide if upgrading makes sense for their organization. Upgrading for the sake of upgrading is not always a good practice. RJS suggests upgrading only if there is a specific modification or enhancement that may be beneficial to you.
For IBM i products the version level is stored in a data area named VERSION. For Windows-based products from RJS you can retrieve your version by going to the Help menu and choosing About. Upgrade instructions are also available on our support website (http://support.rjssoftware.com/). If you have additional questions regarding upgrading your software please contact our support staff at 888-RJSSOFT or support@rjssoftware.com.
Larry John - Technical Manager larry@rjssoftware.com
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