January 2010 Newsletter
2009 certainly posed its share of challenges for RJS. A slow first half finally gave way to a much more promising second half, and all indicators point to solid growth in the coming year. We don’t fully know what 2010 will bring, but we can say with certainty that RJS Software will work diligently to provide solutions that can help your company become more profitable as well as providing the same outstanding customer service our customers have come to expect.
One of our initiatives for the coming year is more frequent communication with our most valued assets – you, our customers. We will continue to host webinars focused on many of our core products, as well as solutions geared toward specific departments and industries.
Many of you may be unaware of our partnership with Sophos, a leading provider of security, anti-virus and data protection software. We will conduct monthly webinars focusing on endpoint security and look at the current and future threat landscape to see how it may affect your business.
Watch for more information on our webinars in the coming weeks.
Andy Roeser, Sales & Marketing aroeser@rjssoftware.com
Eliminate Pre-Printed Forms in 2010
The New Year is upon us. Have you resolved to find a way to save your company time and money? If your business is still printing invoices, statements, purchase orders, EOBs, checks and other important business documents on custom pre-printed forms, it could be time to consider RJS Software’s iForms product as a cost saving alternative.
iForms can be used to create form overlay documents from existing IBM i spool file documents. The software also has the unique ability to generate forms and business reports using live data from any database including DB2, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL and more.
If your team has the need to automatically generate business letters and other correspondence, iForms can be a great way to automate the process. iForms can eliminate outdated tools such as Officevision which is no longer supported by IBM. Contact our sales team today for a demo and a FREE no obligation trial.
Richard Schoen, President, CTO richard@rjssoftware.com
Orders Flow More Efficiently and Visibly at DEMCO
WebDocs enhances order processing and document flows.
BACKGROUND
Madison, Wisconsin-based DEMCO has provided schools and libraries with furniture, labels and other office supplies for more than 100 years. Today, the company employs more than 250 people and earns revenues of approximately $70 million per year. The company’s catalog now numbers more than 1,000 pages and includes more than 50,000 items.
CHALLENGE
Paper takes up considerable space; it has to be manually filed and retrieved, it’s prone to loss, it has to be either copied or passed around when it must be shared, and a considerable amount of time is spent searching for documents that are misfiled. This can negatively affect customer satisfaction.
The costs of paper are considerably higher for high-volume businesses like DEMCO. The company processes about 1,000 customer orders and 1,200 invoices daily. Handling a single piece of paper is burdensome enough, but when you multiply that by the number of documents DEMCO processes every day, the result can be a serious drain on profitability. DEMCO recognized that drain and turned to WebDocs.
SOLUTION
DEMCO chose WebDocs over the other products it considered because WebDocs offered the lowest total cost of ownership. In addition, because WebDocs runs on IBM i, it can be tightly integrated with the company’s custom-developed, IBM i-based ERP system.
DEMCO uses WebDocs to manage a wide variety of documents. Included in the mix are customer orders, invoices, bids, contracts, supplier compliance documents, cross-department issue documentation, legal contracts, and board of director documents. The company plans to add purchase orders and customer quotes into WebDocs in the near future.
DEMCO receives orders in one of three ways: through the mail, by fax, or via its e-commerce Web site. When mailed orders arrive in the company’s mailroom they are opened, collated and scanned into WebDocs. From that point, the order circulates electronically. The paper never leaves the mailroom.
Orders then have to be entered into DEMCO’s ERP system. WebDocs manages this workflow through its Routing Client. The images of the orders are first routed into a pre-edit work queue. In this pre-edit phase, the order is reviewed to see if there are any special requirements.
RESULTS
Moving from paper to electronic document management provided a significant efficiency boost for DEMCO. “We’ve seen a 15 percent productivity improvement that can be attributed to the impact of WebDocs,” reported Mark Anderson, vice president of business development & I.S. The ability to store documents on low-cost SAN disks contributed further to WebDocs’ lower total cost of ownership.
DEMCO has greatly improved security with the help of WebDocs. In the past, paper-based orders, some of which include credit card numbers, flowed through the company manually. Today, WebDocs restricts access to only authorized personnel. The Web-based interface allows employees to easily access WebDocs when they work from home.
“We’re in the upper Midwest,” said Anderson. “Web access will come in handy when we have our couple of snowstorms this winter. And hopefully we won’t get hit with a major flu outbreak, but we’ll be better able to deal with it if we do. We’re even looking at setting up some customer service micro-sites staffed by university students. We can do that thanks to VOIP and WebDocs.”
WebDocs has also provided greater visibility into order workflows. “It always used to take a lot of effort to count how many documents were sitting on people’s desks,” explained Anderson. “The visibility that we now have into documents that are upstream to our enterprise system is very nice.”
Seminars, Webinars and Live Events, Oh My!
The RJS Technology Services Division is excited to kick-off our Webinar and Live Event campaign for 2010. These events are designed to educate our customers about the current and upcoming threats on the network security landscape. With a new malware infected web page appearing every 4.5 seconds, it’s important to stay up-to-date with your security solution.
The first quarter of 2010 provides a number of opportunities to participate. Can’t make it in January? No problem. Perhaps February or March would work better for you. Did a look at the threat landscape pique your curiosity? Then delve a little further by attending an Endpoint Security webinar. Perhaps you’d like a more interactive setting. Consider attending one of our regional live events.
Our first live event is January 21 at RJS Software’s Burnsville, MN offices. For a full list of live events and webinars, visit the RJS Events page at www.rjssoftware.com/news/events or call 888-RJS-SOFT for more information.
Greg Schmidt, Director of Technology Services greg@rjssoftware.com
WebDocs Out of the Box
Does WebDocs do everything you need your document management solution to do? Maybe not right out of the box, but with some edits to the WebDocs exit programs you will get very close. Exit programs are essential to tying a document management solution to your existing processes and line-of-business applications. Exit programs allow you to auto-fill index key information, apply rules-based routing, electronically deliver your documents to customers or vendors, and even pass captured data to your line-of-business applications.
No document management solution meets the needs of every department or industry immediately after installation. That is why RJS Software has added numerous edit points in WebDocs to tailor its functionality as needed. Exit point programming can be completed by the customer with RJS mentorship, or as an additional professional service performed by RJS Software. For more information please contact your account representative or the RJS Sales Team at sales@rjssoftware.com or 888-RJSSOFT.
Larry John, Technical Manager larry@rjssoftware.com
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