RJS Helps to Create a More Favorable Document Management Climate at Gemaire Group
Keeping pace with growth.
Gemaire Group, a Florida-based seller of HVAC-related equipment, parts and supplies, faced a challenge that all companies would like to have: Accommodating a phenomenal rate of growth. Explosive expansion raises a variety of questions that must be addressed, but one is often overlooked until it can no longer be ignored: How will the company deal with all of the paper that the accelerating volume of business transactions generates?
Paper, paper, paper.
Filing cabinets occupied considerable floor space. What's more, because of its growth, Gemaire was generating and storing an ever increasing volume of paper. It reached the point where the company needed much more space than it had. Something had to give.
In addition to the real estate costs incurred to accommodate filing cabinets, paper handling was a burden at Gemaire. When documents were required, employees left their desk, went to the filing cabinet, searched for the required pieces of paper and then took them back to their desk. When employees finished thier work, the documents were then re-filed. All of this manual activity took a significant amount of time. Worse, if a document was inadvertently misfiled or it was sitting on someone else's desk when needed, additional time was wasted to hunt for it.
You must comply...
Being a part of a publicly-traded company, Gemaire is subject to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulations that require the retention and protection of a wide spectrum of company data. But paper documents are subject to loss due to fires, floods or human error. YHe, because backing up paper involves manually copying the documents and acquiring an equal amount of storage space elsewhere, it often isn't considered to be a financially viable option. Gemaire knew there had to be a better approach. It was right. The company now uses WebDocs from RJS Software Systems to store and manage documents electronically.
"Easy" wins again.
Before buying WebDocs, Gemaire looked at other document management products. The choice primarily came down to ease-of-integration with the Mincron application that Gemaire runs on IBM i. Mincron offers an interface that provides seamless integration between WebDocs and the Mincron software. Because this interface was pre-written, the total cost of ownership for WebDocs was much lower than the alternatives when the cost of hiring the other vendors' consultants to code an interface was taken into account.
To err is human, but why bother?
WebDocs also helps Gemaire to reduce errors in its business processes. For example, the branches use WebDocs as a filing system for all of their sales order, transfers, purchase orders and other documents. The branches can run an inquiry to verify that, for example, all invoices are in the system. This allows them to easily spot any gaps and scan in the missing documents. In addition, backing up documents is no longer an issue. Because they are stored as electronic images on disks attached to the company's IBM i server, documents are backed up as a part of Gemaire's normal data backup processes.
Gemaire hasn't attached a dollar value to the benefits it receives from WebDocs, but the potential for a return on investment was clear right from the start.
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