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Operational Efficiency: An Example of Automating Document Management with OpenKM

Written by Ana Canteli on May 06, 2024

In today's business landscape, document management remains a persistent challenge for many organizations. Transitioning from paper-based manual document processes to electronic solutions is essential to overcome a number of obstacles that impact efficiency, safety, and productivity in the workplace. In this article, we will explore the most common challenges businesses face in traditional document management and how implementing a document management system like OpenKM can offer effective solutions to these problems.

Challenges of traditional document management

1. Slowness: Manual document processes are inherently slow and prone to delays, impacting operational efficiency and responsiveness to business demands.
2. Human error: Manual data entry increases the risk of errors and omissions, which can lead to issues with accuracy and reliability of information.
3. Misplacement: Physical storage of documents increases the risk of loss or misplacement, which can result in additional costs and time wasted searching for information.
4. Lack of adequate security: Businesses face challenges in protecting confidential and sensitive data, as well as implementing physical security measures, such as fire and flood protocols.
5. Storage costs: Maintaining large amounts of paper documents requires physical space and resources for storage and maintenance, which can lead to significant costs in the long run.

Advantages of using OpenKM in document management

OpenKM offers a number of advantages that address these challenges and provide an end-to-end solution for document management:

1. Document Process Automation: With OpenKM, businesses can automate a variety of document processes, from capture and classification to archiving and distribution, improving efficiency and reducing errors.
2. Increased security: OpenKM offers a wide range of security measures, including access control, data encryption, and audit trailing, to protect sensitive information and ensure regulatory compliance.
3. Digitalization of management: Digitization of documents facilitates access and retrieval of information, reducing the risks of loss or misplacement and improving information retrieval and operational efficiency.
4. Cost reduction: By eliminating the need for physical storage and reducing errors and rework associated with manual document processes, OpenKM helps minimize operational costs and increase profitability.

OpenKM's role in business process automation

In addition to addressing the specific challenges of document management, OpenKM also plays a critical role in automating documents and business processes. By integrating automated workflows, e-signatures, and file management, OpenKM improves operational efficiency and collaboration between employees, customers, and public administrations.

Use Case: Automating Document Processes with OpenKM

A company in the medical supply industry was facing significant challenges in its document management. With a large number of documents generated daily, from quotes and purchase orders to invoices and packing slips, the manual process of capturing, sorting, and storing was proving inefficient and error-prone.

The company decided to explore document management solutions and approached OpenKM for a proof of concept. They wanted to see how OpenKM could help them streamline their document processes, increase operational efficiency, and reduce errors associated with manual data entry.

During the proof of concept, several key scenarios were identified that illustrated the potential of OpenKM as a solution:

1. Capturing and Processing Customer-Accepted Bids: Using OpenKM's Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature, it was demonstrated how the system could automatically read customer-accepted bids, extract relevant metadata, and store them in the OpenKM database. This allowed for fast and accurate indexing of documents, making it easier to retrieve them later.
2. Management of purchase orders from accepted offers: Once an offer was accepted by a customer, OpenKM could automatically receive purchase orders generated in the company's ERP, integrated with OpenKM. OpenKM's OCR captured the necessary metadata and associated it with the corresponding purchase order, thanks to the relationships' functionality that defines and shows the type of linkage between quotes, purchase orders, delivery notes and invoices and ensuring an integration based on common and error-free data between the different documents.
3. Processing of delivery notes and invoices: When the supplier sent the packing slip and invoice, from the supplier portal, developed with the OpenKM document management platform, the portal used OCR to capture the relevant metadata and link it to the corresponding purchase orders. Even in cases where there were multiple packing slips per invoice or packing slips that were split into multiple invoices, the OpenKM vendor portal ensures efficient and accurate documentation management, thanks to the Relationships functionality, which shows the linking of files and specifies the type of relationship they maintain.

In addition to these specific scenarios, the company can also explore other OpenKM functionalities, such as advanced search and reporting, which further improve operational efficiency and information analysis capabilities.

At the end of the proof of concept, the company was impressed by the potential of OpenKM to transform its document management. They decided to implement the solution on a large scale, trusting that OpenKM would provide them with the tools needed to optimize their processes, improve information security, and increase operational efficiency across the organization.

This use case illustrates how OpenKM can address the specific challenges of document management in an enterprise, providing effective solutions that improve the efficiency, accuracy, and security of document processes.

Are you ready to optimize document management in your company? Contact us today for a personalized OpenKM demo and find out how we can help you increase operational efficiency and improve the security of your data! Our consulting services and OpenKM Academy are available to support you at every step of the transition process towards more effective and digitized document management.