FW: Looking for document management software

Not sure my original posting made it through, so I'm reposting, sorry if this is a double-post.
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There are a few other things I suggest you consider, for example:

- Do users need some type of workflow? When invoices come in, would they like for them to be routed to a manager for approval? Some doc mgmt systems have this capability while others don't.

- How are those documents coming in? Are they all mailed in and then they will be scanned or do you have documents being faxed in as well? Some companies we've worked in the past had about 90% of invoices arriving via fax... and if that's the case, you would want to integrate the receiving of the inbound faxes with the doc mgmt system. And there are several ways to do that, but that's another subject all on itself.

- When you say 'archive printed reports on the iSeries' do you mean they want to archive reports they have already printed (by scanning) or reports they generate from the iSeries and they are not only printed but a pdf/tiff copy is saved as well? I imagine is the latter and for that different systems will handle things differently, as well the indexing of such reports.

- Do you want to have users enter the indexes manually for each document or would you have the ERP generate those? Depending on the system you choose, you can integrate the doc mgmt application with the ERP so that when the user is doing a voucher entry for example, the ERP passes the indexes to the doc mgmt system automatically, thus saving time and avoiding user entry errors.

- How do you see users retrieving documents from the system? Would you like them to retrieve documents directly from an ERP screen or to simply do searches until they find it? Some solutions will let you retrieve not only a certain document but all other related documents as well (e.g. you retrieve an invoice and it comes with the PO that originated it, the receiving documents, etc.) simply by pressing a function key on your ERP app.

It is usually best for you to involve your user/client in this 'discovery' phase and first map out completely the process they have and what they want to change. Once you have the process mapped out, you can then look for solutions that will match what you want. That's a key point. Don't look only at the technology per se, but see how that will apply to the business process.

I'll be happy to discuss and give examples of what I mean off-line if you'd like.

Good luck!

Daniel Kuperman

Quadrant Software
www.quadrantsoftware.com
508-594-2700

<vendor plug> Check out our document management solution at www.intellichief.com <vendor plug ends>

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pat Barber
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 11:52 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Looking for document management software

I'm sorry... I should have at least attempted to explain what I was looking for.

The customer wants to scan documents(invoices,bills,etc) and keep them in month to date, year to date, inception date files.(outside sources)

They would would also like to archive printed reports on the Iseries.

They would want to access them by a few indexes, like name, agent number, vendor, etc.

I guess the best description is a giant archive system.

I assume you could do this with a scan to PDF's but I have no idea of how you might build the index over a bunch of PDF files stored in the IFS.