Workflow Automation Software

Millennia Group Blog

Human Process Augmentation – I’m not scared

Robotic Process Automation.  The description is a little deceiving based on how it is used.  Generally, people think Robot and they think mechanical apparatus, computer brain, a bit scary.  However, the current use of that description is more broad and is also used to describe software based workflow solutions.

With or without a mechanical or physical component, it seems that a better description might be Human Process Augmentation (“HPA”).  Or at least it seems that if software is the apparatus, it is just augmenting the human process.  You could say that using digital signatures is HPA.  You no longer need to pick up a pen and send out an overnight package.  You’re no scaredy cat.

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Yep we need that

You or your co-workers have been away from the office for a long time now. What are you missing? That is not a question about certain people or favorite lunch spots. It’s a question about information. Has this experience exposed deficiencies or nurtured already advancing digital processes?

Some companies are finding that there were still some hard copy documents that they needed access to.  Maybe it was just random documents that were slow to enter the digital realm.  These are the documents that come in to certain people directly, but take a long time to become digital and accessbile to all.  Maybe it is a certain type of document like drawings or archived customer files that have been more difficult or costly to convert.  It may be time to re-evaluate the cost benefit of getting those documents scanned or implementing a centralized digital mail room.

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Kicking off our 25th Year!

Let's Do ThisAs we kicked off our 25th year in business in September, Millennia Group did not wait around for the New Year to start anew. Here’s what’s new:

New Facility – We’re moving to a new facility on December 1st, 2020 with a configuration to maximize our security, efficiency and office flexibility.

New Employee – Welcome to Kevin Turner our new senior software developer.  He comes to Millennia Group with 11 years of experience at a national software solutions provider.

New Equipment – All new high-speed scanning equipment to help you convert those critical paper documents and plans/drawings to mobile friendly digital and a new IP phone system for even better customer support.

New Features – FileStar has new features and benefits (A/P workflow, new integrations, improved notifications and more.)

New Tools – FileStar Agent to keep your network drive in sync with your EDMS.  Call us to learn more.

What does this all mean for our customers and future customers?  It means we will be more efficient and more effective in providing our customers with workflow and document management solutions, document scanning services and data migration services. 

As we start our 25th year in business, we are as dedicated as ever to being the best service provider in the document management industry.  If your new flexible workplace rules have resulted in employees struggling to gain access to critical documents or your work processes have bogged down, contact us now!

Let’s talk X’s and O’s

Small businesses are always looking at ways to grow and prosper.  This is a ritual that is practiced regularly but more now than ever and it’s not limited to small businesses either.  But while owners and executives throw sh** at the wall, whiteboard ideas or put on our rally caps to generate that grand, economy saving solution, it’s important not to forget the X’s and O’s.  That means do the little things right so in the end the chances of winning (or surviving, depending on your perspective) improve.    

That is sound advice even if it is from the sporting world and not Wall Street.  So what are some of the little things your organization can be doing to increase its chances of winning?  Remember, its little things we are talking about, not “Increase Sales” or “Outsource Production”.  More like – does your CRM have the correct industry code for every client or do we have fraud controls in place for our wire transfers?  Let’s take some clues from those head coaches who at half time always say, “we need to do better at the X’s and the O’s.”

As an example of doing little things, we see the use of simple workflows increasing substantially.  A workflow to ensure that every outbound wire transfer goes through the proper authorizations and is recorded properly.  A workflow to help manage bad debt write-offs, which is unfortunately a hot topic at the moment.  How about a simple workflow to process journal entries, typically a manual process of email with supporting documentation attached.  Convert the old methods of doing these tasks with an automated and tracked digital workflow, its time.

How about gathering up all of your organizations vendor contracts, either the hardcopy or the digital version and ensuring you have the correct terms and notification periods recorded.  Yes, that is a basic vendor management system or contract management system.  This will ensure you don’t accidently auto-renew a contract with a less than stellar vendor for another year.  It might also help you realize you are missing the executed contract on many vendors, a compliance and potential cost issue.

What processes are in place at your organization that use a spreadsheet for a checklist?  Now is the time to convert that spreadsheet to an online checklist which is accessible to all vested parties and updated in real time.  Maybe then you can have the checklist programmatically notify you of missing items or upcoming critical dates.  This simple effort can save any organization lots of money and avoid potential missed opportunities or mistakes.

Lastly, take a poll of your remote workers and find out how to help them be more efficient from home or when working remotely.  Is it a better communication tool?  Is it a nicer chair?  Maybe there is information, like customer or order information, that was never converted to digital and hard to access.  Remote work is not going to stop the minute this pandemic is over.  It’s part of your organizations bag of tricks to have an efficient remote option for workers.  Yep, that is a little X’s and O’s talk. 

Millennia Group, since 1996, created and hosts FileStar, a workflow and document management solution and CollectDocs, an online checklist application.  For more information visit our website or contact us.

Pandemic Pajama Plan

via Flickr - Nelson PavloskyThese 9 suggestions are meant to help your company come out of this pandemic with a fresh, invigorated attitude and a platform ready to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way.  And, if your company has a document management system, substitute “network drive” with the name of that document management system.  Good luck and can’t wait to see you on the other side of this.

Top 9 Pandemic Pajama Plan Items:

  1. Purge old electronic files.  Have employees purge files from their personal folders or shared folders that are not necessary for company purposes.  The three main records retention classifications include: legally required, operationally required and historically important.  Don’t destroy records that are need for legal or compliance reasons.  Don’t destroy records that are needed to support current transactions or contracts.  Don’t destroy the first ever drawing of a new product.  Give employees some clear instructions of what falls into the various definitions.
  2. Purge old emails.  Same story as purging old files.
  3. Clean up the directory structure on the network drive.  Rename folders to sort correctly (ie. last name, first name) or to create a perfect match to your core business system.  For instance, include a customer number in addition to the customer name, include a product ID and product name, etc.  Get rid of all folders on the shared drive that are someone’s name, especially if that someone is long gone.
  4. Remind all employees not to save files on their local computer drives.  While you are at it, remind them to move those legally required, organizationally required or historically significant documents to the company network drive.
  5. Take a survey of all employees and ask what information is hardest to get at now that they are working from home?  Then get a plan together to fix that issue.
  6. During your quarterly security awareness training, because I am sure all companies do quarterly security awareness training for all employees, remind them that the CEO\CFO\COO will never ask them via email to wire money to anybody, any time or anywhere.
  7. Go through the company CRM and purge old, bad contacts.  Those contacts just create confusion.
  8. Confirm the contact information for all customers and vendors in your ERP – delete the rest.
  9. Spend 15 minutes a day clicking every single button and menu item and running every report in the most complicated software applications that your company uses so you can see that you won’t break it (stay away from the Delete function).  This will eliminate your fear and turn you into a rockstar.
Millennia Group provides workflow and document management solutions using our FileStar platform and our document scanning services.  Contact us at info@mgdocs.com or find us at www.mgdocs.com.

As necessary

Via Flickr - US ArmyThere are plenty of companies and individuals making decisions over the past few weeks and for the coming few months that are based on a get-it-done strategy.  This is completely understandable as we all face unprecedented business and personal circumstances.  Looking on the bright side of things, some of these “as necessary” reactions and solutions may just be the spark that helps a company be a little more productive, a little more efficient or a little less stuck.

So what parts of the business world is grabbing attention that otherwise gets very little?  The mail room for sure.  Filing cabinets and the documents stuck in them, absolutely.  Virtual video conferencing backgrounds so nobody sees your bedroom, I mean home office.  The quality of the mobile phone carrier and the quality of headphones will definitely get a look.  There will be plenty of stories from people forced to work remotely or otherwise change their work habits.

Make sure to ask the questions and to listen to the stories.  These will be the big opportunities for the future and will help to make little improvements right now.  These improvements will include not only technology, but also physical elements too.  For instance, how far apart should workstations or machines be?  Should any door not have auto-open or hands-free operation? 

But even the wildest imagination won’t pick up on all of it.  There will always be issues that you just have to deal with and do what’s necessary.  If you have to, stagger the workforce hours to make sure your occupancy ratio doesn’t exceed 50% of the total employees, then do it.  If scanning mail and emailing it to employees is what is needed, then do it.  But keep an open mind and see what works or could work with the “As Necessary” process that could become a version of the eventual standard.

So you think your data is clean

Via Flickr - Elizabeth

Having clean data is important for running any business.  Clean data being defined as accurate, suitable for its use, organized and complete.  Clean data means revenue is maximized, the IRS stays at bay and your strategy sessions are effective.  However, what once seemed clean can end up looking very dirty when that data is exposed through a different lens. 

What worked as good data in the old accounting system may fall short in a new system.  A well-organized network drive full of supporting files can look like a spaghetti bowl when trying to migrate the files into a document management system.  No big deal if the data isn’t perfectly clean, it’s worked so far.  That may be true, but what are you missing out on?

True, the old data might have seemed like it worked just fine.  But there is some reason that a new system was chosen, maybe that was part of a merger or the old system was inadequate in other ways like reporting or analysis capabilities.  And don’t forget, that data might look clean to a user that has been with the company for 10 years, but a new employee might think otherwise.

Trying to get data clean can be a difficult and costly task.  Assigning new codes to data or modifying existing flags to meet new requirements takes time and effort.  Be prepared to spend serious time taking a deep dive into your existing data to understand how it may relate to the new solution.  Don’t forget that there should be a benefit from this analysis, like creating a better view of customer demand or finding errors that have caused higher costs or lower revenue.

Generally speaking, more granularity in the data is better, but getting there costs more.  For instance, maybe your client contracts contain a renewal notice date, but that date was never recorded in your tracking database.  The solution is to open each contract, find the data and enter it in the new system.  Or possibly all documents that were inherited as part of an acquisition were scanned as one big client PDF and now you want the contract separate from the correspondence and statements.  All of this takes time, but it will pay off.

Look at the needs of the company.  Look at what additional information and uses can come from better, cleaner data.  Understand how your existing or new solutions can utilize this new data.  Then make some assumptions about the costs and you will be able to determine if the effort is worth it.  Just remember, at some point, a change will most likely be necessary, so start to chip away at what looks like clean data but maybe is not.

Millennia Group provides workflow and document management solutions including data clean up and migration services.  For more information go to www.mgdocs.com or contact us at info@mgdocs.com.

Go old school in 2020

Way back in the 1970’s, according to Wikipedia, the information age began.  This was a period after the industrial revolution where computers started to be part of the daily business landscape.  Vast amounts of “information” were now created, stored and transmitted by these computers.  A good long run considering it is still going on.

Along comes a time, not exactly sure when, where the computer revolution became all about “data” and “tech”.   These are fine things, but what are they?  Data is data until someone turns it into information that is useful.  Tech is certainly cool on my wrist, but isn’t it being informed of an upcoming meeting the important part?  We’re still in the information age, but why doesn’t it feel like it?

First off, its not very sexy to sell information tools.  Take document management for an example.  Document management is there to make sure users get the information they need to make decisions, close deals, prevent errors and function at a high level.  But the organization, storage and delivery of information is just not a very sexy topic. 

There are lots of sexy ways to deliver information.  You can get answers from Alexa or Siri.  Endless amounts of notifications and flashing icons on your phone or watch will let you know important information has arrived.  Very soon little robots or flying drones will track you down and blurt out information that is surely important to you.  All very sexy.

Now for the reality check.  Information is defined as; 1) facts provided or learned about something or someone, 2) knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction and so on.  In order for data or tech to be helpful in the information age, it needs to be factual, studied, learned, supported.  Here’s where document management comes in.  Documents contain the facts, can be studied and learned and will definitely support the decisions when document management is done well.

Document management needs to be organized, trusted and available and it’s just data or tech.  Integrate your EDM with your line of business applications.  Use document management for workflow so data and supporting documents are a package to help decision makers.  Go old school in 2020 and get your document management in order to support your data and make your tech investments pay off. 

Millennia Group provides workflow and document management services and solutions.  To get a document management checkup, contact us at www.mgdocs.com or info@mgdocs.com.

Open for Business

Via Flickr - Brian HawkinsAs a provider of a workflow and document management system we hear first-hand the number of applications that companies use to support their business.  There is always a discussion of how data and documents are being captured, created, shared and the flow within the organization.  We have never interacted with a customer or prospect that is on a single solution for all business functions.  Like Sasquatch, the killer app doesn’t really exist.

The reality is that many different applications are used throughout the organization.  Departments tend to fight hard to get the application most suited to their needs so they can carry out their mandates with effectiveness and efficiency.  That leaves the IT department scrambling to ensure that each department’s key solution can interact with all the others.  Every solution provider strives to be an open platform to accommodate this effort, but what does that mean?

Applications need to be built to handle data exchanges with other applications.  Usually this falls into one of two approaches.  There is the API or application programming interface, that gives an external source access to the internal functions to push or pull data.  Another approach is to have one application push data out to a text or csv file to a secure spot where another application can pick it up to process it.  This is generally just a scheduled data interchange approach known as EDI or electronic data interchange.  Very effective and reliable. 

Whichever method is used, the purpose is the same, common data exists that needs to be shared in order to arrive at the most effective and efficient process.  With document management, there is data exchange that needs to happen in order to create documents with pre-populated information like the customer name or account number.  Document management systems can also feed a list of documents to the ERP as supporting information for transactions, customers or vendors. 

A piece of this puzzle that can go unnoticed is the concept that the document or information about the document is in fact data.  It is that data association that allows the right document or set of documents to be accessed immediately when the customer or order number is referenced.  Without a document being stored and associated with the data, a document is just a static piece of information that is hidden away.  

Folder based systems can fall short in this area because sharing or accessing that data in a folder name or file name is impossible or very complex.  If the organization is going to be effective and efficient in its processes, then the document management system needs to be open for business and contain separate meta data that allows all systems to be tied together.

Since 1996 Millennia Group has been providing workflow and document management solutions that are based on meta data and an open architecture.  For more information contact us at info@mgdocs.com or www.mgdocs.com.

A little can go a long way

via Flickr - JJ MereloGiven that we are coming up to the end of the year, we thought it would be helpful again this year to provide some ideas on how to use your time wisely, if and when projects and meetings slow down at year end.  In order to have this supposed time available does presume that you are working.  However, even some simple changes or small efforts can produce a tangible and noticeable effect across the company.    

Change can be difficult but also extremely rewarding.  Reach out to your co-workers, talk to others in your industry or even just friends and family about new things they are doing at work (that make their lives easier).  Best of all, talk to existing vendors that you trust and like to work with to see what more they can do to help you.  You can even reach out to other vendors to see what other opportunities might exist.  Call it R&D.  Call it whatever you want and here are some ideas to get you started.

Look at the tasks you and your associates undertake on a daily basis and identify those that are repetitive and have some email or document component.  For instance, does your company have an email-based approval process for journal entries, loan approvals, etc?  Sending around emails with attachments does not provide any prioritization, visibility or planning for these processes.  A workflow solution can simplify these processes and pay many other dividends.  Workflows don’t need to be complicated technology solutions, they can be two or three step digital approvals and you will still get positive ROI.

Spend the time to clearly match the file folders on your shared drive or the paper folders in your file cabinets to the source system for tracking those folders.  Here is what we mean by this.  If you have file folders for each client on your shared drive, add the Client Number from the accounting system to the folder name.  For instance, instead of “Smith Products, LLC”, rename that folder to “Smith Products, LLC-999888” where 999888 is the client number in the accounting system.  Some day you will merge your accounting system and those digital files into one document enabled ERP and you will really appreciate the perfect match.  And by the way, the process of doing this will result in locating some missing files.

Check your digital copier settings for scanning or the setting on your desk top scanners.  The default settings should be 200 dots per inch and black and white.  Those settings will satisfy 95% of your scanning needs and produce excellent quality scans for viewing or printing (not that you should print).  You can always use custom settings for those rare situations where you need to capture color pages.  This will provide faster viewing of files for users, take up less space on your servers or in the cloud and make the scanning effort faster too.  These are all going to make users more efficient.

These are just some simple steps that you can take.  There are plenty more opportunities and larger efforts in the document management area that will have a positive ROI, but these are simple changes that you can tackle now.  Just start simple and build up to the really big bang opportunities.

Millennia Group has been providing workflow and document management solutions since 1996.  Contact us at www.mgdocs.com or info@mgdocs.com