When it comes to software, it is important to have the right features, but you also need good functionality and some risk takers to get the most out of the investment. Features are the capabilities of the software. Functionality is all about how easy it is to use those features and apply them to real world tasks.
Most if not all users will discover the basic features and will become functional once they are trained. Only super users will play around with the application enough to figure out all the features. But how quickly will they translate the discovered features into functional solutions? That depends on how many risk takers there are in the company.
I heard someone say the other day that they would try the new application – “why not, I can’t break…
systems, etc. That means we are always interested in what is next and the future of the document management industry. 
What is the cost of a lost document? There are two components to the cost regardless of the document being either lost or just misplaced. 
the new contract. When does it make sense to automate that process?
A technology issue that companies deal with on a regular basis is using one application for managing active or working documents and a separate application for the archived or final documents. Active being defined as documents in the creation or working stage and final being final or executed.
There are plenty of references in our daily lives to the future and yet, somehow, we don’t always spend time to really consider the future. Songs refer to the future, books refer to the future, so do TV shows and movies, the news and much more. Even the Government is now talking about a Secretary of the Future.
In a past era processes were set in stone. Assembly lines were created and they ran for three shifts a day year after year. Big mainframes were programmed and some of those programs still run today. Change was slow and methodical for both consumers and businesses.
During a recent lunch conversation a comment was made about the great benefits of business intelligence (“BI”) – a tool used to connect lots of information dots to generate useful data. However, that was quickly followed by a second comment about the often failed attainment of those benefits. The culprit seems to be bad or incomplete historical data, ie data stuck in documents or inconsistently entered data.
Documents used to be shared by photocopying and FedEx. That progressed to PDF and email, which has been replaced by free file sharing websites. There are also highly secure deal sites available for Wall Street transactions. The reality is that all of these methods are in use because each one meets somebody’s unique need for security, simplicity or both. 
All of our clients that have implemented our workflow solution have done so to improve their efficiency and profitability. However, it has become very apparent that there are significant added benefits derived from the process metrics reports that are generated.