What solutions do you offer today to deal with the problems faced by companies?
SR: We are the exclusive reseller of the Doc.Series solution, a modular document management system that adapts perfectly to all our customers' areas and activities. Our many years of experience in the office world have enabled us to find the most appropriate tool for the demands of the current market.
BN: We could add that we are in direct contact with the publisher, without any intermediary. This allows us great flexibility in responding to all the requests we receive, from integration to development. We are also the only party involved, from installation to maintenance of the EDM.
What are your clients' main needs in terms of document management?
SR: First of all, we will find the primary functions of collaboration around documents. This includes all the main functions of an EDM, i.e. access, indexing and searching for documents, collaboration, validation workflows, and electronic signatures.
Then, we will find the rather secondary functions, but which remain essential like the security of information and the safeguarding of the data.
Finally, we believe that it is the service associated with the tool that makes our strength and differentiates us. For our customers, we manage the installation, hosting, platform, updates, backups and data storage as well as all the support via our After Sales Service.
If you need information, you can deal directly with our dedicated team. You are always in contact with the same person, and we realise over time that this facilitates collaboration and that our customers are satisfied.
How do you know if a company needs an EDM system?
BN: As soon as documents are in transit within the company, require validation, or even if a company just wants to gain flexibility or reactivity, an EDM becomes interesting.
It is important to know that optimising document flows does not necessarily involve renewal or a major change. The idea is rather to optimise existing processes and to digitalise them. The secret is to use existing working methods to automate and optimise them without changing the way employees work. The tool should therefore not be seen as a threat, but rather as a beneficial support for the work, which may require a short transition phase.
What benefits can users derive from this?
SR: If we take the case of our EDM, the benefits are numerous and depend on the customer's needs. Generally speaking, it optimises your internal communication and collaboration, reduces errors and makes filing and searching easier
Thanks to the workflow system, everyone knows what they have to do and when they have to do it. Documents move from point A to point B without getting lost. This limits errors and reduces processing times, thus limiting costs.
You also have the possibility to create links with your other internal software such as management, accounting or invoicing software. There are also several different modules that can be integrated into the basic form of the solution. It can be adapted according to your needs; this avoids overloading the application, but also, you only install and pay for what you need, so you also control the investment according to your needs while remaining flexible at all times
BN: It is also an economical and ecological solution because it considerably reduces the number of paper printouts. Indeed, by having your documents transmitted directly into the application, you keep complete traceability of your documents without the risk of losing them, while reducing your carbon footprint and your maintenance costs.
If you had to highlight one feature, what would it be?
BN: One feature I find particularly interesting is the document search method. Two complementary methods are used: metadata indexing and OCR.
Optical character recognition (OCR) technology is used when you need to search by keyword. The tool converts document text into a machine-readable format.
Indexing allows documents to be found by volume. Documents or other content are associated with information that allows them to be searched and retrieved later, for example "accounting year 2021".
These documents are completed with metadata, such as the name of the creator of the document, its creation date, its last update, etc. Thanks to this, it is possible to have a view and a history of all the modifications made to a document. Lost or mistakenly deleted data can be easily recovered.
In simple terms, this EDM is a real search engine for your company. The "Google" of your company's documents. In the same way, you can easily search for one or more words contained in an index, a field or even in the content of any document in one click! Then you can further filter the results to refine them.
Finding a document becomes child's play...
Is it possible to manage access to documents or make them confidential?
SR: Of course, all access is managed by a main administrator defined within the company who has a global view of everything that is going on. He or she can give access rights as needed, whether for internal or external purposes. For example, to facilitate the work of auditors, you can give them access to documents relating to your current or previous financial year. The documents can even be consulted remotely as they are hosted in our cloud. In addition, an application is available on Android and IOS to consult or validate documents in total mobility.
If I'm interested but don't know where to start, how do I go about it?
BN: From our side, we believe that preparation is the most important step in the process, followed by the implementation phase. First of all, we analyse the existing situation. We need to know your document volume, the document problems you encounter, your working methods, your requirements, what your annual budget is for archiving, how sensitive you are to information security, etc. The more we put ourselves in the shoes of a user, the easier it will be to adapt the tool and improve their daily life. If people like a tool, they use it better!
Then we think together about the most important procedures to be digitised. Once a project has been selected, an initial test phase is carried out to familiarise ourselves with the tool. Then, we optimise the needs per request and per service. The rest happens naturally, once a project is finalised, if the users adhere, another one usually follows quickly.
A satisfied customer who asks to extend our solution to other services or needs is the satisfaction of a job well done and the beginning of a new long-term working relationship.