Promote Remote Working

Currently, companies are accelerating their adoption of this system as a measure against the spread of the novel coronavirus. Do you have a smart remote working system?

Existing workflows and information-sharing mechanisms are often built on the premise that the people involved are in the company, and simply changing the work environment to remote can actually reduce productivity.

Challenge(1)：Internal approval takes longer　(electronic approval speeds up approval workflow)

Challenge

Since you started working remotely, do you feel that your application and approval workflows have taken longer?

When you work in the office, you have the opportunity to meet with the people involved to get their approval, but remote work makes that difficult. Slow decision making may affect client transactions. So even though most work can be done remotely, some employees may be forced to come to work just to get approval.

If you check your boss's schedule and go out of your way to adjust your work day, you'll be less productive than when you were at work.

Solution

If there are many approvers involved in the application, or if the steps are complicated, the time is taken only by internal coordination. The biggest bottleneck that makes your business less productive is the delivery, or "flow," between steps. By automating this workflow, ECM can significantly reduce approval time.

Specifically, when an application is created, the registered approver is identified based on the contents, and the application is automatically relayed like a baton. After approval is made by all parties concerned, it is stored as electronic data in a specified folder. For example, if this is a document such as an estimate or an invoice, it will be recorded as evidence of a business-to-business transaction.

Not only can applicants be freed from inefficiencies, such as finding out who is the approver on a case-by-case basis, or running around the company trying to get the approver, but they can also complete the approval process quickly.

Challenge(2)：Difficulty sharing information (versioning and regression prevention)

Challenge

Most companies use shared servers or online storage to share information about internal documents. At this time, isn't it operated as "Copy data from the server to your computer and upload it after editing"?

If you copy files in this way, you might accidentally overwrite the latest file or lose track of which one is the latest version. The risk of regression is especially high when multiple people are working together on a document.

If a document you've worked so hard to create disappears or is edited in vain, you're not only less productive, you're less motivated.

Solution

ECM provides versioning and document protection for centralized management of various business documents.

One of these features is the Check In/Check Out feature. For example, if a team collaborates on a single document, the file will be checked out when someone accesses the document. This function protects the document by locking the update of the document file so that only A has editing permission. When you finish editing, checking in unlocks the file and updates it. When you access a document that someone has checked out, it opens read-only, so you don't accidentally overwrite someone else's edits.
ECM also automatically saves a history of updates, deletions, and other edits to prevent accidental loss of documents.

It frees you from the tedious task of deploying ECM, scouring for the latest documents, and reworking them with incorrect deletions.

Challenge (3): Work efficiently in a network environment different from the office. (Access to a single database is sufficient)

Challenge

There are various types of data in the office, but they are often managed in different databases depending on the management entity and business flow.

For example, order history by client is CRM, deal information and contact history is Salesforce, and contracts and invoices are copied by the accounting department to the file server. While information distribution can be inconvenient in the office, it can be a significant drag on productivity, especially in remote work environments.

Solution

For example, if salespeople who use Salesforce on a daily basis had direct access to documents such as past order history and "contract, invoice" from the same screen, wouldn't they be dramatically more productive? ECM can be used independently and can be linked with core systems such as ERP, CRM, and SCM.

By managing data on a single platform, you can eliminate the unproductive work of scouring disparate databases for related documents.

Case Studies