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INCREASE MARGINS BY DECREASING PAPER

An electronic document management solution can help your business “measure twice and cut once"
By Steve Neigh 
 
Document imaging and management can be instrumental to improving your processes. These two related functions can increase margins by reducing the cost of doing business and improving communication to ensure that jobs are done right the first time. In short, an electronic document management solution can help your business "measure twice and cut once."
 
Static Imaging vs. Dynamic Management
Document imaging converts paper documents to scanned images. Document management is what sets the scanning of business documents apart from creating a collection of family photos on your home PC.
 
Instead of simply saving documents to your hard drive or network, document management allows you to assign keywords to documents and search for the information you need based on specific criteria. For example, you may want to review all documents related to a specific vendor or customer. Document management allows you to simply type in the name of the vendor or other search term(s) and gather a list of relevant documents. These documents can be cross-referenced, allowing users to move from one related document to another, such as a purchase order and a variance purchase order, simply by double clicking.
 
Document management also encompasses more than what traditionally is considered a document. E-mail, faxes, Microsoft® Word documents, Excel® spreadsheets, reports from transactional systems—all can be stored and searched electronically in a single document management system. Going paperless makes these documents instantly available to everyone who has access to the system. Also, unlike paper files, documents in a document management solution can be backed up to other media including CDs/DVDs or a tape drive.
 
These technologies can improve processes from accounting to managing change orders, and help track customer interactions from prospect through construction. Questions about a job can be answered faster, whether they are raised by a supervisor during construction, or years later by a home owner. You also can create strategies for improving processes that are prone to error, increased expense and/or potential liability, and track the actions that were taken. These can range from maintaining an electronic audit trail of vendor contracts, insurance verifications and W-9s, to developing a method to avoid unnecessary variance in purchase orders, to ensuring that those who need to know are aware of change orders.
 
Given increasing warranty periods, maintaining a virtual job packet that includes everything about a home can significantly improve your ability to provide excellent customer service. Not only will this increase the probability that your customers will generate good “word-of-mouth” for your business, a virtual job packet could be invaluable in the event of arbitration.
 
Deployment Need Not Be Complex
Employing a document management system need not be expensive or complicated; a well-thought-out solution can be integrated with other business applications with virtually no programming.  It can be deployed incrementally, allowing you to purchase basic functionality and easily add users, increase volume, and implement more complex technology, as needs and budget dictate.
 
The system can be maintained in house or hosted elsewhere for a monthly fee.
 
However, while choosing a solution that can be deployed rapidly and is easy to use will deliver nearly immediate improvements and pay for itself quickly, builders also need to calculate the total cost of ownership by investigating the cost of maintenance and enhancements, as you add users, document types, functions, and provide remote access.
 
To implement a document imaging and management solution, consult a technology solution provider offering software and hardware products and with the experience to address the business needs of the home building market. Additional resources are available through the media and industry associations such as AIIM International (www.aiim.org).
 

Steve Neigh is a member and contributor to NAHB’s Business Management & Information Technology Committee and is the Vertical Lead for construction at Hyland Software, Inc., developer of OnBase® ECM software (www.onbase.com). Steve has 12 years of experience in imaging/homebuilding. For more information, contact Steve at 440-788-5898 or via email at sneigh@OnBase.com.

For more information about this item, please contact Natalie Holmes at 800-368-5242 x8461 or via e-mail at nholmes@nahb.com.