Saving Money: How ECM Translates into ROI 

For many companies, investing in an enterprise content management (ECM) solution means a significant capital investment. And like any capital investment, you want to know that what you’re purchasing is going to pay for itself. You know, produce a return on investment (ROI).

With an ECM software solution, there are some fundamental cost savings that quickly rise to the top, including reduced paper consumption, reclaimed floor space once you ditch your “physical document storage” (your filing cabinets and cardboard boxes), and elimination of other services like offsite storage, courier and shipping fees, microfiche and film creation and so on.

For example, Moen, known for its elegant selection of kitchen faucets, sinks, bathroom faucets and accessories, implemented Hyland Software’s OnBase software solution by integrating it with its SAP solution and supporting its AP needs. Beyond increasing invoice processing speed and faster problem resolution, Moen reduced paper, manual processing and storage costs to the tune of $8,000 in monthly savings.

“More difficult to identify, but no less real are the costs eliminated through the use of workflow for transactional business process automation,” says Paul Davis, executive sponsor at Hyland Software. Some of the highlights:

• Capturing early payment discounts on AP invoices
• Ensuring that previously negotiated contract discounts are applied throughout the contract term
• Elimination of duplicate payments to vendors
• Issue resolution on the first call, often an inbound call, without the need for inefficient research methods and a return call for resolution
• Demonstrable, documented compliance with industry regulations that otherwise carry financial penalties for nonconformance

Back to Moen for a quick example of issue resolution. Before implementing OnBase, there was no timely way to track down a paper invoice if a vendor called with a question. Now, AP associates have instant access to both the invoice and all supporting documents. Vendor issues are resolved faster and Moen increases its chances to increase favorable payment terms.

Training savings

“Companies are often concerned about retraining costs for employees learning a new system,” Davis explains. “With the ability to integrate with core applications people already know, the need for retraining is limited.

“For many users, simply learning that a certain keystroke will now retrieve a related document to the content of a given screen, or the ability to extract information from that screen to populate forms, index documents or initiate workflows, brings tremendous power to these core system users.”

And often, they’re not even aware that a new ECM technology has been implemented.

Side note. Over on our blog, our government subject matter expert, Terri Jones, goes even further into this idea with a three-part series on Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO, which is well worth reading. In the series, she tackles the “particularly vexing question” of TCO, given that companies often purchase software through a request for proposal process.

“The problem with this is that the vendors’ responses often focus on the features and functionality of the product,” she writes. “But how can a [company] base its buying decision on this alone, when it also needs to know if and how this product will improve over time, be supported, serviced, and so forth?”

Check out Terri's series to learn even more.