Turn your forest of papers into paper money – ACTNET
It has been proposed for some time that ever-improving technology would ultimately usher in the paperless office. However, as new technologies were introduced, the mounds of paper being generated in offices increased. It is in this sea of floating paperwork that we will find vital documents – documents that are critical to the lifeblood of any company. If they are not formulated, controlled and tracked properly, companies could suffer dire consequences.
With the right software management this paper process can be managed and users will literally be able to turn paper into “paper money”.
This is according to Nolan Sandham, managing director of ACTNET, the enterprise output management and content solution company.
Sandham said documents such as invoices and proof of delivery (POD) notes are “utterly vital pieces of paper” for any company – and needed to be formulated, issued and tracked with 100% efficiency”.
“While the inexorably advancement of technology has not brought with it the paperless office as we were promised many years ago – it has, nonetheless, introduced technologies such as barcodes and scanning applications that have enabled companies to effortlessly and efficiently navigate the vast amounts of paperwork.
He said it is possible, with certain software solutions, to “put a barcode on any piece of paper, be it an invoice or a POD – even if the company is running an old DOS-based computer system, printing to a dot matrix printer”.
“In fact, companies who are able to control their mountainous paper loads effectively – and ensure that all important documentation is formulated, dispatched and tracked efficiently – have an edge over their competitors. Lack of control in this particular ‘engine room’, can impact markedly on company’s revenue and profit.
“There is an old saying: ‘time is money’. Well, cutting back on the time spent managing mounds of paper is certainly a time-saving, and money-saving, pursuit. It is not just a hackneyed old adage.”
Sandham said that, to this end, ACTNET had announced some new and exciting developments to its Enterprise Document Delivery (EDD) solution – in a move designed to provide its customers with solutions that continue to meet the ever-changing document management needs of the market.
“One of the new features we have incorporated into our new version is a powerful scanning and indexing engine, which provides companies with a simple, yet versatile hosted electronic document archiving solution to handle all of their physical transactional documents.
“Since this new version substantially enhances our previous offering,” added Sandham, “we have changed its name from EDD to HammerEDD. HammerEDD has the ability to efficiently scan, index and capture transactional documents into a secure hosted archive solution.”
HammerEDD features include:
- Document Linking: A link feature that can connect any number of documents sharing a common reference field. With the ability to have all electronic and scanned documents residing within the same archive, they can be cross-linked so that, for instance, scanned delivery notes can be linked to an invoice or invoices to a statement;
- End User Web Portal: The provision of a secure Web portal that allows companies to access their required documents;
- Interactive HTML: Delivering an encrypted document that is fully interactive provides a greatly enhanced customer experience, in that it empowers recipients with the ability to sort, import, export, and drill down into the details of that document;
- Branding and Tracking: An updated branding and tracking facility that, for example, provides an analysis of recipient click-throughs on logos and hyperlinks included within the body of the e-mail, thus providing the ability to gauge the effectiveness of an e-mail campaign;
- Multiple personalised attachments: HammerEDD enables companies to include multiple additional attachments that are personalised according to the recipient client’s personal details or user behaviour;
- Reporting: A new set of management reporting options that details both access to the archive and to the actions and activities of users within the archive, which help to paint an accurate picture of administrator user trends and effectiveness of responses to customer queries.
“We are continually evolving our software solutions in order to make the day-to-day operations of our customers that much easier – and more profitable. While HammerEDD is used by a large number of South African corporate companies we are intent on introducing innovative elements that will continue to provide our customers with end-to-end document management solutions.”