Go Paperless – Automate Business Processes with GLOBODOX

No more passing around of paper-based documents
Don’t just store documents electronically — use them to achieve goals too!

Why scanning alone will not help you go paperless
There is a common perception among businesses that all you need to go paperless is to scan your documents. While scanning certainly is one of the starting points, you need to take the document digitization process a few steps further. You need to automate business processes in your organization. That’s because unless you stop creating new documents in paper form, you will simply find yourself scanning more documents and then routing their paper versions for review, approval, etc. Scanning will, no doubt, allow your documents to be part of digital workflows, but by itself will not help your office go paperless! What you need to do is stop creating paper-based documents in the first place and create electronic versions instead (e.g. MS Word files). Also, you can request your business associates to email documents to you instead of sending paper copies. This will ensure that your office has to manage minimal amounts of paper-based documents. This will take care of one part of your organization’s attempts to go paperless. The other part involves using the tool that will help you go paperless. And that tool is document management software.

Why automate business processes using document management software?
Once you scan documents, they need to be indexed and organized in various ways to make them searchable. Document management software like GLOBODOX allows you to organize documents by folders, tags, document types (e.g. Invoices, Checks, etc.) and even project-wise and client-wise. Being able to find documents quickly means you spend less time looking for them and can spend more time actually working on them to achieve your goals. Your simple file management software may not allow you to organize documents in multiple ways. Once your document is scanned, organized, and then retrieved, you can route it to appropriate employees for review, approval, editing, etc. using digital workflows. A digital workflow will automatically send a notification to these employees. They can then open that document and work as needed. Once all required actions have been performed by the concerned employees, the business process is completed. This takes far less time and effort than if you had routed a paper-based version of that document. This was just a simple explanation of how you can automate business processes using GLOBODOX – and go paperless. Real-life scenarios are often more complex, which only means greater gains for your organization as you automate business processes.

How GLOBODOX helps you go paperless
GLOBODOX supports all those actions you need to perform to automate business processes, right from scanning documents to monitoring digital workflows. Have a look:

• • Digitize paper-based documents
    

GLOBODOX supports batch scanning of documents and offers a range of other scanning features. You can even save frequently used scan settings as Scan Profiles.

• • Retain folder structure
    

You can drag and drop or import your entire Windows Explorer folder structure into GLOBODOX. No need to rearrange documents, folders or subfolders. You can even drag and drop email messages and attachments from MS Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird 9.x.

• • Automatically capture your POP3 email
    using Email Capture. Email attachments imported using Email Capture can be routed as part of digital workflows, as they are automatically stored as separate documents – independently of their corresponding email message.
  • Organize files in multiple ways
    

Arrange them into Folders, label them using Tags, segregate them using Document Types and also manage them project wise or client wise, using Stack Types.

• • Search documents by text
    content using full-text search.
  • Find documents in a finger snap,
    using Quick, Advanced and Saved Searches.
  • Share documents securely
    

Before you can route a document for review, you must grant the concerned users access to the document. GLOBODOX offers document-level access control and other security features that help you choose whom to share a document with and whom to restrict it from.

• Collaborate on documents
  

  You may want your colleagues to review a document before approving it. GLOBODOX lets you do this efficiently using check-in, checkout, and the draft document “Under Review” features. Once they have reviewed, you can confer with them before you approve/reject the document.

• Automatically route documents
  

  Replace paper-based processes with task-based, automated processes. Using GLOBODOX, you can automate the document review and approval process by creating digital workflows. Once created, the workflow will automatically route the document to the concerned user by sending them task notifications. Document routing can also be used for actions other than review and approval. Your endeavor to automate business processes (and thereby go paperless) culminates with monitoring the digital workflows to ensure that the process is completed in a timely manner.