OnBase. A single enterprise information platform
A market leader in ECM
OnBase is recognised as a market leader in enterprise content management (ECM). OnBase manages your enterprise content from the point of inception all the way through the information lifecycle until final archival and destruction.
When choosing OnBase to meet your ECM requirements, you will gain capabilities which far exceed standard ECM functionality. OnBase also provides case management, business process management (BPM) and capture technologies on the same platform, which can be further extended with our file sync and share solution, ShareBase. The OnBase platform can integrate with your existing environment, extend to mobile devices and be made available on premises or in the cloud.
To learn more about the other OnBase platform capabilities, click here.
To learn more about the breadth and depth of the OnBase product, click here.
Your ECM solution should be able to capture any file type from any physical location, and automatically classify your documents.
An ideal ECM solution will:
Capture all file types
The value of ECM goes way beyond scanning. Your solution should have the ability to capture all your important content, paper, electronic and data in one system.
Your ECM solution should preserve the native file type, rather than standardising all your files to one proprietary format. This would limit what you can do with your content in the future and inhibit your use of the capabilities within the applications that created it, such as Microsoft Word, Excel and CAD to name a few.
Capture from any physical location
Your ECM solution should provide you the flexibility to capture high volumes of documents right on location, saving you the cost and time associated with transporting them. You should never have to ship documents to a centralised location, just to scan them into a system. That’s what the internet is for!
Automatically classify your documents
The most expense in your organisation comes from your people, not your software. Every document you import needs to be classified and indexed. Your ECM vendor should be able to provide multiple, cost-effective options to help reduce this manual task. Your ECM solution should not introduce significant additional manual work just to get the documents into the system.
ECM promises to optimise your processes, driving efficiency by eliminating wasted time.
This goes beyond automating a few simple decisions. An ideal ECM solution should:
Automate your structured processes
Your ECM solution should automate your predictable, repeatable processes. Certain processes have standardised outcomes, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable and the employee hiring process for example. These processes typically include many repeated steps, which can be automated based on logical decisions. Routing documents to the right person, checking agreed thresholds for approval and generating documents based on decisions made, are all areas which can be automated.
You should look for an ECM solution that allows you to build these solutions without requiring customised code. Your ECM vendor should provide you with a configurable visual designer tool to allow you to build these processes yourself.
Consolidate your unstructured information
Documents are not the only important sources of information. When exceptions occur in your standardised processes, the information generated must be captured. Notes and reminders, reasoning behind decisions, and correspondence with customers are examples of this. If you cannot manage all these things in your ECM system, this important information will be spread across spreadsheets, email inboxes, Access databases and paper sticky notes.
You should ensure that your ECM system allows you to capture and manage ALL the information related to a business process, not just the documents flowing through it.
Facilitate case management
Many case based processes are not so predictable or standardised. These processes rely on the know-how and discretion of qualified people to determine what work needs to be done next, and by whom.
Your ECM solution should provide case management solutions to empower your knowledge workers to more effectively handle issues and high-value exceptions (i.e. cases) that are unique or difficult to predict in advance. In one central system, you should be able to have a 360-degree view of all case-related information, such as data records, documents, forms and history, phone calls, updates, insights, tasks and events.
With all the information related to a case – notes, observations, data, email and more – managed in the same application as your other standardised processes, nothing is lost. The relevant information is instantly available to those who need it and you have the audit history to show for it.
The whole point of having an ECM system is so that you can access your important information quickly and easily. Everyone who needs access to this content should be able to access it easily, from anywhere. The user experience in an ideal ECM solution is:
- Personalised. The ECM software must be intuitive. The ECM interface should allow personalisation to accommodate the preferred work style of each user. When your users have ability to personalise the interface, putting the documents, forms, business processes and reports that are important to them right at their fingertips, they can work more efficiently.
- Integrated. Your users’ primary application is often something other than your ECM system. When they need to access the content from their ECM system, related to the information on their screen, they should not have to juggle between two applications. Ensure that your ECM system extends to your other applications such as Outlook, SharePoint, Office, ERP systems, and all your other critical applications.
- Mobile. Your ECM solution should make your content available from mobile and tablet devices. This is a fundamental requirement, because having instant access to your information from anywhere has a profound impact on productivity. Your processes don’t have to wait just for people to get back to the office.
- Offline. Do you have road warriors challenged by inconsistent and unreliable network access? Ensure that your ECM system will give them the ability to capture photos, retrieve, create and update documents and forms. You eliminate the time and energy spent on entering data when back in the office because all the information automatically synchronises when connected back to the network.
- Extended. It’s great that YOU can access all your information, but what about your customers, constituents and students? Improve your customer service by allowing your customers to submit forms, track their status and access documents online. You also eliminate time and money spent printing and mailing documents and forms.
Your ECM solution should be able to integrate with ALL your critical applications. By integrating with your other applications, this eases the transition to the new software, eliminates switching between screens to find the right information and eliminates error from manual data entry.
Integrations with your ideal ECM solution should:
- Not require any customised code. Your ECM solution should be able to quickly integrate with your other applications. This should take hours, not weeks or months. Some ECM products rely on custom code to create their integration points. Custom code is expensive, takes a long time and has to be revisited when either application is upgraded.
- Do more than retrieve documents. While it is extremely valuable to be able to retrieve related documents and information right from within another applications, look beyond document retrieval. Ask why your users are retrieving those documents. They are typically retrieving documents to answer a question or research an issue. An ideal ECM solution would provide the ability to make your users even more efficient by automatically filling out E-forms, launch workflows, print barcode cover-sheets and dynamically compose documents, such as offer letters and policies.
- Synchronise data real-time behind scenes. The information stored within your ECM system is related to transactions and data in your other systems. Ensure that your systems to remain in sync, real-time with a two-way data exchange. This eliminates duplicate data entry and is vital to ensure consistent decisions regardless of the system the user looks in.
Your ECM solution should allow you to monitor and report on the information and activity within your solution, without involving IT or database administrators.
An ideal ECM solution allows you to:
- Have real time visibility without involving IT. You need information about your business to make point in time decisions. You should have real-time visibility into your processes, including notifications of volume thresholds and aging content. This will allow you to eliminate bottlenecks and make timely decisions. You shouldn’t have to wait on a database administrator to get this for you. You should have the ability to run the reports whenever you want.
- Access dashboards from anywhere. Give your executives real time insights into their organisation from their iPad. Add portals to your SharePoint sites, ensuring that the latest information is right at their fingertips.
- Analyse the data your way. Dashboards are great, but sometimes deeper analysis of the data is required. Does your ECM system integrate directly with Microsoft Excel, allowing instant extraction of data, allowing you to slice the data the way you need to? If you need to extract data to a data warehouse, this should be easy and cost-effective. It is your data after all.
An ideal ECM solution will provide affordable redundancy of your data, and have your retention policies running automatically behind the scenes.
An ideal ECM solution should make it easy to:
- Secure your content. Your ECM solution should be able to take advantage of your existing Active Directory and LDAP security design. You ought to be able to further secure your data with https connectivity and file level encryption on NTFS shares.
- Protect your content. You should not have to pay for expensive storage devices to benefit from online redundancy. Your ECM solution should allow you to store the files on any network discoverable file share, allowing you to take advantage of your existing infrastructure. It should provide multiple electronic copies of all your documents, across multiple servers and locations.
- Destroy your content. Legal requirements dictate that your documents are deleted according to their legal retention requirements. Can you implement these within your ECM solution? One of the main benefits of storing your content centrally is so that you can manage its lifespan. Ensure that your ECM solution will make it straight forward to implement your retention plans.
