Published on the 21/09/2015 | Written by Newsdesk

Office copiers have been transformed into business process management tools. We look at some of the offerings available and find out what they can do to make document management easier… and deliver your coffee just so, too…

Order your coffee via your photocopier? It’s weird, but some modern copiers can do just that. Although you might not fancy your machine doing so, Fuji Xerox has one set up at its headquarters to do just this, as a way of demonstrating how versatile the modern copier has become.

Of course, it’s not attached to a coffee machine… instead it sends an email to reception to bring you a flat white or long black, or whatever.

Obviously a sales demo, it nevertheless serves to illustrate the fact that the office copiers are so much more these days. And the once-were-photocopier suppliers have been transformed into document management specialists, moving well beyond the realms of merely photocopying in the process. The machines have also changed their name along the way and are usually called multi-function devices (MFDs) now, reflecting their enhanced capabilities.

As well as being printers and now usually scanners too, the new photocopiers aren’t actually copiers at all as we once knew them. They now come bundled with document management and workflow software to deliver business process management (BPM) capability.

Document management software and increasingly ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are now integrated with MFDs and are used to track documents’ journey, archive them and make them easy to retrieve. The latter facility is not to be underrated if you have ever had to spend hours trying to track down an essential paper file that’s gone missing.

MFDs can now talk to MS Exchange, Lotus Notes, SharePoint and ERP software via middleware. This allows them to undertake a huge variety of tasks, from assigning metadata to aid document retrieval; to controlling who has access to documents; to identifying who has sent emails. They can also aid workflow and help manage storage.

Non-repudiation is becoming a major issue, with legal compliance and anti-corruption requirements increasing markedly in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. A recent study of senior executives by Dow Jones revealed that 95 percent fear increased corruption in the current climate. Dow Jones Risk and Compliance Solutions’ specialist Richard Butler, warns that, “While trust needs to be inherent within every company, senior executives cannot rely on ethics alone to stamp out corrupt practices. The backbone of any compliance strategy is sound technology that can deliver the necessary checks to clarify the grey areas that exist around corruption and corporate culture.” This reinforces the growing need to integrate paper document trails with electronic processes.

On a more practical level, the new souped-up copiers can ‘talk’ to your server, making document management much smoother and less scary. MFDs aren’t so new, having been around for four to five years now. However, until recently they’ve been confined to the corporate world, so haven’t had a high profile. But prices are now dropping to the point where some SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) can afford them too.

They continue to have their place in the big corporate and government world, but ordinary businesses are also starting to discover just how useful they can be. For example, Fuji Xerox Australia’s office software marketing manager Russell McNamara says that the company is seeing increased interest from small to medium businesses – particularly those that have to deal with a lot of documentation such as invoicing and personal information (for example accountancies and law firms). Fuji Xerox has developed a user-friendly, webbased suite of applications that enables clients to scan and file documents automatically into their document management systems from their devices.

“Our machines are now portals to get into other applications such as SharePoint, Docushare, TRIM or Worksite. The MFD now becomes a direct link to business applications,” says McNamara.

Unstructured control
The link between the copier and business software is middleware, such as the eCopy and Kofax document imaging software, which allows MFDs to ‘talk’ to software. Canon solution specialist Mike Hooker explains: “The business solution side [of the workflow] was separated from scanners, or MFDs, for a long time. Now, through these technologies, they are starting to talk to each other and we are starting to see organisations wanting to utilise the infrastructure they’ve already purchased.”

“Traditionally, 80 percent of information is not stored in a relational database structure. It’s either a piece of paper, in someone’s head, on the local laptop, or a piece of email, something like that. The trick is to consolidate all that information and get it into a manageable repository,” says Hooker.

Canon and Fuji Xerox are seeing the integration of scanning with BPM in several specific areas: to manage invoicing and purchase orders; to manage email communications, for law firms in particular and government departments in general; and for remote document management.

Distributed capture is the name given to managing scanned documents remotely.

Hooker says it is the fastest growing area when it comes of MFD use. It is particularly useful for getting information from remote offices and putting it into workflow. For example, it can be used to automate accounts payable rather than having the job done manually.

“Lots of organisations are looking at systems where you scan in these document images, strip the information and put it in the ERP system, then put it into workflow and approve the invoice, which makes for a much more efficient accounts system,” says Hooker.

Fuji Xerox’s McNamara puts it more directly. “You can track exactly what’s happening with documents, without having to play telephone tag to find out who’s responsible when an invoice goes missing. It makes it that much harder for people to pretend they haven’t received something, when really they just haven’t got around to dealing with it.”

Distributed capture aids document security in this way too – no more ‘lost’ documents – and you also have “immediacy of information”, says Hooker, as that information is now available to everyone who needs it, while the person who generated it still retains control of it.

Business efficiency is the biggest driver behind take-up of BPM-integrated scanning, says Hooker. “And that’s where the accounts-payable solution comes into play for the CFO (chief financial officer) – they can get a quick ROI (return on investment) when they start to plug into MFDs.”

Secure email
Another growing use of software-enhanced MFDs is email authentication. This is of particular interest to legal firms, which must ensure that documents are authentic, so need to know who sent them and be able to create an audit trail for documents. This ‘compliance’ issue, as it termed, is about to become much bigger in New Zealand as the Public Records Act starts to bite next year, when PRA inspections start, says Hooker. Although it mainly affects public organisations, those who deal with them will be also affected. In addition, exporters and companies that are subsidiaries of US firms in particular face heavier compliance demands to ensure their paperwork is in order.

Law firms copy and email a lot of documents, but, surprisingly, aren’t always very efficient about this – even though some have to do so late at night when there is no secretarial support. A large recent installation involved Simpson Grierson, a large NZ law firm, with 420 staff spread between Auckland and Wellington. It brokers a lot of big deals – and generates a lot of documents. It wasn’t coping and was getting buried under the paperwork that it was also having difficulty sending to clients around the world.

Canon’s solution to the paper deluge and communications problem was to install 55 networked MFDs, equipped with eCopy document management software that can integrate the paper and digital worlds, and allow you to scan and email a hard copy document to anyone, anywhere, straight from the MFD. It also creates an audit trail in the process, so improves security. In addition, it interfaces with Microsoft Outlook, so emails are automatically logged in users’ sent items folder.

That audit trail is created because, unlike simpler MFD email systems, the integration with Outlook makes it clear who sent what email where. Newer software enhancements now allow for encryption too, which enhances security even further.

Efficiency vs compliance
Multi-function devices and their ability to integrate with business processes are starting to play a significant role in Australian business. The need to deliver business process improvements and both reduce and better manage costs has coincided with an explosion of unstructured content. The demand for integrated solutions continues to grow along with compliance requirements in document-intensive industries such as finance, health, education and professional services.

Fuji Xerox Australia’s McNamara, says that the need for integrated solutions stems from some basic analysis. “How much time does an employee spend on manual archiving and filing or retrieving documentation?” McNamara says, when you stand back and look at daily tasks, there are often opportunities for automation of paper-intensive processes to achieve efficiencies that can impact on many staff. “But, equally, it is these processes that can be the most resistant when it comes to organisational change” says McNamara. You just can’t avoid the visibility and tangibility of hard copy.

At the same time, compliance and privacy demands have also risen considerably in Australia. Our own version of the US’s Sarbanes-Oxley Act, CLERP 9, has put big demands on companies to maintain scrupulous records, while anti-corruption and privacy concerns when dealing with personal information are also growing issues. Both acts are designed to ensure that the kind of corporate scandals that Enron has become a byword for don’t happen again, which is good, but the result is more and more records to create and maintain.

Only in recent times, as users have come to expect almost instantaneous information at their fingertips, and as document management tools have become more widely used, has attention been paid to addressing paper-based processes – particularly in small to medium businesses. “An area we are seeing significant interest in is the interface between the multi function device and document management systems – particularly in the SME market,” says McNamara.

Bridging the gap
It was to deal with these issues that Fuji Xerox Australia’s in-house development team built Image Gateway for Apeos (IGA2.0), to bridge the gap between the MFD and an organisation’s core business applications.

IGA2.0 is a web-based intranet application that can be accessed through the web interface of the device and, basically, becomes the link between the user and the organisation’s business applications such as the EMDS so, an authenticated user can scan, index and archive a document all at the same time, applying metadata tags as part of the process – all at the MFD, and all within the company’s network.

“This not only saves on time but also aids security,” says McNamara. “Authentication is really important for our customers, it’s a big thing for companies and organisations with all the compliance drivers there are now.”

Swipe card or PIN number security ensures that access is restricted appropriately to the employee’s role, and also provides for usage and cost tracking.

Last, but by no means least, says McNamara, cost-management is a significant factor with document-intensive processes and is a consideration for many organisations. Having a strategy helps reduce unnecessary costs and wastage at a time when high consumable and energy costs have become an issue, because of both the financial climate and pressure on business to be more sustainable, he says.

“People often don’t realise how much they’re printing, and how wasteful they’re being, until they can see and control print spending. Legal and accounting firms, for example, can produce huge numbers of documents for their clients. Education is another industry where the ability to be able to charge back printing costs and allocate usuage is a critical requirement,” says McNamara.

“You need to be able to measure that output and look at ways of managing things better to avoid waste – and also to recover actual costs from clients.”

Green future
And what about the future? Canon’s Mike Hooker sees a growing move to scanning. But there has to be a push to get organisations to do so, he says. This can be an office move or compliance demands, or the rising cost of real estate. Such caused Canon itself to digitise old manuals using scanners, to cut down on its files when it moved offices.

“But the paperless office is not going to be a reality,” says Hooker. “We now talk about paperless filing. It’s a case of ‘scan once, view many’, so it’s available to everyone who needs access to it because you captured the information.”

Fuji Xerox has a real bottom-up ‘green’ approach, with some components of its machines now being made of a biomass plastic that is 30 percent corn-derived, making it both bio-degradable and less energy intensive to manufacture – its carbon footprint is 16 percent lower than that of conventional plastic. Competitive pressure has seen a whole raft of standards introduced and compliance is something that the industry is taking very seriously – which has to be a good thing for not only for reducing purchase and running costs but also for lightening the environmental load, which is good news for the planet.

NZ ARCHIVES: State-Of-The-Art Storage
Across the Big Ditch, in New Zealand, compliance regulations have taken somewhat longer to impact on businesses than in Australia, but this is about to change – at least for companies dealing with the public sector – when the Public Records Act starts to bite next year.

Storage and record-keeping specialist Iron Mountain’s business development manager, Tony Watt, says that while the act is not legally binding on companies – it covers public entities – it is very helpful to businesses tackling compliance issues as they can use the Public Records Act (PRA) as a guide. The act provides a detailed description, plus technical specifications, of how to use metadata to help with file storage and to ensure documents are authentic. It has raised interest overseas too, as it is such a good guide.

Through Archives NZ, the PRA has made available different flavours of PDFs and TIFs, as these are more secure than text versions of documents. These are the main image formats in which scanned documents are stored. “In these formats, Archives NZ guarantees it will maintain a migration path [to newer technologies] indefinitely for documents,” says Watt.

But even scanned images aren’t totally secure. “Documents can be locked-down as ‘read-only’, but PDFs can still be pulled to pieces,” says Watt. “So, it’s a matter of keeping the document’s context intact. This is done via an audit trail.”

This is the other part of what Archives NZ calls its document risk-management process, by which it creates just such an audit trail. It does this using metadata and it recommends organisations use two forms of metadata: at the point of capture and as a part of the whole document creation process. This mitigates risk and ensures “the creation and maintenance of full and accurate business records”, it says.

First of all, tight procedural controls are necessary to ensure records are “tamperproof and authentic”, according to Archives NZ. The person or persons who have responsibility for both creating and changing the records must be both assigned and documented, it says. This information must be included in the document’s metadata.

Metadata is also created at the point of capture and should include, as a minimum, a unique identifier, name and date. In addition, information about who created the record and what business is being conducted must also be attributed to the document. This gives it a context which helps in establishing authenticity.

In theory, organisations could actually abandon hard copy altogether, under the Electronic Transaction Act (2003), and use scanned images of documents in court should they ever need to do so, says Watt – “providing you can show their integrity and that they’ve not been tampered with”. However, this has yet to be tested in court.

The solution that government and many companies are moving to, instead of testing out these new legal waters, is to have a company like Iron Mountain scan in their documents and then store the hard copy originals securely off-site. To this end, Iron Mountain has just opened a $15 million storage warehouse in East Tamaki, Auckland. This means that concerns around, say, the authenticity of signatures on documents stored online can be resolved, by referring to the hard copy when necessary. But this still frees up valuable office space and means documents can be largely stored online, making their management and retrieval a lot easier.

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