'Purchase to Payment' - Process Efficiencies for SMEs

In these unrelenting times of austerity, it is SMEs who continue to suffer and have to make further cuts. However, savings can be made through improving efficiency of business processes in order to maximise budgets. One area which presents an opportunity to fine tune such processes is within the finance department itself.

While the majority of businesses have invested in implementing Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) over the years, this technology fails to virtualise and automate all processes – leaving finance departments with manual paperwork to be completed, often during the “purchase to payment” process.

Nearly 80% of all invoices are still delivered to a business on paper. And where an electronic method of delivery is implemented, invoices are still delivered as PDF files, presenting an unstructured document for the individual that cannot be read by the ERP program.

Few SMEs have the luxury of moving to a full Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) approach, which is often taken by many enterprises to standardise documents sent between recipients. In addition to this, with paper based files and PDFs likely to be maintained for years to come, SMEs need to consider solutions that will combat these issues and embrace unstructured documents.

 

SMEs opting for an invoice process solution that automates the accounts payable process will eliminate clerical tasks associated with filing and processing invoices through automation thus, reducing cost and resource spent. Furthermore, the system increases control and visibility across the company, and allows immediate and secure access to the data.

A business automation approach based on document capture, management and workflow can enhance existing business processes and compliment the investment in existing ERP systems. With costs of new generation document management and workflow systems, SMEs now have a viable option to transform their purchase processes that offers a compelling ROI. 

Click here to discover how Invu’s Invoice processing solution can benefit your business. 

Government Data Sharing

Cabinet Minister Francis Maude has recently unveiled his initiative to increase the ability for Government departments to share public data.

The plans, if passed, will make it easier for government and public sector organisations to share confidential public information. The plans will also make it possible to license the sharing of data where it is currently prohibited, subject to privacy safe guards.

According to the ICO, data sharing is currently seen as the disclosure of data from one or more organisations to a third party organisation or organisations, or the sharing of data between different parts of a single organisation, which can take many forms.

The initiative proposes to put in place  fixed guidelines which look set to aide good practice – enabling organisations to collect and share personal data in a way that is fair, transparent and in-line with the expectations of those whose information they are sharing.

Data sharing has been discussed in detail since 2007, with Tony Blair proposing amendments to the Data Protection Act to allow greater data sharing between departments within the government – but this was met by opposition from those who stated that this would affect data privacy.

Government departments, if they choose to data share, need to have a secure and reliable system in place with which to store sensitive information. Through removing the manual files and replacing the process with a secure, electronic system data protection is adhered to, and only those who are privy to reviewing certain information have access to it securely. This reduces the likelihood of sensitive information being lost, stolen or falling into the hands of those who should not have access to it.

We would be naive to believe that data sharing currently does not exist – what should be concerning is the way in which this sharing may occur. With many files being paper, surely the manual processes associated with sharing the information should be cause for alarm?

NHS Trust fined £90,000 for serious data breach

A recent news story has highlighted how a Central London Community Healthcare (CLCH) NHS Trust has been fined £90,000 after a serious breach of the Data Protection Act.

The breach occurred in March 2011, following on from patient lists being faxed to the wrong recipient, around 45 faxes over a three month period. The lists had contained sensitive personal data relating to 59 individuals.

An investigation from the ICO into the data breach found that neither member of staff involved with the breach had received data protection training and that the organisation did not have adequate checks in place when sending information.

The handling of public data has been a popular news topic recently with various government officials being penalised for not providing the necessary care in handling such information. But surely all organisations handling such data should be putting vigorous processes and robust systems in place to manage all corporate information, especially that of a sensitive nature, if not because of the media furore that ensues after a breach is found then certainly for operational reasons?

Through the use – and regular review – of such processes and systems, fines such as those imposed by the ICO can be avoided.

This case has highlighted that organisations are not only failing to protect their clients’ or patients’ data, but are also failing to protect themselves when it comes to the data which they handle and the systems which support them.

By not having a reliable system in place – both in terms of IT infrastructure and internal practises – organisations are letting down their clients, customers and indeed anyone whose information that they hold, and ultimately undermining their own long-term stability. 

Business Process Management – Not just for the enterprise

A recent study has been carried out by IBM on attitudes to business process management (BPM). The survey, conducted by YouGov, spoke to 650 senior business decision makers from small, medium and large UK firms. One of the most significant findings was the difference in attitudes to BPM between small and large firms. The survey found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the larger the business, the more likely they were to have plans in place to update their business processes in the next two to three years – demonstrated by 70% of those businesses with 250+ employees having BPM plans in place, compared with only 31% of those with less than 50 employees.

BPM is centred on making processes efficient and flexible in response to the company’s expansion. The implementation of faster and more effective business processes aligns all aspects of the company and, as such, usually results in improved client services. 85% of the senior business decision makers identified ‘line of sight’, ‘visibility into work occurring across your organisation’ and ‘clear understanding into how your business is performing’ as key to a business’s success. However, despite the majority believing this, very few SMEs practise what they preach as they are under the impression that they cannot afford to implement systems that aid in BPM.

Document management systems however are one means by which to create a transparent, streamlined business – a major pre-requisite for effective BPM. By consolidating all documents electronically into one central system, employees are able to access client information that would otherwise be difficult to lay hands on, and therefore deal with any queries directly. Time spent on manual processes is dramatically reduced with companies often seeing a return on their investment after the first year – challenging the wide belief that BPM solutions are only affordable to the enterprise and demonstrating real value for companies of all sizes. 

The impact of the proposed EU data reforms

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI), a UK business lobbying organisation, has shared its concerns over the proposed changes to the EU data protection regulations; specifically, the potential financial impact on businesses as well as the risk of data compliance restrictions stifling innovation.

The CBI argues that many innovative business models, citing advertising and the music industry as examples, rely on data-sharing to generate revenue and ensure they are providing a tailored user experience and suggests that proposed reforms would restrict businesses’ ability to do this.

In addition to implementing data-sharing restrictions, the CBI highlights the financial consequence of complying with the reforms. The European Commission claims that its proposals will save businesses €2.3 billion a year, across all EU countries, by creating a coherent and streamlined approval process for organisations working across EU states. However, the CBI believes that this is an overestimation of the business benefits and overlooks compliance costs such as changing IT systems, re-training staff, implementing call centres to handle data compliance issues and, in some cases, appointing a Data Protection Officer. While costs are likely to be incurred in order to comply, businesses need to carefully consider the potential cost should they suffer a data breach.

Businesses could potentially face fines of up to two percent of their revenues should they fail to report a breach in the 24 hour time period and the cost to brand reputation should not be overlooked either, as recently demonstrated in the news reports surrounding Global Payments’ data breach.

Those that choose to implement a document management system mitigate the risk of suffering a data breach and incurring huge fines as their documents containing sensitive data are stored in a central, secure system. Other cost burdens that the CBI highlight, such as re-training and IT refresh, would also be significantly reduced, if not eliminated, as the document system is integrated with existing IT infrastructure, improving ease of use.

Click here to find out more about how a document management system could help improve your data protection processes. 

Housing Associations open spending data

Housing Minister, Grant Shapps seems to be making progress with his campaign to push for Housing Associations to make spending data public knowledge – with at least two housing associations, Hertfordshire Housing and Viridian Housing agreeing to open up spending data from next month.

Hertfordshire Housing and Viridian Housing are responsible for around 5,300 and 16,000 properties respectively, with the associations expected to publish the details of all spending which is above £500, and of any salaries which are over £50,000.

The call for greater visibility of spending data follows pressure to expose how public monies are being spent – organisations which receive money from the tax payer should now expect to come under greater scrutiny and be willing to explain financial decisions openly and honestly.

The ability to be able to share this data however will require housing associations to have in place a system which will ensure that all monies spent are being accounted for and accessible – with information being able to be readily accessed.

Although not public bodies, the housing sector in particular takes in money from taxpayers – the majority of which is invested in social housing, with this in mind surely it is only reasonable to share how this investment is being spent? Other public sector areas should beware, with the growing trend of openness and honesty with public spending it is only a matter of time before they too will have to review the systems which they have in place.

Coutts AML penalty – how come?

Coutts private bank, a division of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has been fined £8.75m by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for not displaying adequate measures to prevent money laundering. After reviewing 103 high-risk customer files the FSA found deficiencies in at least 73 of them.

The bank has received the largest fine of its sort for breaching anti money laundering (AML) rules, after three years of ‘systemic’ problems in handling client affairs vulnerable to corruption because of customers’ political links.

The FSA found, after an industry-wide review in October 2010, that the bank was not conducting robust enough checks, nor were they monitoring relationships with high-risk customers to a satisfactory degree or verifying origins of deposits being made. Therefore, any suspicious funds being laundered through the account were not being highlighted.

The failings displayed by Coutts have been labelled as ‘significant, widespread and unacceptable’ with its conduct falling well below the standards expected. The fine which has been awarded to Coutts demonstrates the severity with which the FSA is regarding anti money laundering and should serve as a sharp reminder to other major players in the industry.

But surely avoidance of such fines is simple? Banks should surely have in place a system with which to manage and track any irregular activities which could highlight money laundering or suspicious behaviour around customer accounts. Inherently manual in part, AML relies largely on clients providing physical evidence of identity. Through automating the processes involved in the manual collection of data, a client can be identified and then linked into an online data provider to perform the necessary checks automatically. The processes, infrastructure and technology are all available, so why was this allowed to happen?

Electronic data management not only brings a joined-up process to AML, but also reduces the time taken to perform previously onerous checks. It turns a time consuming task, prone to error, into a background function taking minutes. Our work in the wealth management space proves that compliance can be joined up and effective.

And as if this time and cost saving wasn’t enough, there is then the small matter of avoiding crippling fines for failing to prevent data misuse, and all at the click of a button or two.

Social Housing solutions for the smaller Housing Association

It’s easy to think of Housing Associations in terms of the big boys with high stock levels and major infrastructure projects supplied by the big system integrators. Of course it’s a fragmented “industry” with many small HAs. They face the same compliance and regulatory needs as the large players and need to get appropriate bang for their buck too. Getting efficient can sound a little trite. But it belies the fact that massive changes like welfare benefit reform and a dour economic backdrop mean that cost savings simply have to be top of decision makers’ minds.

This month’s Housing Technology includes an article about Shian Housing‘s adoption of Invu. There are approximately 320 small associations, with fewer than 1000 units, registered with the National Housing Federation and working in London. These form the G20 group, one of which is Shian.

Invu solutions have been implemented in many HAs and the trend is positive. Many of these have been in good sized and growing HAs, like Seren, Cosmopolitan, Adactus and Derwent. The solutions have been complex at times and the results hugely positive. We’re delighted to work on these projects and we hope that these customers are enjoying the benefits they set out to achieve - the fact that they are willing to provide great testimonials and case studies is certainly positive. But the Shians of this world show that careful husbandry, very well defined scope and a pragmatic sense of ambition can allow the smaller HAs to share many of these benefits.

Invu is delighted to work with all sizes of HAs. We’re at the NHF Housing Finance Conference and Exhibition at Warwick University and TAI 2012: The Housing Olympics in Cardiff this week. Next week  we’ll be at Hitex in Edinburgh. Come and ask us about Shian and our other customers experiences.

Pritchard's - A Lesson in Compliance

The recent case of Pritchard Stockbrokers using client money for its own expenses highlights the severity with which the FSA is now dealing with organisations that are breaching regulations.

The FSA issued a first supervisory notice to Pritchard, preventing it from taking part in further regulated activities, after being found guilty of using client money for its own expenses. In addition to breaching the golden rule of ring fencing client monies this also put client monies at risk – the firm’s assets were also frozen and clients were informed that Pritchard was no longer working for them.

The regulator said that it had come to the decision as it had ‘serious concerns’ – specifically that Pritchard had failed to arrange ‘adequate protection’ for client’s assets when it was responsible for them.

The impact for Pritchard’s is severe - all retail clients’ stock assets transferred to W. H. Ireland  and cash assets to  Reyker Securities plc, whilst Pritchards itself has now entered administration. W. H . Ireland’s £500,000 investment secures 8,000 new clients with non-cash assets of £400 million. This increases its private-client stockbroking client numbers by c.50% and total assets under management by c.25%. The cost of compliance cannot be under-estimated, nor, perhaps the potential benefits.

Pritchard’s actions raise several questions – not least how the stockbroker could go unnoticed using client money for internal expenses. This highlights the necessity for internal systems and processes which would record or flag abnormal activities regarding the movement of funds and fraudulent activity.

It also highlights how businesses at risk of legislation and compliance need to remain on ‘their toes’. Legislation doesn't generally go away; if anything the trend is for increased regulation  and firms must ensure they have sufficient processes in place to establish and maintain compliance. Failure to do so will inevitably result in warnings, as highlighted in the case of Pritchard’s, that have the potential to evolve into fatal penalties. 

How are you handling electronic discovery for your documents for FATCA?

The U.S Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) comes into effect on January 1^st 2013 to combat offshore tax abuse. Those caught by FATCA may be swiped with a 30% withholding tax on U.S investment income. For understatements on undisclosed foreign (ie non US) assets there’s a further 10% to add to this.

Foreign entities can avoid FATCA’s swingeing withholding tax as they enter the FATCA regime – after entering into a binding agreement with the IRS to identify U.S persons and to report certain information about them to the IRS. This information is then used to identify potential instances of under-reporting as well as fraud.

But how is such information collected? FFIs must retain all paper and electronic documentary evidence establishing the identity of account holders for 10 years. As is to be expected records must be accurate, up to date, consistent, retained for specific periods of time, and readily available for certification and auditing purposes. And this latter point is the key – all documents must be electronically searchable. The IRS will want to be able to run some sophisticated data collection, recognition and analysis tools over high volumes of data. No more hefty physical files of information or, if you do persist with these, then they will need to be digitised. 

Because of these requirements firms will need to adapt their systems and operational processes of January 2013 – this is a significant undertaking for many organisations, least of all those with multiple customer platforms. FATCA will be applicable for all types of financial institutions – the operational system needs to be in a position to detect U.S clients at the moment when an account is opened, as well as the entire lifecycle of a client through monitoring.

The efforts needed to fulfil these obligations can be substantial for a financial institution and can require specialist knowledge and assistance – knowledge which can be aided by a supplier of such a system with an understanding of the Act itself. Some firms are even taking the view that they will no longer broker for US citizens.

Getting parochial for a moment, it is essential that organisations caught by FATCA review all their internal systems. Much of this should be in train already, but the disclosure elements and, in particular, electronic searchability/ discovery means that how firms handle, store and retrieve documents will be at the heart of this.  Discussions with a document or content management provider should be high on the immediate agenda. A good provider will be able to call on a strong understanding the act, and be able to guide the organisation through the requirements and suggest any changes which may be needed to current systems in order to meet FATCA and other compliance requirements. 

FOI and Housing Associations

The Freedom of Information Act (FOI) came into force in 2005 and demands that individuals have the right to information, the right to confidentiality and the right to effective administration.

As such the act means that members of the public can demand information at any given time and it must be readily accessible. Considering today’s government is planning to consult on extending the FOI still further, this should give those Housing Associations with limited grip on their documents serious cause for concern.

A housing association typically holds vast amounts of information about each resident – past and present – and each property, making management of the sheer number of documents a trial in itself. It is therefore critical that a system and a set of robust processes are in place to manage such information, allowing administrators easy access to relevant material as requests are made.

Many housing associations are not however sufficiently equipped to easily produce information as requested, and are falling short when it is being demanded. Not being able to produce such information sends out the clear message that Housing Associations are not forward looking, not up to date and are simply inefficient when it comes to the management of documents. Above this, the simple time cost of manually trawling through documents in order to satisfy an FOI request can be enormous.

Housing Associations must realise that it isn’t difficult, costly or disruptive to manage information in such a way that enables ready compliance with the Act – even if the legislation is extended. Culturally it doesn’t have to be difficult either – in a society when information is readily available (the Google Corporation is after all now a verb), it will be nothing short of an anachronism that any organisation cannot access the right information immediately.

Housing Associations must therefore evaluate their processes ahead of more stringent requirements coming into force. The question is not just whether or not the FOI is appropriate to Housing Associations. In a way this doesn’t matter – from an operational and forward-looking perspective, the ability to comply should be a given. 

Further Reading:

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/blogs/data-overload/6519921.article 

The Mortgage Market Review & You

As the governance, risk and compliance bandwagon rolls on, and the ongoing need to evidence suitable ‘Know Your Customer’-oriented processes, so the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) consultation paper arrived in late December.

But for the typical IFA, what does it mean to day-to-day processes and workflows? Following the MMR, the ability to build and assess a full and complete profile of a potential borrower in order to ascertain the risk to the lender becomes a necessity. And rightly so.

After all, squeezing interest rates and deposit thresholds in order to mitigate against the damage caused by unexpected losses will only get the lender so far in the current economic climate.

Know Your Customer is increasingly being about understanding the risk of potential customer’s appetites. However, lenders should be aware that when MMR legislation is blended with Anti-Money Laundering legislation will surely mean that it is only a matter of time before there is a high profile case where the lender is seen to be misleading borrowers. As a result, the manner in which documents are created, edited, stored and presented is absolutely crucial – in fact, business critical.

Brokers, wealth managers and other investment houses are increasingly putting systems in place to ensure that relevant checks are not only being made with regard to records, content and document management, but that also provide financial organisations with security against auditors and any potential customer complaints.

As with much of corporate best practice, it is considered a nice-to-have until legislation insists upon it. Well, in the case of IFAs and best practice document processing, that time has surely arrived.

Document & Content Management for Housing Associations: A White Paper

Most of the white papers we’ve produced to date have been generic in kind – that’s not to say that they’ve not had focus, but they’ve been as applicable to a manufacturer as to a constructor or a charity. We’re taking a slightly different tack with the latest off the production line. This is sector specific , notably Housing Associations and other Social Housing providers. That’s not to say that some of the points we make aren’t valid elsewhere of course, but the focus is on a group of organisations which is of increasing importance to Invu. The number of HAs that we deal with continues to rise and rise.

The Social Housing sector faces all manner of pressures, from keeping costs down to service levels to financial control. Document and content management can play their part in alleviating these pressures by acting as so much more than simple passive repositories. This is mature technology which can be optimised to deliver even more value and this paper sets out to explore the options. It’s borne out of our experience to date and, in particular, where we’ve been back to existing customers to explore how they can benefit from work we’ve done for other HAs with the latest versions and technologies at our disposal. For example, the Adactus invoice processing, workflow and QLF integration project has delivered a solution which is of genuine interest to many other HAs. Great news and those customers taking the solution on board will see real benefits, from ROI, service level improvements and that critical financial control.  

Why not download the whitepaper http://www.invu.net/info/whitepapers.aspx and see if your organisation can reap the benefits too?

Teamwork paying off at Wembley

Yesterday was an incongruous mix – Wembley stadium dressed up for an NFL game between the Tampa Bay Bucaneers and Chicago Bears and “the home of football” home to hoards of accountants. This was the keynote IRISWorld event where Phill Robinson and his team got to say, “Hello Wembley” to massed rows of accountants worrying more about the numbers and the future of their practices than the 3 lions. The stadium is very impressive of course (and so it should be) and with a target attendance of c.800 IRIS pulled out all the stops to do justice to the choice of venue. OK – typical exhibition drop-out rates meant that the actual number was somewhat under but what this single community saw was an example of a well-focused team talking directly and knowledgably to its customers about what they wanted to hear. And it’s this aspect that struck home as being most impressive. The financial community has a very important concept: KYC – Know Your Customer. Wembley and the other IRIS roadshows was a fine example of how to know your audience en masse.


The headline plenary sessions were good and strong and stuffed with subject matter experts from the ICAEW and Microsoft. More importantly the mood-music and buzz around the break-out rooms and the exhibition stands was confident; an acknowledgement that this was no waste-of-chargeable-time, but an important tool in knowing how to guide each individual practice. And it wasn’t all futures and jam-tomorrow. One of the sessions was a very simple hints-and-tips talk and it was just as packed as the bright-new-future presentations.

IRIS’s branded version of Invu (IRIS OpenDocs) was well in evidence and it confirmed our view that Invu’s integration with IRIS and it’s strong positioning with accountants was natural and now, almost taken for granted. On the IRIS OpenDocs stand, a steady stream of attendees sought more info (“how does it work?”, “what’s the cost”), but the number one question? Email, email, email. How do I handle the sea of emails I get? Almost from day one in our relationship with IRIS, the need for a flexible email solution was a top agenda item and directly led to Invu Email Manager coming to market. Yesterday continued the evidence that this was well judged.

The last couple of years have seen a lot of change at Invu, including the IRIS partnership. Standing back and reflecting, this was and continues to be an extremely positive partnership and Wembley showed the benefit of dealing with the experts in an area. Invu deals with a number of domains as well as solving some more generic issues in other sectors and it’s important not to lose that focus. Where we get close to the issues faced by individual customers or sectors we have a solution set which can be a veritable chameleon. But you have to understand what’s needed and what works best for each business. As Invu delivers more individual mid-market type solutions our focus on what’s needed for a successful solution teaches us a valuable lesson in listening closely to what our customers want. This varies by business sector and by customer and we’ve had to change the way we work. In fact this has been a major and hugely positive transformation. Wembley showed that with a strong, capable and domain expert partner we can deliver on both fronts with trust and confidence. IRIS and other partners keep us on the ball so we cannot ever afford complacency. Without getting smug, Wembley reinforced the partnership. For some of us with many years spent delivering software for accountants it wasn’t quite like coming home, but it was pretty close.

IRIS & Invu team up for IRIS World 2011 Roadshows

There will be plenty of eyes on Invu in its guise as IRIS OpenDocs in the next few weeks. We’ll be supporting IRIS as our premier accountancy partner as the IRIS World 2011 roadshows begin. These are taking place across the UK, starting with Bristol and ending with a 10th and final event towards the end of the month. These are excellent opportunities to find out about Invu’s unique fit in the accountancy space, to discover why the largest provider of accountancy solutions has chosen to work so closely with Invu and to meet the teams to find out more about the difference IRIS and Invu can make.

The regional events are condensed to ½ day sessions so you can join the IRIS and Invu team for breakfast and be back in your office in time for lunch.


The largest event is at Wembley Stadium; this is a full day conference with guest speakers and focused afternoon breakout sessions. One of these is Practice Efficiency – Save an hour a day with IRIS and this is where accountants can find out how much time can be saved using IRIS Practice Software and IRIS OpenApps.


Join us at the largest FREE customer event for accountants. We’d be delighted to meet you and to hear about your practice’s needs – to register click this link http://bit.ly/p5Xcc9

Software for the real world….

Like software businesses the world over we find ourselves testing new releases in something of a vacuum – attempting to replicate the actions and environments of the real world can be a thankless and impossible task. Where the software can be used across a number of business scenarios and the twists and turns of a wider user community can vary enormously the scope of error is compounded. It’s an issue which the software community has wrestled with for many years now. Other than long, in-depth and often automated testing, the most common belt and braces proving route is by customer validation. Beta site testing is used the world over whether it be the big names like Microsoft, Oracle, Sage and others or the niche software provider.

Invu’s Early Adopter programme is typical. But we know that alongside those who are genuinely keen to see what’s round the corner, for most businesses the attraction can appear limited. We’ve been giving this a lot of thought. You see, high quality, real-world pre-release feedback is nothing short of gold dust. It can be the difference between success and embarrassment in some cases. But there must be something in it for the customer.

That’s why we’re formalising the Early Adopter programme with some sweeteners to add to the standards. (The standards being: a bit of first-mover advantage so you can be up and running before your competitors, enabling you to plan out your implementation and getting closer to the vendor and therefore being more influential in future product direction. There’s also the issue of ensuring the software quality for yourself – don’t trust anyone else, gain your own confidence etc. This is what large organisations with major roll-outs will do anyway so some of you may already be used to a period of User Acceptance Testing before new software is available to the business in a live environment.)

We’re looking for a good spread of customers across a range of organisational types. If you join us we’d like to make it a worthwhile exercise for all parties. Our most recent Newsletter leads with this request and asks that if you’re interested that you contact Mark Palmer or Sandeep Kang. Of course, we’ll be asking some customers and partners directly. But it would be great if you put your hand up first before we even send the invitations out….

A tale of two cities?

In our news section, we’re talking about a tale of two cities. Not exactly original, but it comes to mind with two new case studies – Seren Group in Newport and, a quick hop down the M4 in Cardiff, Hendre. They are both engaged in social housing and both have been delighted with their Invu experience. Housing Associations (HA’s) are waking up to Invu with its wider portfolio of products and integration opportunities with housing systems. Forty plus HAs have adopted Invu and, increasingly, the demand is for document management at the heart of the business.

HAs face a bombardment of documentation, from invoices, to maintenance orders, to tenant correspondence and much more. Service levels can massively improve if the documentation is immediately to hand and a 360˚ view of a tenant’s affairs or suppliers transactions are to hand. HAs come under tight regulation and service levels are an important benchmark, so being able to respond quickly with all queries answered first time is a significant measure of success. It’s also a measure of efficiency and cost saving. Right now there are still many HAs find themselves reliant on paper filing and queries may take hours or days to get answered and then only in part – add in the “whilst I’ve got you”, almost mandatory supplementary question and you could be back to square one. You can see why a good eDM solution is needed.
HAs face particular issues with accounts payable – often working with a host of suppliers. Many of these are likely to be local and small in keeping with an ethos of trading in the community where possible. Quick payment is often critical to these suppliers. However, manual processing of paper invoices can be a slow process. Invu’s invoice processing solutions cut through this – we’re getting increasing and encouraging demand here. Invoices are scanned, the relevant data is extracted from the invoice and then looked up against the finance system for supplier details, POs etc. This then initiates an automatic workflow for authorisation – what might currently be 1-2 week’s worth of round trip can be simplified to minutes, all without the fear of loss and all whilst still having sight of the information for queries. Extending Invu Document Management out beyond a passive repository can make a huge difference to the way businesses work and this is a great example of a sector where the fit is especially good. Invu’s engagement with HAs continues to get closer and stronger – we hope to see our South Walian friends at Seren and Hendre joined by many more HA peers using Invu.many more HA peers using Invu.

Housing Associations under pressure

Housing Technology magazine publishes provides IT, Technology and Telecommunications news to 8,000+ business and technology strategy decision makers in the UK social housing sector and local government. Document Management continues to be a pragmatic solution in the HA space – in fact we’ve been delighted to work with around 40 HAs in increasing depth, making Invu an important presence. 

The July edition of the magazine includes a focus on the importance of getting the eDM decision right and deploying successfully. HAs are facing increasing demands with changes to funding, auditing and governance all eating into resources against a background of cost pressures and a focus on service levels. eDM is not a silver bullet but we’ve seen some genuinely impressive results even with tight budgets.  Find out more by reading the Do’s & Don’t White Paper at: 


http://www.invu.net/info/whitepapers.aspx


   

Printing can seriously harm your business’ health

We’re on our soap box today. With a sense of indignation we look at something so many organisations take for granted – the need to print. As more output is electronic and email the business communication medium du jour it seems odd that our addiction to print isn’t challenged more often and robustly. Part of this may be due to the fact that the addiction is fed by a print and copy industry which tells us we can do the same and more for less. But is this a self-serving message?

Invu publishes a new opinion paper which looks at document and content management in the context of printing. According to Gartner research, “the typical print costs for mid-market companies are around 1-3% of revenue (Gartner 'Managed services in Europe')”. Gartner’s Predict 2011 anticipates 20-30% industry growth in managed print services until 2014 – it’s clearly a profitable sector. But at who’s cost and benefit? Our printing polemic takes an alternative view and examine why you should begin slashing your print costs.

Download Printing can seriously harm your business’ health at:

http://www.invu.net/info/whitepapers.aspx

Invu establishes alliance with Objectif Lune to launch new content automation technology

Invu now offers Invu Content Automation, after establishing alliance with Objectif Lune. PlanetPress Suite will be added to Invu’s product portfolio, providing customers with direct access to trans-promotional and transactional applications.

Trans-promotional activity is proven to enhance customer growth, retention and service levels, and every document sent to a customer is an opportunity for new business. The new offering, Invu Content Automation, will provides an easy way for businesses to create or enrich variable content documents of any type from Invu’s document management repository. Invu Content Automation also accelerates distribution, speeds up payment processes and even reduces postal costs.

Invu Content Automation will allow customers to import existing business documents created with any Windows application and to interpret their content intelligently for repurposing and enrichment. Data can be mapped onto a template document, and efficiencies are increased with workflow by routing documents for printing, emailing or indexing and archiving into Invu.