The race to success in today’s business world starts and ends on a budget. For companies of all sizes, the goal is to remain competitive while spending less. This challenge is especially great for small and mid-sized businesses that need to invest in order to grow.

It can be a struggle for SMBs to find the technology they need to succeed, without breaking the bank. However, companies such as Xerox recognize the unique business requirements of SMBs and have developed an extensive portfolio of technology that gives these businesses an array of options to enhance the ways they work.

For example, Xerox’s latest version of DocuShare, it's enterprise content management platform, is specifically tailored to the SMB crowd. DocuShare Express is affordably priced for smaller businesses and comes equipped with an easy, quick install process suited to business users – dispelling any notion that extensive IT knowledge is needed to get a content management solution up and running. To allow more direct integration with the multifunction display panel than ever before, Xerox has also made a DocuShare EIP Connector available at no cost.

It is important to realize that content management is no longer a necessity for only the largest of companies. It needs to be top of mind for smaller companies too. A key reason many SMBs fail within their first few years is that they’re unable to manage company information and processes, especially when the company begins to grow. Many smaller business owners are just focused on trying to get their businesses off the ground - instead of thinking about how vital keeping, storing and maintaining information, records and documents will be to the success of their business.

In an age of information overload, being able to obtain useful information and collaborate effectively is critical for organizations of any size, so it is important that smaller businesses have access to advanced, affordable content management solutions.

Jay Ganesh
Director, Channel Marketing and Launch
Xerox DocuShare Business Unit

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I had a chance last week to moderate a lively and informative panel on enterprise content management at the CIO Forum and Executive IT Summit in Cleveland. The one key message that panelists drove home was that effective enterprise content management has to be about more than just installing software on a server and putting together a technology workflow.

There has to be organizational change and a commitment to optimizing the productivity of the assets of the enterprise in order to accomplish key objectives such as speeding time to revenue and rapidly managing costly corporate issues such as litigation risk. Effective ECM solutions start with understanding the needs of the business and how ECM technologies can enable or improve critical business processes. EMC solutions can help health insurance providers improve membership enrollment, can help financial institutions process and fund mortgages more quickly, can help companies manage and adhere to employment laws, or can help global manufacturing companies bring products to market more quickly. Today’s collaborative business environments are also requiring ECM solutions to extend out beyond our own firewalls to include our customers, suppliers and business or trading partners.

For example, one Xerox customer was able to change its culture from relying on snail mail to using Xerox Distributed Capture Service to submit account-related documents. Now more than 90 percent of its volume it submitted through devices with XDCS, improving time to revenue by taking a 3-5 day process down to just a couple of hours. The solution also significantly reduced expenses related to overnight shipping and long-term archival storage costs.

A second discussed example was how a large, global manufacturing company leverages document and content management technologies to better enable and support their legal discovery and litigation management requirements. This solution has created a more efficient process for their legal staff and outside counsel and has significantly reduced their costs.

So when your organization starts to think about ECM, think beyond a single hardware and software decision, and think about starting the journey with a single business application that has high-payback rather than trying to change the entire infrastructure, which for most companies is very difficult to do. Today’s solutions often include multiple technologies and integrate with the line-of-business applications. The key messages from the session were that successful solutions involve joint ownership and leadership from a business and I/T perspectives and that engaging outside partners can bring some of the best practices from the industry.

For open commentary and industry perspectives, visit http://www.xerox.com/blogs, http://www.xerox.com/podcasts or http://www.consulting.xerox.com/flash/thoughtleaders/index.html.

Rich Baily
Vice President, Business Process Services, Xerox Global Services

Posted by Big I, little t at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The office environment is constantly in flux and evolving as new accessories help make work flow easier and more efficient. Recently this became even more evident to me based on a conversation with a client. This gentleman informed me that he not only helped dramatically reduce his companies overall expenditure on promotional literature, but also increased their sales revenue by over 20% by altering how this literature was produced.

He informed me that his company use to prepare these huge elaborate informational binders which they sent to prospective clients. Each binder cost approx. $50 to produce and was quite heavy and expensive to ship. Looking to upgrade the presentation while reducing the cost, the company created a fluid digital presentation which they used their Xerox Duplicator to copy on to CD’s. This minor switch not only reduced the overall cost of each presentation from over $50 to less than $1 each, but increased their client retention and sales success rate.

How can such a simple change bring about such a major transformation? To me this shows the transition of today's office to a more digital workspace and how digital technology such as CD duplicators can not only be an integral office accessory, but also a financial asset. When you dissect the facts in this case, even though the original binder presentation was most likely very attractive and eye catching, and has the advantage that the reader does not need a separate device to read it, there were numerous drawbacks;

1) A binder is too heavy and cumbersome to travel with whereas an optical disc such as a CD or DVD (“Disc”) is light and easily fits in a briefcase or even a pocket for convenient travel.
2) Plus the shipping cost of a thick heavy binder is far more expensive than a small light Disc.
3) A binder is flat with two dimensional images, charts, and text whereas digital content on a Disc can offer eye catching graphics with fluid action and text that comes alive.
4) A binder can become dated and stale if it sits for too long whereas a Disc can have a link that directly connects to the companies website for the most up to date and relevant information.
5) A binder is susceptible to the elements and can become ruined if it comes in contact with rain or snow where a Disc is more tolerant to extreme conditions.
6) The lifespan of a Disc is far longer than that of content printed on paper.

This is not to say that Discs will wholly displace paper or other printed material, but rather to show the emergence of Discs and other digital content in the general office environment. When people ask me what markets are appropriate for an optical disc duplicator, I inform them any market that has content they want to store, distribute, or duplicate. So the next time you have a presentation or similar matter that you need to disseminate to any number of people or entities, look at the opportunity to take your company digital.

Ryan Swerdloff
VINPOWER DIGITAL INC.
"The Future of Optical Storage"

Click here to see more about Xerox Duplicators

Posted by Big I, little t at 03:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)