As you evaluate document management systems, you’ll no doubt have a list of “must-haves” and a list of “nice-to-haves.” If you’re having trouble determining which items go within the needs vs. the wants lists, consider first the goals of your transition from paper to digital processes. Which gaps are you trying to fill? Which paper-based errors have cost you the most as a business?

Need some advice? We can boil it down to four critical features that you can put straight into your “must-haves” list. These document management system features will significantly impact your bottom line and efficiencies.

Every year, the way we do business shifts, morphs, and adapts to current expectations. The finance department is subject to the same impacts, and in turn, sees emerging trends that impact processes year-over-year.

Looking toward 2019, we're predicting that these trends include the rise of automation technologies, greater conversation around data privacy and content management, and the ever-growing demands of a mobile workforce. Curious how these finance department trends will impact your day-to-day processes and decision-making in the coming year? Read on.

Are you wondering why business process reengineering is a term popping up everywhere you turn? Here’s a refresher: the term, "business process reengineering," was coined in the early 1990s. It is defined as the radical restructure of organizations by focusing on the ground-up design of their business processes. It’s the full-scale recreation of processes as opposed to an iterative optimization of sub-processes. Since inception, it’s been a wildly popular methodology, and it hasn’t lost any steam in 2018.

Technology plays an enormous role in the implementation of business process reengineering. In fact, emerging technologies that automate labor and resource-intensive processes or eliminate obstacles for swift delivery or customer service have propelled business process reengineering into even greater popularity.

In the '90s, we were waiting for technology to catch up! But with machine learning, AI, workflow automations, and cloud technologies taking over core processes, business process reengineering is no longer just a concept.

Business process reengineering is not a particularly new term or methodology. In fact, it made its first appearance in an article in the 1990s, 20-some years ago.

This article was written by Michael Hammer, a computer science professor at MIT. Hammer defined business process reengineering as the act of recreating a core business process with the goal of improving product output, quality, or reducing costs.

What is business process reengineering? It's a company's approach to change: rethinking how technology could be used throughout their workflows to create new processes. Typically, this involves first analyzing these core workflows and identifying processes that are under-performing or inefficient and then finding technology solutions to better them.

Many companies—and some industries—still rely on paper for their core business processes and operations. But the “go paperless” revolution has brought on new technologies that are designed to overhaul the processes that have traditionally required paper documentation. Technology, like enterprise content management (ECM), has been a major motivator for companies to implement business process reengineering methodologies.

"Reengineering" in this case means radical change, not just minor adjustments to negligible issues in your workflows. This technology is meant to disrupt the way you’ve always done it when it comes to data capture, record storage, content and document management, and information exchange. How can electronic forms help you reengineer the core processes in your business?