The
Secret to Electronic Document Delivery
What is in it for me?
A recent company
announcement we found describes the future direction of communication:
We are pleased to offer to our stockholders the
benefits and convenience of electronic delivery, including:
What is electronic document delivery?
Electronic Document Delivery (or distribution) is the ability to
create, distribute, and view documents without any paper trail. At the forefront of e-business, any solution
should be capable of bringing significant efficiency enhancements to your
organization, dramatically reducing the time and expense of your manual
day-to-day business processes.
From the company’s perspective, electronic document distribution
solutions will save thousands on the costs of producing and delivering their
business documents. From the stockholder’s perspective, e-delivery provides
speed and convenience. It also means that communication to and from the company
is now available from the individual’s desktop at home, thereby eliminating the
need to print, envelope and then mail any correspondence to the Company.
What are key features to look for in
electronic document delivery software?
A good software solution can electronically produce and distribute a
range of business documents, such as invoices, purchase orders, payslips,
remittances and you can stretch this list as far as the imagination can go.Some key features that you should look for in the software are:
-
Ability to easily integrate with your existing software application:
How do you link the software
to your current business application?
-
Ease of setup and operation:
A quick read of an overview help topic, should be
capable of delivering the concept of how to use the product and thereafter the
user interface must be intuitive to be able to lead you in its use.
-
Document must be converted to a universal electronic file format:
PDF files can be read on Apple
MACs, MS Windows, or Unix based systems. Files must be compact in size allowing
easy transportability by email. Some email servers do not allow sending of
large file attachments. PDF files are generally more size efficient than its
original document and are viewable on different operating systems using the
Adobe Reader.
-
In-built functionality to split (aka – ‘burst’, ‘explode’) an individual
document or multiple documents in a ‘Print Run’1
If the printed document consisted of say 20 pages, can
you send pages 1, 5, and 7 to destination 1 and pages 2, 4, 8, 10 to
destination 2 and so on?
-
Email capability:
Can you send the ‘burst or
exploded’ electronic document as attachments with customized emails?
-
The ability to password protect the electronic file:
If confidentiality is required, as in the case of
payslips, is the software capable of inserting an encrypted password (either
pre-configured or created ‘on the fly’) into the file?
-
An ability to personalize the email message and ‘Read Receipt’ options
for each Client:
The software configuration should allow you to
configure a subject/message/ read receipt requirement & confidentiality
flag option on the email plus optionally add a password to the electronic file
attachment
-
Price:
This is a key part of the evaluation.
You can measure the ‘Return on Investment’ (ROI) by assessing the number of
Invoices and Supplier Payment advices for instance, you would send out
currently in the mail. Then using the following formula you can measure the
time in months required to recoup the cost of the software by way of savings:
§
No of months for ROI = Software Price divided by Cost of producing monthly invoices
§
Cost of producing monthly invoices = No of monthly Invoices produced multiply by $1*
* $1 is the cost to cover postage/stationery/manual
labor to sort, envelope and deliver to the post box
For example: If the purchase
price is $395 and 100 invoices are printed currently per month then:
No of months ROI = 395 / 100 =
approx 4 months to recoup the cost of the software
There are
currently a number of accounting applications that provide document delivery
via PDFs attached to emails. However, some of them are only capable of
producing one document at a time so that there is still a heavy reliance on
manual input. A ‘complete’ solution would be capable of converting a ‘print
batch’ of documents into multiple e-documents and sent to multiple destinations
without the need of User intervention.
How do I find such applications?
Use of keywords like
‘PDF exploding’, ‘PDF bursting’ ‘Report bursting’ in some of the larger search
engines should identify the software available.
Acknowledgements:
Mac and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the
Windows and MS Windows are trademarks
of Microsoft Corporation
UNIX
is a registered trademark of The Open Group.