How To Identify Hindrances To Your High-Efficiency Backend Systems By Samuel L. Schrage, AnyDoc Software

Thanks to a heightened regulatory environment and fierce competition, enterprise-wide workflow, content management and resource management systems are no longer found exclusively among the high brow Fortune 500 companies. According to a recent study published by the Aberdeen Group, 40 percent of mid-market companies are reporting moves to core business applications and ERP suites. With the promise of being able to streamline operations, break down silos that isolate individual departments and prevent key business processes from slowing to a crawl, you would anticipate staggering increases in productivity and efficiency. However, regardless of how well an enterprise's automated backend system flows, if it is tethered to a manual front end process (to wit, manual sorting and data entry), its efficiency will be curbed.

The first generation solution to manual data entry was semi-automated data entry processes, such as keying in data from digital images on a screen. But even key-from-image technology is falling short of the power and speed necessary to keep up with the demands of fully automated backend systems. This fumbled baton pass between these mismatched systems can—and many times does—keep companies from reaping the monetary rewards they were most likely promised when they automated. Consequently, companies often forego valuable money-saving opportunities, such as early pay discounts with invoices, and lost income inherent to the manual processing of remittances. Essentially, having a manual front end process feeding an automated backend is like putting a governor on a sports car in that you have a powerful downstream system being stymied by its upstream data entry processes.

Sam Schrage is President of AnyDoc Software, a leading provider of automated data capture and document processing software solutions. With more than 19 years in the software industry, Schrage combines his technical acumen and business administration background to keep AnyDoc Software on the cutting edge of the data capture industry.