Document Imaging and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) alive in VisualRATEX Tuesday, August 2 nd, 2:30 – 3:30pm By Thomas Romantic, Cornell Business Services & Jere Warner, Ratex Business Solutions

Questions Document Imaging and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) alive in VisualRATEX 2:30-3:30 Attend this session to learn how your school can use Document Imaging tools in VR to view actual invoices, course requests and other important documents with one click of the mouse. We will also demonstrate the birth of the new CRM application that is being developed in VR.

Alto Database Integration AP.TF and TX.CRF Digital Storage

The Idea Scan all of the store invoices into an electronic repository in order to eliminate time-consuming filing and make them easily accessible to all store staff.

The Process In fall 2004 we began work on this project. With the vendor, Alto imaging Technologies Inc., that developed the systems we use to store and retrieve scanned articles for custom coursepacks, we discussed applying this technology to solve one of the labor intensive administrative functions in our business. We receive approximately 25,000 invoices each year. The processes of filing them, and then of retrieving them when questions arise have been time consuming and inefficient.

The Process The initial development took just a few weeks, and additional features were added later. We were able to use equipment and hardware we already had, although we did choose to buy a new server and we needed to acquire an additional license for the software. The equipment requirements are: –Standard server running Windows Server 2003 (can be obtained for approx $2000) –UltraDoc software from Alto (contact RBS) –Scanner (prices for scanners range from $100 - $6000)

The Process We began with invoices for this fiscal year, which started July 1, We first loaded the metadata, which is the log of every transaction, and then scanned each invoice in order to attach the image files to the metadata. It took several months to scan the invoices dating back to July 1. Student employees assisted with preparing the invoices for scanning (removing staples, etc.) and scanning is done by members of the store operations team when they can flex from the sales floor to the office.

Daily Maintenance Now that the repository is in place, the metadata is updated every night based on new invoices and credit memos that our business office has entered in RATEX. The following morning we scan the paper invoices and attach the image files to the metadata. This takes 45 minutes to one hour each morning.

Features Usage is view-only (except for one or two users who have administrative’ privileges) The data attributes displayed can be customized by user Full-text searching… e.g. by name of company, or name of product Images saved as TIF files…. Can be printed, or can be ed as an attachment and then viewed with the Microsoft TIF viewer that is now standard in Office. The database is tied into Visual RATEX so that users can link directly from RATEX to the appropriate image file

Results Our buyers and accounting staff are extremely pleased. The retrieval of information for verifying pricing and answering questions is almost instantaneous. The time savings from filing alone nets to over 15 hours per month. (We were spending approximately 30 hours per month filing invoices. Scanning them takes just 15 hours per month.)

Results The space savings have also been dramatic. We used to keep approximately 64 linear feet of filing capacity in our business office. After one year the invoices were moved to banker’s boxes in our warehouse. We’ve had to retain 24 banker’s boxes per year for 7 years. After invoices are scanned they now go directly to banker’s offices, so we’ve eliminated the need for file space. The university is currently revising its retention policy; it’s possible that if electronic versions are available, we will not need to retain the paper copies at all in the future.

Results We are also discovering new uses, now that data on invoices is so accessible. For example, UPS invoices include credits for missed delivery times, based on Z number, so we can search by Z number in order to refund customers’ payments for expedited shipment. A second example is better freight monitoring, to see if the method we requested was used.

CRM Applications

Customer Notifications

Faculty Database

Live Examples

Thank You! Tom / Jere

Thank You!