FileDirector Blog

Why Every Organization Should Use Barcodes

2011-06-09T13:07:00.004-04:00

Webinar - Thursday June 16th 2011 - 3pm EST

When it boils down to it the ECM and Document Management industry really strives to work towards one common goal - Improved Efficiency.

Implementing change to improve efficiency can take time in itself, but in the long term the benefits reap rewards. It's these benefits that can be realized simply by using barcodes.

Do things quicker, save employees time, automate business processes with ease and so on. Barcodes are capable of this and more, who'd have thought it from a few stripy lines!

In the 9th of our educational webinars we explore the ways in which barcodes can help your organization, from indexing and separation to automatic document matching and identification.

Please join us on Thursday June 16th at 3pm (EST) to discover how to improve your efficiency through the use of barcodes.

Space is limited so reserve your Webinar seat now at:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/796548059

PLEASE NOTE WE NOW HAVE A TOLL-FREE PHONE NUMBER AVAILABLE

The Security of your Electronic Documents Webinar - Thursday April 14th 2011 - 3pm EST

2011-05-04T14:02:00.003-04:00

If you're thinking of implementing an Electronic Content or Document Management System, or if you already have one in place then document security should be something you think about.

Whether you're facing a possible 'cyber-hacker' attack or the wrath of a disgruntled employee you have to know that your information is safe, especially if you've destroyed original paper copies.

In the 8th of our educational webinars we explore the ways in which your information could be put in jeopardy and what can be done to safeguard against such occurrences.

Please join us on Thursday May 12th at 3pm (EST) to discover how to protect your information.

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements

PC-based attendees

Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees

Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

Please note our webinar registration has changed and improved, however, space is limited so please reserve your webinar seat at:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/788915643

Circulate & Approve Your Documents Without The Paper Trail Webinar - Wednesday December 22nd 2010

2010-12-15T14:24:00.000-05:00

Workflow, Process Management, Business Process Optimization and Automation; These are all terms used to describe the flow of documents around your organization, but what exactly does it all mean?

As an example let's say, for instance, you want to purchase a new computer for your desk, but you need authorization to do so. Company policy states you have to fill out a purchase request form and hand it to your boss, who then needs to hand it to his or her boss for further approval. Once it has been agreed upon by everyone in the chain of command then the purchase request is converted into an order which is sent from your purchasing department to the vendor and, if you're lucky, three weeks later your shiny new computer arrives!

Three weeks may not seem like a long wait to get your new computer but it could have arrived much quicker, when you needed it. And what if, horror of horrors, the purchase request form was lost or filed at the bottom of your bosses "to-do" pile which takes months for them to get through. In this case you may not even see your new computer in the next year! This is where Process Management comes in useful...

Track and monitor progress of documents, find out who is responsible for the next step in a process and circulate documents for approval without them ever touching a piece of paper. These are just some of the benefits of Process Management.

Please join our Webinar at 1.15pm on Wednesday, December 22nd to discover how your Business Processes can be improved through the use of Process Management and Workflow.

Please e-mail Contact@FileDirector.ca to take part. Places are limited so please respond at your earliest convenience.

Adding to the Bottom Line with an Automated AP Solution

2010-12-15T14:22:00.001-05:00

One of the most paper intensive parts of every business exists in the Finance & Accounting department in the form of Accounts Payable invoicing. Regardless of your industry every business has to deal with them, so how can we make this process easier?

It is inevitable that information on these kinds of documents will have to be data-entered into a business system of some kind but this can be tricky when the invoices you receive are in hundreds or even thousands of differing formats. This is where we can help...

Intelligent Freeform OCR is the solution; It has the ability to read text from unstructured documents and restructure it into a useful format, tying up index fields with relevant data automatically. This automation can be a powerful weapon in the fight against needless data entry, it will not only save you time but also money, and isn't that what Finance people love?

Integrating your Business Systems with ECM Webinar - Tuesday November 9th 2010

2010-11-03T15:42:00.002-04:00

Every Electronic Content Management (ECM) software solutions vendor on the market claims to improve efficiency and most of them can assist in achieving it. At MES Hybrid Document Systems we believe that our FileDirector ECM solution can also help improve efficiency, even in some ways that our competitors can't.

Information can be indexed automatically with no data entry via human interaction and users don't even have to change the way they work now to retrieve the information they want. All of this is possible and more...

Please join our Webinar at 1.15pm on Tuesday, November 9th to discover how efficiency can be improved within your organization by integrating FileDirector ECM with your current business systems.

Please e-mail Contact@FileDirector.ca to take part. Places are limited so please respond at your earliest convenience.

New FileDirector Literature

2010-09-15T12:48:00.007-04:00

We have just launched some new, informative FileDirector Brochures, take a look…

FileDirector – Document Management Made Easy

A small one page brochure detailing the benefits of FileDirector and why it is one of the best solutions available on the market today

Click here to download

FileDirector – Integrated Solutions That Work The Way You Do

A brochure detailing the fantastic solutions available in FileDirector for integrating with your organization’s other business critical solutions.

Click here to download

FileDirector – The FileDirector Difference

A small one page brochure detailing what makes us stand out from our competition, find 11 things listed here which make FileDirector the best all round solution available.

Click here to download

Brand New Spielberg Website Launched!

2010-07-26T15:49:00.004-04:00

The developers of our FileDirector Document Management and ECM software, Spielberg Solutions, have today launched a fantastic looking new website packed full of content about the high level application.

Check it out now at http://www.spielberg.de/en.html

Brand New Video's on FileDirector.ca

2010-07-19T09:48:00.004-04:00

Please check out some fantastic new content on FileDirector.ca we have put together some videos highlighting some of the best unique features of FileDirector and currently have 6 short but informative clips online regarding the following modules:

Codeless Connector
Client Configuration
Filing System
Quick OCR Indexing
Microsoft Office Integration
Retention Control

Click here to take a look: http://www.filedirector.ca/Videos.html

Case Study - Airport Development Corporation

2010-06-04T13:03:00.001-04:00

Airport Development Corporation (ADC) is responsible for 3 of the world’s major airports; Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Canada. Ferihegy International Airport in Budapest, Hungary and Quito International Airport in Ecuador. They are also responsible for many other major developments such as residential towers, hospitals, offices and hotels in Canada.

In August 2008 ADC Administration Manager, Andrea Danckzay-Blum, went through the process of finding a suitable vendor when she identified the requirement for a high-quality Enterprise Content Management Solution. Andrea selected FileDirector from MES Hybrid Document Systems above several other systems she saw and said “The staff at MES made us feel extremely comfortable in dealing with our data project, something that could easily become complicated and overwhelming. MES offered an incredible amount of support and simplified the project in a way as to make us feel that our goals were not only attainable but the process in getting there was much easier than anticipated.”

FileDirector has been used to replace an ever-increasing, expensive and inefficient paper storage solution in which hundreds of file boxes were being used to store any type of document that could be generated when going through the complicated, lengthy process of developing an airport terminal. Financial documents, such as contractor invoices, government planning applications, regulations documentation and correspondence have now been organized in a simple to manage and easy to use application. This has also provided ADC with invaluable24 hour internet access to their documents from their global offices based in Toronto, Quito, Budapest and London.

When asked how the solution has benefitted them so far, Andrea Danckzay-Blum had this to say; “We no longer have to spend time searching for documents as they are all located in one central database. Also, since FileDirector allows us to access files easily, we are now able to retrieve the documents from past projects that facilitate us in creating documents that relate to new projects, thus saving us valuable research time. The solution has saved us an incredible amount of money. When initially researching various alternatives for data management, MES’s solution not only provided us with an excellent solution covering all of our needs but it also did so in a cost effective manner. Most of the other options were twice or three times the price and were far too complicated for our needs. We needed to keep it simple, and MES provided a platform to do so.“

With the FileDirector Document Management Solution, now in place for over a year at ADC, they have seen costs fall, efficiency increase and their jobs simply made easier. Andrea stated “We could not be more pleased with this choice. The software fulfills all of our criteria but also MES have offered us support that I believe is unmatched in the industry.”

Reducing Your Data Entry Costs

2010-05-18T13:59:00.012-04:00

Think of all the different computer systems used in your organization. Some typical examples are:

· Accounting/ERP (AP/AR)

· Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

· Service Management

· Warehouse/Stock Management

· Electronic Content Management (ECM)

These systems are based on some kind of database which collates and stores this vital business information, in a format that allows you to find it all again, when called upon. However, these databases don’t fill themselves with that information; it has to be done by us human beings. Usually the data has to be entered at least once but more often than not it is being repeated over and over into each system. Think of the time taken to do that!

To be honest, FileDirector isn’t any different, it still needs index information (aka metadata) entered with every record to ensure that they are traceable again. Just like older methods of filing classification where everything had to be labeled properly in your filing cabinets. But if this information has already been entered into one system, why waste time entering it all again?

It’s a problem that every office in the world faces, so I’d like to show you some different methods below that will either eliminate or simply reduce the amount of data entry that your office needs to do using four different technologies offered in our FileDirector ECM solution; barcode recognition, full text optical character recognition (OCR), forms recognition and open database connectivity (ODBC).

Bar-coding

Bar-coding has been around in one way or another since the 1970’s and has been commonly associated with products in supermarkets or with library books. In recent decades it has been used increasingly on all kinds of documents to help classify and sort them, just look at the top of your utility bills or even on the back of your (Canadian) driver’s license for examples. There are many different kinds of barcodes in use today which can contain a great deal of information and we can put that information to great use when indexing documents.

Full Text Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

OCR has been in use for a number of years now. The purpose of it is to translate typed, printed text into text that a computer can understand. This allows a user to extract text from a printed document, such as a book or newspaper without the need to re-type it. In terms of ECM solutions it is most commonly used to allow searches of any word on the page of a document. When documents have been scanned a full text OCR process is performed on the resulting images and the data gets stored into a database and can be searched upon to retrieve said documents.

Forms Recognition

When storing documents away in a filing cabinet there are usually separate cabinets, drawers or folders dedicated to a specific type of document, or at least a filing method to split these kinds of documents. It makes much more sense that dumping everything into one cabinet together. When scanning documents for storage and retrieval this process of splitting documents into their different “document types” can be automated, so that you don’t have to organize a large pile of paper before its scanned. Let the software do it for you and this will save you time.

Common types of documents, especially those which your organization has control in designing, can be recognized by the system for the correct type of document that they are. This is based on a common “identifier” located on that document. When the software sees that common identifier, such as the name of that document, it recognizes it and applies it to that document type in the system.

In the example below you can see the grey “text identification” area that has been highlighted, this is common to this document so every time the words “Sample Invoice” are recognized using OCR the software will store that document away under this classification. If there were a mixed batch of documents it can pluck them out of batch and file them accordingly.

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)

As mentioned in the introduction above, when you already have a multitude of systems installed into your organization, which contain critical business data, then why would you re-type that information into another system? This is where an ODBC connector comes into use. It is possible to set up a connection between the original source of that data and the new program that you wish to push or pull that data into. Our ECM solution, FileDirector, utilizes an ODBC connection to an existing database and will populate index/metadata fields dependent upon a linked field between the two, such as a Purchase Order number or Client ID.

For more information on this or any other module of the FileDirector application feel free to contact us.

May 21st, 2010 - Document Management Educational Seminar

2010-05-03T11:15:00.002-04:00

The great news is that you've already taken the first step by enabling scanning on your office copier; but by now questions about how to manage these electronic records are undoubtedly cropping up.

So now that we are scanning, can I legally destroy the paper?
How do we manage different versions and prevent employees from copying & pasting multiple copies all over the network?
Proper document management is going to be an investment, how can I determine if there is a business case to support it in my organization?
What do we need to plan for in advance to ensure a successful rollout?

Learn how to plan for success, address legal requirements and minimize your costs by attending our education-based document management seminar on May 21st.

Who Should Attend

Business owners
Executive staff
Corporate records managers
IT directors

The Speakers

Michael O'Shea - The Information Professionals - Michael O'Shea has been involved in Records and InformationManagement consulting for over 20 years. He is one of the most respected international experts in traditional and emerging forms of information technology. He is currently President of The Information Professionals. His company provides consulting services to clients at all levels of government and all industry sectors.Michael is a voting member of the Canadian General Standards Board's committees on Microfilm, Imaging and Electronic Records as Documentary Evidence. He is also the author of Carswell's authoritative publication Records retention Law & Practice which is available in both hard copy & electronic formats & is the co-author of Carswell's on-line Records and Information Management Audit Toolkit

Marc Wilkens - Fujitsu Canada- Marc Wilkens has been involved in the information technology sector for over 20 years. Marc has been a consultative asset at Fujitsu and has participated in several major account initiatives. Marc currently holds the position of Channel Development Executive for Central and Western Canada wit Fujitsu's Imaging division.

Kevin D'Arcy - MES Hybrid Document Systems- Kevin D'Arcy has been involved in the document/records management industry for over 10 years and brings considerable insight into process planning and solution deployment. Kevin current holds the position of Vice President of Sales & Marketing with MES Hybrid Document Systems and sits on the executive board of the Independent Information Management Dealer Association (IIMDA).

The Details

When: May 21st, 2010 from 8:30am through 11:30am
Where: The Delta Markham - 50 East Valhalla Drive, Markham, ON L3R 0A3 Map

The Agenda

8:30am: Breakfast
9:00am: Michael O'Shea - Electronic Images as Documentary Evidence.
9:45am: Break
10:00am: Marc Wilkens - Choosing the right document scanner and cost saving solutions.
10:45am: Break
11:00am: Kevin D'Arcy - Planning for success. What you should know about document management.
11:30am: Seminar concludes

http://www.mesltd.ca/s_product.html?id=653

Twitter

2010-01-05T11:01:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year!

Apologies for not updating in a while, it was a busy last quarter of 2009. However as we bring in the new year we also bring in some new ideas. So if you don't want to read long posts about FileDirector, how about reading short ones on Twitter instead?

Our page can be found here: https://twitter.com/FileDirector

Please feel free to follow us for plenty more updates...

E-Mail Retention & FileDirector

2009-09-23T09:05:00.003-04:00

Here are some great articles about email retention (or lack thereof).....

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/16/judge_had_warned_mayor_on_deleted_e_mails_last_year/ and here http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-manager/?p=2113

These articles outline something we hear very often; “Our IT backs up our emails”. But do they really?

If a user deletes an email from their inbox are they certain the emails are still backed up? More often than not, IT only backs up emails that are still in the user’s inbox, if it’s deleted from their inbox it’s usually deleted from the back up as well. Which, is against the law.

The FileDirector MailStore module can help with this problem. For instance, if the City of Boston was using MailStore they could automatically capture all incoming emails for all users. They could then use the records retention option in FileDirector to destroy the emails after their 2 year requirement (length of time varies, 2 years in the City of Boston’s bylaw). These emails would be saved in a system outside of their Microsoft Outlook client, strictly as back up, so even if a user deleted an email from their inbox, FileDirector would still have a record of it.

So who could us MailStore. Here are some basic criteria:

1. Medium to large organizations. Usually over $15 million in revenue/yr.
2. Organizations with 60 or more employees
3. Companies with high legal/retention concerns; Medical, Local Government, School Boards, College/Universities, Manufacturing, Children’s Aid Societies, Insurance.

What’s the value in this to the client? Well, lawsuits surrounding deleted emails have ranged anywhere from $50,000 to $1.45 billion. The cost of FileDirector with MailStore? About $21,000. The math is simple enough.

The FileDirector Brochure

2009-09-18T09:55:00.009-04:00

Please have a look at the FileDirector brochure developed by us at MES Hybrid Document Systems Inc. in Toronto, Canada. It gives you some great insight into the powerful application. You can find the brochure by clicking on the blue button in the area on the right hand side of the page.

Spielberg @ The DMS Expo

2009-09-08T16:58:00.006-04:00

You can find the talented developers of FileDirector at the upcoming DMS Expo in Cologne, Germany from September 15th through till the 17th, 2009.

They will be showing the latest additions to the software such as the Freeform OCR capability and the MS Sharepoint connector and will be available to answer any questions you may have about the product.

For more information visit the DMS Expo website at www.dmsexpo.com

FileDirector Web Sites

2009-09-02T14:55:00.008-04:00

There will, of course, be plenty of great information available about Spielberg's FileDirector Document Management Software on this blog in weeks to come, but for now there is a whole host of information on number of sites around the internet. Here are a few useful links for you to peruse....

www.filedirector.com - The Official FileDirector site from Spielberg.

www.filedirector.ca - The Official Canadian FileDirector Website.

www.filedirectorworldwide.com - The Official Worldwide Brand of FileDirector.

www.activedatasystems.com - The website of the US distributor for FileDirector.

www.mesltd.ca - The website of the Canadian distributor for FileDirector.

FileDirector, an Introduction...

2009-08-04T15:41:00.004-04:00

First released in 2006 and now on version 2.0, FileDirector is the flagship product of the Spielberg group of document management software applications. Based on the up to date, and versatile, Microsoft .net programming language it allows for hugely scalable enterprise wide connectivity and can support up to 128 servers with upwards of 5000 users.

FileDirector is one of the most feature-rich and innovative document management systems to be found on the market today with comprehensive functionality to suit any size of business.

FileDirector is distributed nationally across Canada by MES Hybrid Document Systems Inc.