Sponsored by GreatAmerica Financial Services
It’s not just storage anymore.
It’s the kind of thing your customer brings up over drinks or after teeing off for the 5th hole. A bunch of important documents went walkabout and are nowhere to be found. The customer doesn’t want it to happen again and asks what to do. The path to being a hero in this situation is document management—something you can bring to the party.
The cheap storage available from Apple, Google, or Microsoft (“50 GB for 99 cents a month!”) serves some basic needs, but the management of it is only as good as the person setting it up—maybe the guy who left your customer’s company and moved to Mountain High, Colorado. With him gone, weaknesses are showing up, so your customer needs a process with someone to call if things go sideways. He or she needs a document management system that covers for employee mistakes and protects documents while keeping them accessible to authorized users.
What is a Document?
Most people think of documents as Word or Excel files, PowerPoint decks, or maybe a PDF. But those are just formats. The content in those formats is the documents: HR records, proposals, estimates, invoices, receipts, transactional records, expense reports, contracts, confidential reports, and much more.
In some cases, those different documents may be combined into one. Consider a large, upscale used car dealership. Each previously owned car comes with a 24-page full-color booklet, personalized to the customer, that includes a description of the vehicle, a Carfax report, service history, warranty info, a pitch for aftermarket items, service coupons, and space for the financing pages. These individual “documents” are printed on an MFP and combined into each customers’ booklet. A couple of dozen such documents might be needed each day just for used cars. The car dealer needs to manage all this content, plus other files on vehicles that include acquisition cost, days in inventory, work done prior to sale, and more.
Law firms and medical practices use specialized document management software attuned to their unique needs, but bookkeepers, ad agencies, retailers, car dealerships, school systems, municipal departments, and more need systems that can adapt to their requirements. Managing, automating, and corralling all this data is what document management systems do. And it can be a revenue opportunity for dealers like you.
It’s Not Just Printing Anymore
“Document management is an opportunity for dealers to expand their business and increase revenue while taking on a sustainable practice that can grow in ways print cannot,” said Jim Roberts, president of DocuWare. “Dealers who evolved from selling and servicing hardware can offer software solutions that are a win/win for themselves and their customers.”
Take Les Olson Company in Salt Lake City, Utah, for example. Customers across Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming have partnered with this dealer to implement DM systems using DocuWare software. John Huston, corporate IT sales manager at Les Olson said, “Document management software allows businesses to control retention, recall, and access needs of all their business documents. They need to automate workflows, simplify document capture and improve the search capabilities.” Some of this is workflow and some may be part of managed IT (see our March issue), but it is really about ensuring that all of a company’s internal or external information is current, secure, and readily accessible.
Software companies like DocuWare are not alone in this hunt. I checked in with Cody Walton, national manager of strategic solutions for dealer sales at Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., and Jennifer Healy, director, marketing and campaign strategy, dealer and partner channel, Ricoh, to get a print engine vendors’ take on document management. Talking with both dealers and customers who buy machines direct enables these OEMs to hear things independent dealers may not. Vendors know the complexity of documents and by extension, the need for dealers to ask customers how their needs can be better supported. As I noted, it’s not just storage.
Consider the used car dealership noted above. “Automation, compliance, and workflow processes are no longer ‘wants’ by your customers and prospects but are a necessity for your customers seeking to stay relevant and competitive,” noted Walton. “Document management was once a matter of storing and retrieving documents based on metadata or information. Market demand evolved into content management, which incorporated process and workflow automation. These allowed once unstructured data to be scanned, captured, classified, and be accessible.” Hence the need for management.
Ricoh’s Healy went deeper, describing DM as the “…active ownership and use of unstructured data in a workflow.” Such data has a business purpose in by providing actionable information between different parts of a business. In this context, DM supports not just what is done with the data presently but how it may be used in the future. For instance, a product that has gained market share following the introduction of a new feature may indicate the importance of the feature. But absent sales data and customer follow up—both of which can go into a DM system—such insight may be lost, or the gain in share be attributed to pricing or a marketing campaign. While adding the same feature to other products may be important, the decision to do so should be based on data that might otherwise be ignored or lost if stored in a weak-kneed document management system.
Another key document management player is Kyocera. Kyocera Document Solutions America draws on the company’s decades of experience to tailor DM solutions that meet the diverse needs of many industries including legal, healthcare, financial services, government, education, and more. And it goes much further. Kyocera’s software goes beyond digitalizing and automating document workflows for productivity and efficiency to focus on document security. According to Kyocera, navigating cyberspace provides businesses the opportunity to place cybersecurity at the center of their digital transformation strategy. Such security may be something your customers come to expect.
All these companies go beyond mere storage to providing document management solutions that add value to your dealership and for your customers. The key point is that no matter your choice of OEM, forward-thinking dealers can rely on an OEM to train your techs while helping ensure the DM solutions you offer are the right fit for your customers’ needs, no matter what business they may be in or where their employees are located.
The New Workplace
In all likelihood, more than a few of your customers’ employees are working remotely at least some of the time. This is the new normal and you have to get used to it. And serve it. “More remote workers means more people need access to information,” said Ricoh’s Healy. “The evolution of hybrid, remote, and on-premises workplaces is all in play—even at the individual-employee level—and means information should be accessible and fluid across an organization, and between businesses and customers. A DM system should be structured in a way that supports this evolution.”
Of course, there is no substitute for the cloud and its ability to sustain data across geographies. It’s part of every DM system. This connectivity enhances remote work while providing security against natural disasters and other catastrophes. But when it comes to DM there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Some may be perfectly happy with using the 50 gigs of storage Apple, Microsoft, or others offer. Others may need something that offers better integration with the way their employees work and interact with customers. Find out what customers’ needs are and how the offerings and expertise from companies like DocuWare, Ricoh, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, and others may support those requirements. And, as you talk with these vendors, see how their offerings match customers’ needs.
Don’t Be Left Out
So how do you charge for this? Good question. It varies based on customer needs. Common options include the number of users, amount of storage, and various tiered-subscription models. Talk with your vendor of choice to find what options are right for your customers.
“Dealers can’t afford not to participate in at least some aspect of document management,” said Konica Minolta’s Walton. “Print is being reduced, information is digitized, and the needs for process improvement are everywhere.”
“Document management and automated workflows provide measurable cost savings to any business. Dealers who care about the long-term success and profitability of their customers are moving fast to add software to the portfolio of services they offer,” concluded DocuWare’s Roberts.
Don’t be left out.
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