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The modern office environment is a breeding ground for cutting edge technology. CEOs review profit reports on wireless devices as they travel. Branch employees communicate with headquarters via thin clients and the Internet. Shipping personnel capture proof-of-delivery signatures on personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Why, then, is the average distributor still pushing paper, employing clerical staff to duplicate invoices on copy machines and collect documents in filing cabinets? Together, Activant and DocMan offer an alternative.

A third-party application that integrates with Activant Prophet 21™, DocMan document imaging solution allows users to store documents in a digital environment, eliminating much of the time and aggravation associated with traditional paper filing. In addition, by automating and streamlining document storage, DocMan decreases a company's dependence on clerical staff, which reduces overhead and sends more dollars to the bottom line.

Electronic Filing

Designed to act like an electronic filing cabinet, DocMan organizes files into cabinets, folders, documents, and pages, while enabling users to create custom indices with searchable keywords. Traditionally, when an office collects a batch of invoices from a supplier, everything needs to be copied - often in triplicate - and filed by hand.

With DocMan, an employee only needs to load those invoices in a scanner, define how they should be indexed (by supplier, by date, etc.), and the application does the rest. The time required for filing is reduced, allowing that employee to focus on more important tasks, and the costs associated with copying and filing hard copies (paper, cabinets, etc.) are significantly lessened.

DocMan can also reduce the amount of time it takes to search for a requested document. Instead of walking their fingers through endless file cabinets, employees can call up documents with a quick keyword search in the solution. In addition, they can reproduce the document in whatever form it was originally received, whether as paper, a fax, or an e-mail attachment.

COLD Capturing

Distributors who do not utilize a document imaging solution also have to deal with documentation created internally, and just as with supplier invoices, they mostly resort to printing, photocopying, and filing by hand. DocMan simplifies this process with COLD.

For example, instead of photocopying and manually filing a pick ticket, an employee can electronically capture the document with COLD. Functionality that allows your solution to communicate with your imaging server as if it were a printer, COLD stores pick tickets, invoices, etc., and indexes them according to user-defined templates, virtually eliminating the need for manual intervention.

COLD can also be used to capture and store the myriad day-, month-, and year-end reports you produce, which makes them searchable by the information they represent (i.e., customer number, SKU, etc.). That means you can find and print only the specific data you need, instead of having to contend with bulky paper reports.

DocMan also contains an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) module, which converts bit-mapped images into text documents. While not as accurate as COLD, OCR can streamline the process of filing mailed or handwritten documents, as it batch captures and indexes them according to your templates.

Time and Money

As a rule, when saving documents electronically, the original image cannot be changed. DocMan provides annotation capabilities - including underscoring, single line text, electronic "sticky notes," and the ability to block out confidential information - to help you maintain control over the documents you file.

DocMan also enables you to capture delivery documents, so when you scan in signed delivery tickets, invoices, or pick tickets, the solution will match them up with the corresponding electronic copies already in your database.

For example, when distributors ship items to their customers, they need to include a packing list in the shipment. With DocMan, packing lists - or any other document - can be printed with a barcode. This way, if a list comes back with a customer's signature or notes, a user can scan the hard copy and DocMan will read the barcode, automatically archiving it with the original packing list.

The DocMan application includes modules for scanning, indexing, searching and retrieving, printing, faxing, viewing, OCR, e-mailing, making notes, and saving archives to CD media. By integrating DocMan to its Windows-based, SQL server solution, Activant^® offers all Prophet 21 users the ability to drastically cut the time and costs associated with paper filing, and focus their resources on more important areas, like customer service and the bottom line.

For more information on Activant's enterprise software solutions, please fill out our Web Contact Form.

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