Financial Planners

Financial Planning Paperless Systems

Planning for your documents future

It’s not just people that need sound planning.

Electronic document management software planning is mission critical to the running of a successful financial planning business.

From compliance to document retention policies to automated workflows, it all comes together with award winning M-Files.

In this video, we explore everything from a far easier and faster way of capturing all of your information including paper documents like a signed statement of advice during a meeting; through to all electronic documents like Word, Excel, PDF and of course emails.

We will then look at instant retrieval of this information and so it is grouped in meaningful ways so you have just what you want and when you need it. Then we will get into the really good stuff.

M-Files is a cross referenced SQL data base where clients details etc. from existing databases like XPLAN or NetSuite can be linked into M-Files so you only need to manage one database.

Now that you have all of your documents in one place and all of your knowledge like a client’s contact details or the status of their next follow up date in one place the magic begins.

Increased productivity = Money saved and an opportunity for growth

By having a one stop shop for all information and knowledge automated assignments and detailed workflows will be created by of experts who in turn will teach you how to manage and create new ones as the needs arise (we are always on hand if you need some help).

These automated processes are controlled and based on security to ensure the right business process is being completed in a timely fashion. You can edit documents and have each version automatically tracked for audit purposes, you can annotate and collaborate with other team members.

financial-planner-document-management

Paper Trail = Money Pit

We must have a detailed trail of work completed as this is a highly-regulated industry, it just no longer needs to be paper based.

There will be time where paper is required, it the filing and refiling of these document where so much money drops into the money pit. You now can have the best document management software and see return on your investment within 2-3 months.

Finance options are also available from as little as $200 per month so no need to hold off on propelling your business into a more successful future.

Click on one of the buttons below to get a free trial or an instant quote. As financial planners you will be impressed with the small outlay and ease of use.

To read the full transcript of the video, please click here

Financial Planners video transcript

 Overview

Hello and welcome to this demonstration of M-Files for Financial Planners.  To give you an overview of where we are headed today, what this is all about, is a way to centralize all the company’s information whether that’s information that’s paper-based files, electronic documents, emails, reports, anything coming in or going out is all captured into a central system.  We need to be able to achieve that quicker and easier than your current manual processes, so that we’re not adding a Job to the day.  Most importantly, it’s all about retrieval.  Allowing you and the staff to be able to find anything instantly, any way that makes sense to you as an individual.  You might be searching for who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in, via a keyword off a document.  We have it up on the screen immediately.  It’s primarily designed as a productivity tool.  In the third and last part of the process, we’ll look at things like assignments, workflows, version control, document collaboration and you’ll get a great feel for how the benefits will be derived for you as Financial Planners.  Let’s let have a look at the three main parts of the system.

Security

The first part being capture.  The whole system’s password-protected.  We’ve got to log in, which means we can set up different security levels for different people within the organization.  There might be a general filing area that everyone can see.  There might be a HR/Payroll area, that only two or three people can access.  Different security levels depending on what you need.  From there we can set up individual user rights.  Some people get to annotate, edit, append, delete and other people get read-only rights.  Behind the scenes, every action that is taken within the system, is automatically tracked and recorded.  You’ll know who’s looked at what document when, who’s approved a quote, who’s updated a version.  Any of those actionable items are now automatically tracked and recorded.

Looks Familiar

 The nice thing about M-Files is, it looks and feels like Windows Explorer.  There’s really no learning curve.  Where you’ve got server drives and folders, all the way under system, Job Files and the Job that we’re doing for our Client, Bill and Mary Bloggs.  If we click on this folder, we get a list of documents.  Like Windows Explorer, when we click on a document, you get a preview of that on the right-hand side.  The nice thing about this being based on a folder structure, is, it instantly usable.  We’re all familiar with it, but, of course the problem with folder-based systems is they don’t work.  If you name it incorrectly or put it in the wrong spot, if you and I have differing opinions on how we think it should be named or saved, then it can be difficult to find retrieve and utilize.

We take a vastly different approach.  Instead of having to name this document correctly and put it in the right spot so you can find it again, what if we had dozens of different links that linked back to it and you could search for it by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in or via a keyword off a document.  We could then have it up on the screen immediately.  We call those links metadata.  Metadata for this document is listed at the bottom, where we’ve noted who the Client, is what Job we’re doing, who your Client manager is, document dates, document types, workflows etc.  Because we tend to file and find using metadata, the old folder-based search method generally becomes redundant.  This example of metadata is just that, an example.  We will custom build this, not only for your Financial Planning Company but also for each of your departments.  We will then use your terminology.  We custom build it for each site we go into.  It’ll be built specifically for you.

Capturing

 Looking at the first part of the system then, let’s look at ways of capturing information.  Let’s say we’ve got some correspondence to one of your Clients, Bill Bloggs.  This might be on letterhead, it might be a Word document, it could be a PDF, a spreadsheet, photo, video.  Any file format whatsoever, can be saved.  How do we save it?  The same way you do.  We simply click on save.  Instead of saving it in your folders on your server, we now save it in the M-Files system, which also lives on your server.  M-Files asks us to categorize this.  Would you put this under Client files, Company Admin, that only management can see, General Admin that everyone can have access to?  You’ve got various departments established and we’ll create those for and with you.  Inside a department, you have document types, working sheets, purchase orders, correspondence etc.  Not only will we create that Departments with you, but we’ll create the document types using your terminology.  In this example, we’re going to call it Client Correspondence.  It says, all great, which Job is that?  Instead of having to type them all in, what if we could pick it from a pre-set list.  Most financial planners we work with have a core business system.  A lot use X plan.  We can integrate it with any of the databases out there.  If you had X plan, as an example, we can link back to it.  Instead of typing it in your list of Jobs, it will become available from that X plan list.  When we select this Job it says great, I know things about them, I know who the overriding Client is, I know who your Client Manager is, you want me to fill out the auto fields?  We say yes.  These are what we call parent-child fields.  When we select one piece of information, it goes to fill out the rest for us.  We hit create and that one is added into the filing system.  You continue to work on the document as you normally do and now that we’re finished with it, it is saved into the system.  We have captured our letter to Bill Bloggs.  The preview of it is shown on the right and its metadata is now showing at the bottom.

Templates

 Let’s do this again, but a far quicker and easier way.  Because M-Files runs all day, we can create new documents from within the system.  Instead of building a document from scratch, under Client Files, one of your Clients has requested a report.  It launches your reporting template.  The nice thing about managing templates within M-Files is, if you change the reporting template, it’s then globally changed and we’re all on that new version moving forward.  This is great for policy documents, leave applications.  All sorts of common documents and forms that you use with your Clients can all be managed and simplified in here.   M-Files fills out the bulk of the filing fields for me.  All I have to do is pop in today’s date.  It even sets up an automatic naming convention which I’ll come back to.  Our report is generated.  Your letterheads on top and I’ve asked M-Files to fill out the bulk of the filing fields for me.  These items in dark grey are metadata that has come from M-Files and has inserted into your word document.  Of course, a lot of this information that’s come in from M-Files, has come in from your existing databases, again like X plan.  If you wanted to put in additional metadata, like perhaps, the documents version number, then using the M-Files tab which follows you around in Office, we can insert additional metadata.  In this case our documents version number.  That’s another item in dark grey.  Later I’m going to change this version and you’ll see that we’ll go from version one to version two.  We’re finished with this one, so we save this into the system.  Its preview is shown on the right, its metadata is listed at the bottom.  I’ve now set up an automatic naming convention to say what it is, who it is and the Job we’re doing for them.  I didn’t have to fill any of this out.  I didn’t have to spell it correctly.  I didn’t have to adhere to your crazy rules about how we’re supposed to file things here.  It just did it all for me.  It also means that everything going in and out of the building is named in a consistent method.

Capture Emails Quickly

Let’s have a look at Outlook and emails.  Emails are notoriously difficult to capture and file.  Some of the problems with emails.  First is, they are an editable type document.  It must comply with the Electronics Acts.   They’ve often got attachments.  They’re sent to you as an individual.  I have no idea whether you’ve dealt with it or not and then six months later you run out of space and you delete them.  Company information is disappearing which is a disaster. I’ll just get rid of these temporary emails.  Luckily M-Files integrates with Outlook, into the filing system.  All we need to do is drag and drop it.  This email I see is an IT Agreement from our IT Supplier, so to me that sounds like Company Correspondence.  All you do, is drag and drop it in this folder and M-Files does everything for you.  It fills out the subject line based on the subject line of your email.  It puts in the dates, email addresses.  There’s really nothing to do and it’s been captured to the system.  A couple of nice things to note when you file an email in M-Files, it’s given a blue category.  Visually I can see that one out of four emails have been captured.  If I was to email this through to you and to Michelle in your office, who’s responsible for filing it?  Of course, no idea, you both might do it, none of you may do it.  Let’s say Michelle has filed it.  When you go to file it into the system, it tells you it’s already been done.  This saves on email duplication.  How much time and space are wasted capturing duplicate emails?  The file format that we saved this in, is an Outlook email, so when you open it you can reply, forward, open the attachments.  We’ve got it as a useful email message, not as a piece of paper in a filing cabinet.  I’m going to file another email but do this one a different way.  This also has an attachment in it and when people send you an email it’s usually not the email you’re after it’s often the attachments that we’re really looking for.  I’m going to ask M-Files to separate out and file all the attachments for me automatically.  I’m going to put this one under Client Correspondence, because it’s from one of our Clients.  Because that’s a different Department, it’s going to ask for different things.  All I have to do is fill out the particular Job and M-Files does everything else for me.  If you were doing a lot of work with Bill and Mary Bloggs, you just simply have a folder over here for Bill and Mary Bloggs and you drag and drop it for them.  It wouldn’t even ask you any of these questions then.  You just hit create.  This one gets added to M-Files.  It too gets a blue category.  When we go into the M-Files system, instead of simply having an email which you can click on and open, this one has been put in a folder where we have our email which you can open and use.  More importantly, the attachment is there.  If you were to search your database for the word, cabinets, it would take you straight to the attachment, which is what you really were looking for.  You’ve also got the email there should you need to open it and reply.

Scanning

If you want to scan we use high speed document fed scanners.  Something like this as an example.  You load up a stack of pages and it’ll scan them through 70 pages a minute straight up onto the screen.  Of course, we can make use of your existing photo copiers or other scanners, however, this is a nice ergonomic unit and for the person opening the mail, it’ll save them a lot of time.  There are many ways of scanning into the system.  One way is to right-click and add document from scanner. I’m not going to do that but if I did open up the mail and scan through a batch of mail, it would ask who’s it from, what’s it about, where would you like to file.

Importing your existing Documents

Instead of batch scanning, I am going to do batch importing, which is effectively the same thing.  I’ve put together some example documents that we’re going to file as a batch.  The first one is opened and on the right-hand side, it shows us a preview of what we’re filing.  I fill out the usual metadata fields like I had previously.  I hit create.  On the first document, if you look over on the left, you’ll see the first one is added to the system and the next one is opened.  Its preview is shown on the right.  Its name from your folder is also maintained, so your naming conventions are maintained.  Of course, we know this is the correspondence folder for this Client.  Why don’t we just say create all and when we do that each of the documents are added to the system.  The original file format is maintained.  Your original naming convention and document dates are maintained.  You can also search in a variety of ways, keywords off the document, as well as via any of the metadata.  It takes around 10 seconds to capture a folder.  If you look at how many folders and subfolders you have you’ll be able to very quickly capture all that information.

Linking to your Existing Folders

What if we could just simply link back to your existing network drives.  Let’s say you had a Z Drive.  I’m going to map back to your Z Drive.  We call this a traditional folder.  This is your Z Drive with all your folders and documents as it looks today.  From day one, your entire folder base structure can be made available in M-Files.

That’s the first part of the system which is capture.  We find the capture process should be at least 20% faster than what you’re currently doing.

Retrieval

The real benefits come when we go to find things in the retrieval side.  If you wanted to know what time the sunset was tonight, you’d put in your location, the word, sunset, into Google and you get yourself an instant answer.  You don’t need to know that that information came from a spreadsheet 20 folders deep on a server in Darwin.  You don’t care, you just want an answer.  Wouldn’t it be nice if your filing system worked the same way?  That you could ask for what it is you wanted, in a way that made sense to you.  You don’t have to remember how it was named, or which folder it was put in and that’s how it works.  Now very vaguely, I’m going to do a simple search for the word Bloggs.  That’s all I know, very vague.  We’ll do a search for that one word and we get documents totalling 25.  It shows me where the word appears in the name.  It shows me where the word appears multiple times in the metadata and each of the instances throughout our document.  Problem is though, 25 is too many.  I remember it had something to do with Bloggs and it is an invoice.  We’re adding a second word and that narrows it down to two.  It shows me where both words appear in the name, multiple times through the metadata and throughout our document.   99 times out of 100 you know who you’re talking to.  You know what you’re looking for and you drill it down to a couple of documents every time.  This means no more telephone tag.  Any inquiry, you can say, yep looking at it, what would you like to know?

Searching by Customised Shortcuts

 Depending on where you’re sitting within the business, you’re going to want things very different ways.  If you’re in Client services versus General Admin versus Management or HR, you’re going to want things very different ways.  What everyone has tried to do of course, is squeeze everybody into one filing system, which really doesn’t work, and everyone’s gone off and done their own process.  Hence the mess.  What if we could give you a filing system for each individual user, each individual Job role?  We set up shortcut searches on the side that we will custom build for each user, depending on what it is they require.  This is across the whole organization.  Let’s have a look at some examples.  You might be looking after Jobs.  You want to look at our current Job files and you can see there’s a Job for Bill and Mary Bloggs.  If we go into their Job, there are all their documents and folders.  Maybe from a Client management point of view, you’d like to look at all our Clients.  If we click on Bill and Mary Bloggs, we have metadata for them as a Client.  We see they are Clients.  We see who their Account Manager is, what industry they’re in, or their contact details.  This sort of information is available in your main database or Outlook contacts, wherever you’re storing that information.  Wouldn’t it be nice if it was available here as well?  Perhaps you’d like to look at it from a HR point of view?  If we look at our employee Angela, I can see she has an employee contract, employee documents and a performance review.  If we go into her performance review, we can see who it’s for, what it is, and when it was done.  We get a preview of that showing on the right-hand side.   Perhaps you’d like to look at it from an Asset Register point of view and I can see regards this PC, how much it was, when we bought it, serial numbers, whose desk it’s on.  Even things like warranty expiration dates can be listed as well.  Perhaps you’d like to look at it from an Account point of view and you might say show me your Supplier Invoices that have been entered ready for payment this week.  There’s just the one but my favourite one that I use all day every day, is recently accessed by me.  I am always going back to documents that I’ve recently worked on and one of those things is our report that we created earlier.  What we’re trying to show you, is, you can have any information to you, the moment you need it for those 5200 bits and pieces we all look up each day.  To have it in seconds, instead of minutes, takes the pressure and stress out of our lives.  We get to go to lunch on time and you can spend more of your day doing the important work.

Processing Documents

 Annotations

Now that we found some documents, you will want to work on them.  If I had emailed this report to you and Michelle in your office, you’d make some changes, you’d send it back to me and I’ve somehow got a collate it and bring it all together.  What if you could simply manage that on the fly, instead of making changes and editing it as different copies?  What if we could just simply mark up the existing document with annotation tools.  We might draw arrows on it, highlighter pens.  You may decide that you put a post-it note on it that doesn’t fall off.  We’re annotating over the top, not on the original.  You can print this with or without these notes.  I can also rubber stamp it, saying this one is now approved for payment and I can even assign documents as we go.  I can sign off on documents on the fly.  These annotations are floating over the top of the document, not on the original.

Version Control

If you wish to change the original, we have a simple checkout process.  Whilst the document is checked out to me, only I can change it.  Everybody else can still view it, but only I can make changes.  I’ve decided to change the colour.  I’m finished with my changes, so I saved this back into the system and we have our new version.  I also note now that this is version 2, and I think, well that’s interesting, how did that come about?  I can now ask for the documents history and I can see version 1 and 2.  I can see they were created 11 minutes apart by the same user.  In your case of course, it might be weeks apart by different staff members, but we’ll use this one as an example.  I’d like to look at our current version, so I open that one up.  I can see our current version, but M-Files has said, wouldn’t it be nice if you could see the history of this document?  Using our compare feature, I can open the original and the current one at the same time.  The original is opened on top and the current one is opened on the bottom.  You can see the differences between our documents.  Well, I think version 2 is awful.   I want to go back to version 1.  I close this down and click on the version I like.  I say can I roll back to the earlier version and it says yes.  It creates version 3, one minute later, back to back. Instant and easy version control that cannot be circumvented by staff.

Distributing Documents

Now that you’ve worked on a document, you often want to send it out to somebody.  In any program of course, you can right-click and send as a copy by email and it attaches it as it is, a Word document.  You can simply hit Send.  Maybe, you don’t want to send things out as an editable Word document.  Maybe, you want to send it out as a PDF, so in your world, you open it in Word, save it as a PDF on the desktop, you attach it, send it, and delete it from the desktop.  It’s way too hard.  We know you want to do those sorts of things, so we give you the ability to send as PDF by email.  M-Files opens it, attaches it as a converted PDF and you can simply hit Send.  You’ll see niceties like that throughout the M-Files experience.  Just simple day-to-day things, made so much easier.  When you’re sending this report to your Client, isn’t this a business transaction?  Shouldn’t you be keeping this in your filing system?  We give you the ability to do that with one click, with our send and save to  M-Files button.  You can do both at the same time.

The Power of Metadata

That’s the first two parts of the system, filing and finding of documents using metadata and that within itself should be a brilliant productivity result.  In the third and last part of the system you’ll see where it all comes together.  What if we could apply this theory of metadata to other things within the business?  What if you could have metadata around Clients, Contacts, Suppliers, Staff Members?  You’ll then start to see that all your information, like reports, spreadsheets, plans, emails, etc., as well as all your knowledge like phone numbers, status of Jobs, revision dates, etc., can all be brought together into one place.  A one-stop shop for all your information and knowledge.  The best way to start to show you the third and last part of the processes, is first, we’re going to do a search for all staff.  We do a search for all employees and if you click on me as an example, it has metadata around me, the employee.  Instead of having metadata for a document, we’ve got metadata for an employee.  It says that I’m a director and an account manager, so I have multiple roles.  I have addresses, phone numbers, contact details, even emergency contact information is listed there as well.  You’ll also see throughout M-Files there’s these little arrows.  It links you off to everything else.  What is related to me the employee.  As it turns out, I’m working on sixteen Jobs.  I have six employees in my team.  I have four outstanding assignments etc.  Let’s go down further now. Of the contacts that I’m working with, one of them is Bill and Mary Bloggs.  When I click on their card, I get their metadata telling me their Accountant, their address, phone numbers, contact details.  What’s linked to Bill and Mary Bloggs?  Well, as it turns out, some documents. One of those documents was our report.  Because we’re clicking on a document again, we get a document preview and we get the documents metadata showing.  What’s linked to our document?  As it turns out, an annotation, a contact, a Job.  If we were to go into just the Investment Portfolio Job for Bloggs, isn’t their documents exclusive to it?  One of those documents, again, is back to our report.  Wherever you are within the M-Files system, whether you’re within a Job, Client, Contact, Supplier, Staff Member, everything is related back to everything else and now all your information as well.  All the associated knowledge has been brought together into one place.

Assignments – Approvals & Tasks

Where this becomes particularly useful, is in a simple day-to-day example.  If I asked you to call Bloggs regarding that report, how do I get your attention?  Do I send you a long email you don’t understand?  Do I come and interrupt you, but you’re busy?  Even if I get your attention, how do I know you’ve done your Job?  Do I have to follow up with you tomorrow?  That takes up your time and my time.  Instead of having unmanaged plastic in trays, what if we could simply have managed electronic ones, where we have assignments.  My assignment for you is to call Bloggs.  Simple stuff.  I’m going to give you a bit more information, so you know what to do.  I’m going to allocate it to the Clients file, so I’ve got a permanent record that I’ve requested this of you.  The deadline I’m giving you though, is today, so it’s a short deadline to get this one completed.  As I’m set up in the system, I will assign it to myself and I’ll receive email notification, telling me I have a new assignment to do.  We have our new assignment.  Let’s say, somehow, I’ve notified you to do this work.  How do you go about doing it?  First, where’s the phone number for Bloggs.  Is that in your database, Outlook contacts, a business card?  Once you’ve got the phone number, where’s that report now?  Is that the report that you emailed to them?  Is that the edited one they sent back to Michelle?  How do you know you’re on the right version?  With M-Files, if I asked you to do the same Job, you say, great, what is the phone number for Bill and there it is at the bottom.  As the phone’s ringing, Bill picks it up and you can say, hey Bill, I’ve got this report open on my desk, what would you like to know?  What a result.  How many times a day do we need a document and a phone number, an email and its attachments?  Whether it’s been actioned or not, an approval status for an invoice.  Most of what we’re doing in a day is information and knowledge and this brings the two together beautifully.

Notifications

How do we notify you of this?  We have found the best place to do that is in Outlook.  Because we send and receive emails all day, we get email notifications.  It says call Bloggs, read the report.  That’s fine deadlines today, I better get on with it now.  Instead of going off in all those different areas to try and compile it, you can click on it directly from your notification in Outlook and it takes you straight to your assignment in M-Files.  Not only do we have the phone number and or other contact details available to us at the bottom, we have the document that we need open on the right-hand side.  The rest of their file is open as well in case they ask you something obscure.  This will be in your to-do list forever until you mark it as completed. To do so, all we simply do, is right click on our task we put a tick next to your name.  We hit save and there’s a green tick on the clipboard showing it’s being done.

 Managing Office Workloads

However, as your boss I might say show me all assignments for yourself and I can do a search and see that you have.  Five I can see you’ve completed.  One is outstanding.  If I see that you’ve got too much work to do, or too little work, I can micromanage In-trays to ensure that nothing gets missed.  As a manager, I can discretely have a look and move things around and allow you to get on with your work.  The whole purpose of you being here.

Workflows

These are simple day-to-day tasks, which is nice, but of course a lot of what we’re doing is more complicated than that.  We’re dealing with multiple people, multiple steps and stages and often different deadlines, so one of the last things I’m going to show you is a workflow that brings all these different features together.  We’re going to create a new document but instead of building a document from scratch under our Client files, a Client has requested a quote for services and of course it launches the quoting template.  We fill out our usual metadata fields like we had previously and it’s going to set up automatic naming for us again.  We hit create. A word quoting template comes up and again I’ve asked them fast to fill out the bulk of the filing fields for me.  All you have to do is say that the life insurance quote is three thousand dollars and as quick and as easy as that you have saved that into the system, like any other document, it has been automatically named of what it is, who it’s for.  We have our automatically named document.  We have our preview of it on the right-hand side and our usual metadata at the bottom.  Now we also have this workflow area.  This workflow is a Job quote approval workflow.  There’ll be dozens of different workflows built and created for you.  We’ll teach you how to maintain and manage them.  This one has been automatically assigned to me and I’ve received email notification telling me to do my Job.  The deadlines I’ve been given is 24 hours and my Job is the quote is to be reviewed.  I’m looking at it do I approve this, yes or no?  At this stage I can go in two different directions.  I can either say, quote to be amended please see comments and it automatically goes back to your desk, or in this case I can say approved please send out.  I’m happy with it and I can make a note if I want to.  If you look at who it’s assigned to, whose desk it’s on, that will change.  It goes off my desk and it goes on to Karen’s desk.  Karen is notified via email her Job is, the quote has been approved it is ready to be sent to the Client.  Karen does her Job and she might say email today and when Karen clicks okay, it goes off her desk.  It’s on nobody’s desk it’s been completed.  It’s a very simple and short workflow, but it gives you the idea that information can go through from person to person.  Each one of you does a certain Job or action, then it goes on to the next person.  24 hours before my deadline I can be sent a reminder but 24 hours after I miss my deadline, you could be notified.  Workflows can be very simple as demonstrated, or they can be more complicated and going in a series of different directions, depending on what it is you need.  Each of these workflows will be built and created for and with you.  We’ll teach you how to maintain and manage them.  We also get these nice graphical overviews, so you can take it to a staff meeting to say hey guys is this working?

Mobile/Web/Tablet Access

The last thing I wanted to show you is being able to access your entire solution from any mobile device.  We’ve become a more and more mobile workforce.  What if you could access your entire filing system from any iPhone, Samsung, tablet, PC or iPad through a web browser from wherever you are?   I can’t show you my mobile phone, but I can play for you a one-minute video, which I’ll do now, that explains how all that works.    M-Files mobile access puts the information important to your business right at your fingertips.  No matter where you are, view documents on the go, like that purchase invoice that just came in.  Check it out make sure everything is correct and approve it.  Then Greg in accounting gets emailed automatically.  You can pull the invoice up on his laptop and send the payment.  It’s seamless, mobile and available for download now.  It’s just one of the ways you can experience the magic of M-Files.  From that you can see that it brings it all together beautifully, all your information and all of your knowledge available to you at your fingertips from wherever you are.  Hopefully at this point you can see some significant productivity gains and enhancements for your business.

Customisation/Implementation/Training

What we found is most critical, is implementation.  It’s almost at the point, where it doesn’t matter what system you buy, it’s how its implemented and who you choose to partner with, that gets you these maximum results.  We’ve specialized in this for 20 years.  This is all we do and we’re all about ensuring that you get these results demonstrated today from day one.  The first challenge we’ve found is that you’ve got multiple staff with multiple opinions and we need one filing system, one methodology.  The first way are we going to bring it all together is we’re going to develop a procedures and how-to manual specifically for your organization.  We document what it is you do, how do you process them, what do you do a fax, as emails, Client records, reports?  Whatever it is you do, we will custom build this for you.  This document in our example though, if we click on how we process the mail there’s your workflow and again it’s a made-up example but if it’s incoming mail and their general documents they’re opened, then admin to sort, scan and file.  What if I have forgotten how to file?  I click on the word in blue and up come the filing instructions.  Written instructions in English, by our trainers, not IT talk.  These screenshots are a copy of your M-Files system, so if you have someone start new, they can read this.  This is how we operate but we then take it further, where we make fields for filing compulsory.  Where you must file by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in; with these asterisks we can make them compulsory fields and you must fill that out or it won’t let you file it.  You get to set as many or as few compulsory fields to ensure that it’s captured a certain number of ways.  We will then provide extensive implementation and training.  We’ll train two people there as M file system administrators, who will build and develop the whole system.  You’ll set up procedures, processes, passwords.  You’ll own it as a process, in-house.  The ongoing maintenance, once it’s up and running, which is what we do before we finish, is maybe five minutes a month.  If you get a new staff member, they’ll need a password and you type it in.  There’s very little to do once we have it completed.  We will then train the balance of the staff in small classes of up to three people, for four hours and if we’re training you processing your documents, through your scanners, based on your procedures and process manual, into your computers, then you’ll be at an expert level.  We’ll have all the staff training done in back-to-back sessions, immediately after the system administrator training.  You will go live immediately and are guaranteed to get your results.  There you go, that’s probably enough out of me as an overview what we have found is that it’s all about the implementation.

Download a Trial/Quote

 There is also a trial that is available from our homepage, there on the website, so definitely use the trial, so you can try it firsthand.  There’s also an option to get an instant quote, so you can see how much the system will cost as well.  I’m always available, if you’d like to call or email, or if you have any questions along the way and we look forward to working with you on this project.

Our Document Management System is trusted by our clients

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Testimonial by  from
Sean Sandford Mortons - Urban Solutions

During our recent QA Certification and Accreditation process it became very clear that the power of M-Files could provide us with the ability to ensure that all documentation both leaving from and arriving into the office could be controlled in such a way to enable the document retrieval for Quality auditing extremely streamlined and efficient.

Furthermore the control of our QA Documents through M-Files has enabled us to manage and control system documentation in a way that provides users with the necessary access while tracking changes and being able to easily input the relevant details into the appropriate forms, checklists and reports. M-Files has enabled us to better control the system documents needed for audit control, monitoring and storage, improving the way we are able to operate the QA System.

Finally, through the workflow process within M-Files we have been able to assign tasks and function to staff members required by our QA procedures which ensure that the necessary documentation is being undertaken for the ongoing implementation of our QA procedures.

Karen and her team have provided excellent support and worked with us through the whole QA implementation process.

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