Real Estate Sales

Document Management System for Real Estate agencies

Less time filing more time selling

We have all dreamt of going paperless but surely this isn’t achievable in real estate? Especially for the sales department. Or is it?

What if all incoming and outgoing documents were captured and stored electronically? Now I know what you are thinking, we have tried that before and all we have done is take the mess of the manual system and put it on a computer.

There is an effective solution and it revolves around the term meta-data. Today you have filing cabinets, Word, PDF and Excel directories, email accounts and information stored in sales programs. The information for a property could be anywhere.

With M-Files this all changes. M-Files is a meta-data driven database that can link you’re your existing sales programs. All of your documents from any of the traditional areas are now in one place and the document you need is linked/associated with the CRM information in your existing system.

This means if you need a copy of the contract and a vendor’s phone number both pieces of the puzzle are side by side. No more searching multiple areas.

Multiple departments, multiple filing systems?

M-Files can not only manage the sales but also the property management department and the back-office administration as well.

Traditionally Real estate offices have a system for PM, a system for sales and not much in the way of a system for general office administration. M-Files for real estate will bring it all together and allow for the uniqueness of each business unit.

M-Files is built from the ground up to meet your needs and we also ensure that we use your terminology so there is only a small learning curve.

All this sounds expensive but it’s not you should expect to see return on investment in 2-3 months. In fact, it’s costing you more not to have this in place.

paper-less-real-estate-document-management

Filing cabinets taking up valuable real-estate in your office.

By effectively becoming a paperless office you not only will save valuable floor space but also save the environment. Being able to access your entire electronic document management system through the free M-Files App has also been very popular.

How often do you reach for your smart phone or iPad and google something? Now you can do the same for your offices filing system and tick off workflows and assignments on the fly.

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

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

Real Estate Transcript

Hello and welcome to this demonstration of M-Files for the Real Estate industry.  At the end of this video, there will be an opportunity to download a fully functioning version of M-Files and they’ll also be an opportunity to get an instant quote.  I’ll give you details of that at the end.  To give you an overview of where we’re headed today, what this is all about is a way to centralize all the company’s information.  Whether that’s your paper-based files, your electronic documents, emails, invoices, 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 we’re not adding a job to the day.  Most importantly, it’s about retrieval, so allowing you and the staff to be able to find anything instantly, but by any means that make sense to you.  So, by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in, a tenant’s name, a landlord’s name, a street address, we have it up on the screen immediately.  It’s primarily designed as a productivity tool.  We typically increase productivity by around an hour per person per day.  The results have just been tremendous.  In the third and last part of the process is where you’ll see that will all come together.  We will look at things like assignments, workflows, version control, document collaboration, all the actionable items that you do with this information and how that can be tracked, managed and simplified.

Who we are

To give you a little bit of information about M-Files and who we are, we have been specializing in this for over 20 years.  We do a lot of work across Real Estate from sales marketing, general admin, property management, commercial management etc.  I’m sure you’ll see tremendous results in this meeting.  Here are some of the current pain points that we often see, especially across Real Estate and I’m sure that some of these, if not all of them would resonate with you.  These are some of the challenges and problems that we will solve today.

Security/Access

Let’s have a look at how the whole system works.  The whole system’s password-protected, so we’ve got a login, which means we can set up different security levels for different people within the organisation.  There might be a general filing area that everyone can see.  There might be a HR, Payroll that only two or three people can access.  Different security levels depending on what’s required.  From there we can set up individual user rights, where some people get to annotate, edit, append, delete.  Other people get read-only rights and 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 updated an entry report, who’s changed a version.  Any of the actionable items that you do throughout the day are now automatically tracked and recorded.

Looks familiar 

The nice thing about M-Files is it looks and feels like Windows Explorer and where you’ve got server drives and folders and subfolders all the way down to property management, down to our client Bloggs and one of their properties 12 Smith Street.  Just like Windows Explorer, if we click on this folder we get a list of documents and like Windows Explorer if you click on a document we get a preview of that on the right-hand side.  The nice thing about this being based on a folder structure is, it’s instantly usable but the problem of course with a folder-based system, as we know is, they don’t work.  If you put it in the wrong spot or if you and I have differing opinions on how we think it should be named or saved, it can be difficult to find, retrieve and use.  We take a vastly different approach.  Instead of having to name this document correctly and put it in the right folder, what if we had dozens of different links that linked back to it and it could searched for it by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in, who your property manager was, a supplier, a document type, a keyword off it and we have it up on the screen immediately.  We call those links metadata and metadata for this document is listed at the bottom where we’ve noted the address, who the landlord is, the current tenant, your property manager, document types, dates, workflows, assignments 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 specifically based around your organization, your procedures, your processes.  We will use this as an example for today.

Capturing your information/documents 

Looking at the first part of the system, let’s look at ways of capturing information to make sure the input process is quick and easy.  let’s say we’ve got some correspondence to one of your landlords.  This might be on letterhead.  It might be a word document.  It could be a spreadsheet.  It could be a photo, a video or exit report.  Whatever it is, it can be saved.  How do we save it?  The same way you do.  We just click on save, but 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 then asks us to categorize this.  Would you put this under company admin, general admin that everyone can see, HR, property management, sales, commercial management? You’ve got various groups and departments and we’re going to create the departments for and with you.  Inside a department, you then have document types.  We might have bond documents, maintenance, notices, reports, agreements etc.  Not only will we create the departments for and with you, but we will also create all the document types to go with your current terminology.  In this case we’re going to call it property management correspondence and it says, well great, which property is that for?

Linking to Existing Databases

Instead of having to type them all in, what if we could pick it from a pre-set list?  What if this list came from existing property management software like Console, Rock End?  There’s a myriad of different solutions out there and we can link into those databases, so we’re not having to type them in.  We simply pick it from your pre-existing list and when we select our street it says, I know things about them.  I know who the landlord is.  I know who the current tenant is, you want me to fill out the auto fields and we say yes.  These are what we call parent-child fields.  When we select one piece of information M-Files goes to fill out the rest for you.  They can be any combination you want.  Of course, this is an example.  We pop in today’s date and we hit create and that one’s added in to M-Files.  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 and we’ve captured our first document, our letter to Bill Bloggs.  The preview is shown on the right and the metadata is listed at the bottom.

Using Templates

Let’s do this again, but a far quicker and easier way.  Because M-Files runs all day you can build new documents from within the system.  Instead of building a document from scratch, one of our clients has asked for a report and it launches your condition report template.  The nice thing about managing templates in here is, if you changed our reporting template, it is then globally changed and we’re all on that new version moving forward.  This is great for policy documents, property management, sales, leave applications.  All the documents that you’re commonly using can be managed here.  M-Files fills out the bulk of the filing fields for me and all I have to do is pop in what type of report it is and today’s date.  It even sets up an automatic naming convention, which I’ll come back to.  Our report is launched.  We’ve got your letterhead on top and your standard report.  These items in dark grey are metadata that have been inserted into the document from M-Files.  This information from M-Files, has often been in the existing property management software, but if you want to put an additional metadata like perhaps the documents version number, then using the M-Files tab, we can insert additional fields.  In this case our version number and that’s another item in dark grey.  Later, I’m going to change this version and you’ll see that I’ll go from version one to version two.  We’re finished with this one and we save this into the system and we’ve captured our second document.  Its preview is shown on the right and its metadata is listed at the bottom.  We’ve set up automatic naming by where it went, what it is the property is and who it’s for.  You can have whatever combination you want to automatically name.  I didn’t to fill any of that 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.  We find that’s a far quicker more uniform way and everything going in and out of the building is named consistently.

Capture Emails Quickly

Let’s have a look at Outlook emails.  Emails are notoriously difficult to capture and file.  Some of the problems of emails, first, is they’re an editable type document, so they don’t comply with the electronics acts.  They’ve got attachments.  You have no idea whether you’ve dealt with it or not and then six months later you delete it because you run out of space, disaster.  Luckily, M-Files integrates into the outlook filing system and to file it all we do is drag and drop it.  This email I see is an IT agreement from our IT supplier.  To me that sounds like company correspondence, so I drag and drop it into this folder and M-Files files it for me.  It fills out the subject line, based on the subject line of the email, the dates, the addresses.  There’s nothing to do but hit create and that one’s added to the system.  You’ve automatically complied with the electronic acts and it’s all backed up on the server.  A couple of nice things to note when you file something in M-Files, using the smart folders, it’s given a blue category, so visually I can see that one out of four emails have been dealt with.  If I emailed this through to you and to Jo-Ann in your office, who’s responsible for filing it?  Of course, you have no idea.  You both might do it.  None of you may do it.  Let’s say Joanne’s filed it.  When you go to file it into the system, it tells you it’s already being done.  It saves on email duplication.  How much time and space is wasted capturing duplicate emails?  The file format that we save 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 it a different way.  This one has an attachment in it from one of our clients.  I’m going to ask M-Files to automatically separate out and file all the attachments for me.  Because this is from one of my clients I am going to put it in job correspondence.  Because we put it in a different department, it’s going to require different things.  It wants to know the address.  We pop that in and M-Files fills out the rest of the filing fields.  I hit create and that too has been added to M-Fi8les.  If I was dealing with 12 Smith Street all the time, I would actually set up a folder here for 12 Smith Street, which would just take me a moment and I could drag and drop into it without even be asked any questions.  When we go into M-Files, instead of simply having an email which we can click on and open, this one’s been put in a folder where we have our email available to us again if we wish, but more importantly the attachments are there.  If you want to search for the word cabinets within your filing system, it would take you straight to the attachment, which is what you really wanted.  You’ve also got the email there as well should you need to reply.

Scanning

If we’re scanning documents into the system, we can use high speed document fed scanners like this one, where you load up a stack of pages and it’ll scan them through at 70 pages a minute straight up onto the screen.  We can make use of your existing photo copiers as a scanning device.  Any scanner will do the same job, but if you’re opening the mail, instead of hogging the photocopier, an ergonomic light unit like this, is much better.  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 do batch scanning and opened the mail, it would ask me who’s it from, what’s it about, where would you like to file it?

Importing your existing Documents

 We can do batch importing which is easier to show you.  I’ve put together some example documents that we’re going to file all at once.  What it’s going to do, is open the first document and show me a preview on the right of the first document we’re filing.  We fill out our usual metadata fields, like we had previously, and I pop in today’s date.  When I hit create if you look over on the left, you’ll see the first document is going to be added and the next one’s opened and its preview is shown on the right.  Its name is maintained, so your naming conventions are maintained, and we have previews of what we’re filing.  Of course, the whole point of your folders today is, they’re groups of documents we know.  This is the correspondence folder for 12 Smith Street.  Why don’t we say create all and with M-Files when we do that, those documents are instantly added.  The original naming convention is maintained.  Your original document types and dates are maintained.  Anyone can search for the content of the 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 map back to your existing network drives.  Let’s say you had a Z Drive for property management.  In this example, you had all your folders and subfolders there.  We can link back to your Z Drive and there are all your documents and folders as they look today and that can all be made available from day one.

That’s the first part of the system which is filing information.  That should be quicker and easier than what you’re doing by quite an amount.  We’re not having to do any of those manual processes and when we’ve captured it and filtered it around the office, we’ve done the filing at that same process.

Retrieval

Let’s look at the retrieval side.  This is where we start to see the real benefits of the system, which is instant retrieval.  If you wanted to know what time the sunset was tonight in your location, you’d put in your suburb name and the word sunset into Google and you’d get an instant answer.  You didn’t need to know that that information came from a spreadsheet, 15 folders deep, on a server in Perth.  You just asked a question to get yourself an instant answer.  Wouldn’t it be nice if your filing system worked the same way?  One that allows you to find things based on what it is you wanted?  Where you don’t have to remember how it was named for where it was filed and that’s how M-Files works.  It allows you to find things based on what it is you want.  We don’t have to remember those other details.  Very vaguely, all I remember is I spoke to someone call Bloggs.  I can’t remember the property address, but I just remember the name, so I do a vague search for that and I get documents totalling fifty-seven.  It shows me where that word appears in the name.  It shows you where the word appears multiple times in the metadata.  Let’s pick a document that has one in the document itself and it also highlights where that word appears in our document.  But I got 57, it’s too many.  I remember it had something to do with blogs and an invoice, so I’ll narrow it down by adding in a second word and I get seven documents.  It shows me where the word appears in the name, the multiple words in the metadata and throughout our document.  99 times out of a hundred, you know who you’re talking to.  You know what you’re looking for and you drill it down to one or two documents every time.  No more telephone tag.  Any inquiry, 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 general admin, or as a principal, or as a property manager, or a Sales Director, you’re going to want things very different ways.  Generally, what happens is, we’ve tried to squeeze all of you into one filing system and it really didn’t work.  Everybody’s then gone off and created their own information silos and often it’s on desktops and they’re not being backed up.  What if I could give you a filing system for each individual there.  It is as if the entire world revolved around what it is you did.  We do that by simply creating common searches.  I’ve set up an example set of searches here across the whole business.  These will be more directed to what you need specifically.  You may say show me all our property management documents and when we look at our client Bloggs, we can see there’s four properties and we can go into each of its properties and see is documents and folders.  Maybe you’d like to look at it from a landlord point of view and I can see that Bloggs is a landlord.  I can see they are a landlord, a purchaser.  I see that they’re accountants.  They have addresses, phone numbers, contact details.  Now this is all CRM information available for them which is no doubt available in other databases.  Wouldn’t it be nice if it all appeared here as well?  Maybe you’d like to look at it from a HR or Payroll point of view and if we look at our employee Angela, I can see she has employee documents and a performance review.  If I go into her performance review, it’s automatically named of what it is, who it’s for and when it was, and then a preview of that is shown on the right-hand side.  Maybe you’d like to look at it from an asset register point of view?  We can see that this PC, how much it was, warranty or serial numbers, warranty dates, locations, and whose desk it’s on etc can all be listed there.  Depending on what you need, maybe you’d like to look at it from an accounts point of view?  You might say, show me all invoices that have been entered ready for payment this week.  There’s just the one with the details on the right.  We can see what stage it’s up to and even whose desk it’s on to pay it.  The one that I use all the time is, recently accessed by me.  I am always going back to documents I’ve recently worked on and one of those documents was our property management report.  Now that we found some information, what we’re trying to illustrate here, is the ability to find what it is you want the moment you want it, every single time.

Processing Documents

Annotations

Once we found the information, you often want to work on it.  We’re often working with various different documents, different people.  I might send it out to you to get your opinion on it.  You might make some changes send it back to me etc.  Instead of me sending this out to a couple of you to make changes and send it back, what if you could just mark it up or annotate it on the fly?  You might decide that we’re going to highlight this part, scrub out these sections, you can draw arrows on it, maybe put a post-it note on it that doesn’t fall off.  We’re annotating over the top of the document not on the original.  You can print it with or without the notes.  We can rubber stamp this one saying it’s been approved for payment.  I can even sign it with an e-signature, that’s only available on my machine.  We’re working over the top of this document not on the original.

Version Control

If you want to change the original, we have a simple checkout process and while this 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 and the size.  I’m finished with my changes, so I saved this back into the system and we’ve captured our letter to Bill Bloggs.  We can see that it’s red.  I think, well that’s interesting, how did that come about?  I can ask for the documents history and I can see version 1 and 2.  I can see that we created it 14 minutes apart by the same user.  In your case, of course, it might be weeks apart by different staff members.  I’d like to look at our current version, so I open that one up in word and I can see our current version.  M files have said, wouldn’t it be nice if you could see the history of our document?  Using the compare button, I can open the original and the current at the same time and you can see the differences between our documents.  I think version 2 is awful.  I want to go back to version 1, so I close that down and click on the version that I like, and I say, can I roll back to the earlier version, and it says yes, and it creates version 3.  Back to back to where we were.  Instant and easy version control that cannot be circumvented by staff.

Distributing Documents

Now that we’ve worked on a document you often want to send it to somebody.  A common feature in any program, is to right click and send a copy by email.  M-Files attaches it as it is, a Word document, and you can hit Send.  You don’t want to send it out as an editable Word document, so in your world you open it in Word, save it as a PDF on the desktop, attach it, send it, delete it from the desktop.  That’s way too hard.  We know you want to do those sorts of things, so we give you the ability to send as a PDF by email.  M-Files opens it, converts it to a PDF and attaches it and you can simply hit Send.  You’ll see niceties like that throughout the whole M-Files experience.  Just simple day-to-day processes that we’re all doing made so much easier.   When you send this piece of Correspondence to your landlord, shouldn’t you be filing that?  Isn’t that a business transaction?  We give you the ability to do that with one button, send and save to M-Files, and it does both at the same time.

The Power of Metadata

They’re the first two parts of the system filing and finding of documents using metadata.  That within itself should be a brilliant productivity result, having what you need available to you instantly.  In the third and last part of the process is where you’ll see this will all come 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, landlords, tenants?  We will then start to see that all your information like documents, PDFs, emails, and all your knowledge, like phone numbers, due dates, invoice status, can now all be brought together into one place.  Our one-stop shop for all your information and knowledge.  The best way to start to show you the third and last part of the process, is where first we’re going to do a search for all staff.  We do a search for all employees and there’s 12 of us.  When we click on me as an example, it has metadata about me, the employee.  It says I’m a director, a property management manager.  It also says I am a sales consultant.  I have addresses, phone numbers, contact details, emergency contact information etc.  This is information about me, an employee.  I’m not a document but I’m an object within our database.  We’ll see these little arrows everywhere throughout M-Files and it means there’s information linked to me.  It says that I’m working on one sales address.  I’ve got 12 properties I am working on in property management.  I have six employees in my team, four outstanding assignments to do etc.  If we go down further, of the properties that I’m working with, one is 12 Smith Street.  Who is the landlord for that?  Bloggs Pty Ltd, when I click on their card, I get all their contact information.  Again, from your other databases, but it now all appears in your document management system as well.  Weren’t there documents associated with this property and one of those documents was our letter to Bill Bloggs.  When we click on our letter, because it’s a document, we get our documents preview and our documents metadata.  There is another arrow that is linked to the document.  As it turns out, an annotation, a landlord, an address, a property manager, a tenant.  Even if we were to go into Brian and Miriam’s folder, aren’t their documents exclusive to them?  Again, we’re back to our letter to Bill Bloggs.  Wherever you are within the M-Files system, whether you’re within a job, client, contact, supplier, property address, everything is related back to everything else.

Assignments – Approvals & Tasks

Now all that information and all of that knowledge has been brought together, where that becomes very useful is in a simple day-to-day example.  If I asked you to call Bloggs regarding that piece of Correspondence, 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 in this meeting?  Do I put a post-it note on your screen?  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 now replace them with managed electronic in trays.  These simple jobs are now called assignments.  My assignment for you is to call Bloggs.  I’m going to give you a bit more information, so you know what to do.  I’m going to put the property’s address in the system, so we’ve got a permanent record that I’ve requested this of you.  It’s part of the file now.  The deadline I’m giving you is today.  Such 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 an email notification telling me to do my job.  We have our new assignment, call Bloggs.  Let’s say somehow, I’ve been notified to do this, how do you go about doing it?  First, where’s the phone number for Bloggs?  Is that in console?  Is it in Outlook contacts, or a business card?  Once you’ve got the contact details, where’s the document itself?  Is that the one that you emailed to them?  Is that the edited one they sent back to Joanne?  How do you know you’re on the right version?  Then you can pick up the phone.  With M-Files, if I asked you to give Bloggs a call, it would say great, what’s their phone number and there it is at the bottom.  As the phone’s ringing, Bill picks up the phone and you say, hey Bill, I’ve got this letter on my desk what would you like today?  What a result.  How many times a day do we need a document and a phone number, or an invoice in its approval state, an entry report and whether it’s been responded to?  Most of what we’re doing in a day is information and knowledge.  This brings the two together beautifully.

Notifications

How did we notify you of this?  We’ve found the best place to do that is, within Outlook.  We send and receive e-mails all day every day.  We get an email notification and it says, call Bloggs, read the letter.  That’s fine, deadlines today, I better get on with it.  Instead of going off in all those different areas, you can click on it directly from your notification and it takes you straight to your assignment in M-Files.  Not only do we have the phone number and/or other contact information available to us at the bottom, not only do we have the document open on the right-hand side, so we can refer to it, but the rest of their folder is open as well in case they ask you something obscure.  This will be in your entry forever until you mark it as completed.  To do so, you simply pop a tick next to your name, hit save and we get a green tick on the clipboard.

Managing Office Workloads

As your boss I might say, show me all assignments for yourself.  There’s a list of five ones completed and the rest are outstanding.  I can see where you’re up to.  If I see that you’ve got too much work or too little work, I can micromanage in trays to ensure that nothing gets missed.  Instead of having to come and see you each day and follow up and bother you and take up your time, as a manager, I can discreetly have a look to see what’s going on and only come and see you if there’s an issue.

Workflows

These are simple day-to-day assignments, which is nice, but a lot of what we’re doing of course, is more complicated than that.  Where we’re dealing with multiple steps, multiple stages, often different deadlines.  I’m going to show you a process that’s going to bring all these different features together in a workflow.  We’re going to build a new document, but instead of building a document from scratch, under property management files, one of our clients has requested, a maintenance request.  It launches your work order template.  We fill out our usual metadata fields like we had previously for the other documents.  Because it’s a work order, it’s going to ask us what type of job, who the supplier is?  In this case, we’re going to use Breezy Air, because it’s an air conditioning job.  We pop in today’s date and we hit create and our template is launched.  We have your letterhead on top and your work order.  These items in dark grey are metadata that’s been inserted from M-Files and built to create and fill out the bulk of the document.  The quote for services is $3000 and as quick and as easy as that, we have finished with our work order.  We save this into the system and like any other document, we have it automatically named by what it is, the address etc.  We have a preview showing on the right and our usual metadata listed at the bottom.  We also have this workflow area.  This workflow is a property management maintenance workflow.  It’s been automatically assigned to me and I’ve received email notification.  The deadline I’ve been given is 24 hours.  My job is, the work order is to be checked.  Ok, so I’m looking at it, am I happy with this to move along and I say yes, and I move it to, work order approved please send to supplier.  I can make a note on this if I wish.  When I click okay, if you look at who it’s assigned to, whose desk it’s on, it goes off my desk and it goes on to Karen’s desk.  Karen gets notified via email.  Her job is, as the work order has been approved, please send to the supplier.  Karen moves that on and she might say emailed on the 20th.  When Karen finishes, it goes off her desk and it’s on nobody’s desk.  It has been sent.  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.  24 hours after I miss my deadline, you get notified.  We can put all sorts of rules around these workflows.  They can be very simple as demonstrated here, or they can be more complicated and go in a series of different directions, depending on what it is you need.  We will help you build create and manage these workflows.  These screen overviews are nice as well.  You can take it to a staff meeting and say, hey guys, are these processes working for us?

Mobile/Web/Tablet Access

The last thing I wanted to show you is being able to access your entire information management system from any mobile device.  We’ve become a more and more mobile workforce.  What if you could access M-Files from any Android device, Apple device, a web browser?  From wherever you are, being able to have access to your entire solution.  I can’t show you my mobile phone, but I can play for your one-minute video which I’ll do now.

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 and it’s just one of the ways you can experience the magic of M-Files.

Customisation/Implementation/Training

As you can see from that, it brings it together beautifully.  All your information and all your knowledge available to you from wherever you are.  The trick we found with the whole M-Files solution over the years is, it’s all about implementation.  We need to ensure that you get these results effortlessly from day one.  The challenge we find is, you have multiple staff with multiple opinions.  We need one filing system, one methodology.  The first way we go to achieving that for you is we’re going to develop a procedures and how-to manual specifically for your organization.  We will document what it is you do.  How do you process the mail?  What do you do with entry reports, emails, invoices?  Whatever it is you do, we will custom build this as a document.  If we click on our example of how we process the mail, there’s your workflow.  This is a made-up example, but if it was incoming mail and they are general documents, then they’re opened at admin, admin to sort, scan and file.  I’ve forgotten how to file and up come the filing instructions.  Written instructions, in English, from our trainers not IT talk.  This is not a technical manual.  These screenshots are a copy of your M-Files system, so if someone starts new, they are to read this.  We then take it further.  We will make fields compulsory, where you must file by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in, or the system won’t let you file it.  You get to set as many or as few rules around the database to ensure it’s captured a certain number of ways.  We will then provide extensive implementation and training.  We’ll train one or two of you as M file system administrators, who will build and develop the system.  You’ll set up procedures, processes, passwords.  You’ll own it as a process in-house.  The ongoing maintenance of the system is maybe five minutes a month.  Once it’s up and running you simply make use of it.  We will then train the balance of the users in small classes of up to three people for four hours.  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 everybody trained in back-to-back training sessions.  You go live the next morning and you are guaranteed to get your results.

Download a Trial/Quote

That’s probably enough out of me.  As I had mentioned earlier, you can now download a full M-Files solution that’s a 30-day trial full of documents, assignments etc.  You can test it out for yourself.  There’s also the opportunity to get an instant quote to see if you’d like to know how much M-Files costs.  There’s an option for that and both of those options are available on our home page.  If you have any questions, drop me an email or give me a quick call, it would be great to hear from you 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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