Output Management and Workflow
The timely delivery of documents to any business is critical, be it an invoice so that you are paid on time, or an urgent purchase order to buy vital stock. Output Management is all about improving the way you generate and deliver documents from your ERP system. According to independent research by the Gartner Group, Forms and Document management can cost up to 15% of a company's total revenue.
Output Management systems give a company the ability to replace the majority of its traditional paper based systems by providing distributed information electronically where and when it is needed and in the form required. Users of ERP systems are no longer satisfied with congested line printer reports, printed centrally, which then require distribution to their final destination. In addition, standard output often needs a considerable amount of redesign in order to produce the report a user will actually use. This is even more critical with documents that are distributed to customers or suppliers.
Capture output from virtually any system by sending it to a virtual Formate print driver. This output is then grabbed by Formate. Based on the workflow and predefined rules for that particular output, Formate can do numerous things:
- Formate will modify the standard printed output into the required format e.g. add or remove fields, incorporate logos, change fonts, add signatures or bar-codes, consolidate multiple pages onto fewer pages or expand the data onto more pages, sort data and/or pages, and include data from external database lookups.
- Formate can then automatically send faxes, emails, PDFs, MS-Word documents, Excel workbooks, XML files, and HTML web pages.
- Distribute information to where it's needed.
- Allow users to view documents electronically.
- Send documents to an archiving or document management system such as Inforouter.
Formate allows format the output how you really want it:
- Auto-fax documents
- Email documents instantly
- Store file copies as PDF images
- Create MS Word/Excel HTML or XML output
- Auto publish output to SharePoint
- Pass final document, with meta-data to your document management system (We already have an integration for Inforouter DMS)
- Sort print jobs to reduce postage costs
- Add bar codes — 1 and 2D
- Monitor Mailboxes and process emails
- Build Workflow processes
Key Areas Addressed by Formate
- Capture output from your legacy application in a variety of ways including file submission or through a virtual printer, so normally no changes will be required to your legacy applications.
- Modify standard printed output into the format required e.g. add or remove fields, incorporate logos, change fonts, add signatures or bar-codes.
Conditional processing allows documents to be tailored to your customers' needs (every customer can receive a personalised version of the document).
- Print to any technology of printer supported by Windows: laser, thermal, inkjet, digital copier or dot matrix, in mono or colour.
- Automatically create faxes, emails, PDFs, MS-Word documents, Excel workbooks, XML files, and dynamic HTML web pages.
- Distribute information to where it's needed.
- Allow users to view documents electronically.
- Reduce ERP implementation time.