Figure 1. YSoft SAFEQ scan workflow, simplified key stages.
Swift, simple delivery via predetermined locations
The delivery stage of scanning can be the most involved and mistakes are easily made. In previous articles, we have looked at the traditional approach to document capture. Let’s return here once more.
How many times have you scanned a document, returned to your desk to find the email containing the scan, save it to your desktop and copy/paste it to a shared folder or upload into another system. Then, send an email to somone letting them know that the document is there?
All of these ‘delivery steps’ take time and errors in any step or forgetting a step can be costly for the company. Automating delivery removes the risk of human error and increases productivity for the business.
YSoft SAFEQ scan workflows eliminate these frustrations because the location is defined within the scan workflow template. The user simply selects a workflow from the list of their authorized workflows on the MFD and scans the document; everything else is automatically managed for them, in the backend: delivering the scan securely to its authorized destination and notifying recipients that the document is available.
Control and Flexibility of Shared Locations
Secure, shared locations are fast becoming best practice as repositories for digital documents. By defining an authorized destination and automatically routing the scan to that location from the MFD, the possibility of digital files getting into the wrong hands is eliminated. So, what do we mean by a secure, shared location? It can be an on-premise file server or ECM (electronic content management), a line of business application or a third-party cloud application.
We have a wide range of third party applications including Dropbox Business, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft OneDrive Business, which offer secure, cost effective storage. You can see the
current library of connectors here. We are continually adding to this library and appreciate your input on new storage applications or line of business applications you think we should add.
With connectors to these third-party applications, users do not have to login to the 3
rd party applications to have the scans delivered. YSoft SAFEQ can be configured to use single sign on in the workflow; the same credentials used to
authenticate at the MFD are used to log in to the cloud or on-premise applications that the business uses.
Secure Delivery Via Encryption
Security is a growing concern and with recent attacks on some of the world’s largest organizations, including Amazon, Twitter and Netflix, it is imperative that businesses protect their data and that of their customers and partners. The most effective way to protect your business is through secure automated delivery. With YSoft SAFEQ scan workflows, encryption is managed in the back end, it does not rely on any manual intervention or technical expertise. This means that you have complete peace of mind that your documents are delivered securely and can only be viewed by your authorized users.
A note about email delivery of scans. We’ve noted above about how unproductive and prone to human error scan to email can be. It is noteworthy to point out that scan to email is also less secure than encrypted delivery to pre-defined destinations. YSoft SAFEQ still supports scan to email which is generally fine for the occasional scan need or personal documents.
Complete audit trail via reporting
According to AIIM’s 2016 Process Improvement and Automation report, 89% of respondents said that audit trails and executed processes must be secured. That is to say, as employees share information it must be done securely and be auditable, in line with their specific industry’s regulations. Not easy to achieve when you consider that (according to Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation) between 1981 and 2012 an estimated 2,183 unique regulations have been promulgated, within U.S. manufacturing alone. And for global businesses, the complexity magnifies exponentially.
Auditing is a huge task for any organization to undertake. So, automating both tracking and reporting is essential in protecting your business and remaining in accordance with industry regulations without having to incur vast costs.
YSoft SAFEQ scan workflows provide reporting on your company’s scan activity. This provides you with complete insight into document capture activity. Reporting includes information on who is scanning, what devices are being used, when scans took place and where scans were delivered. The reports can be filtered in a variety of ways to show most active users, devices and by date ranges. If even greater granularity is required, detailed audit logs are also available within the reporting module.
YSoft SAFEQ scan workflows in practice
Let’s looks at a scenario, where the deliver stage of YSoft SAFEQ scan workflows can help an organization. A pest control company has over 100 specialists that can make three to five customers visits a day. Each driver receives daily paper orders from the head office that instructs him where to go and what services to provide.
Each paper order has a barcode containing the customer account information. At the end of the day the drivers return with completed forms. The next morning, the office administrator has a stack of completed forms that are marked as job completed. These forms need to be entered into their billing system.
A customized automated workflow is created in YSoft SAFEQ for easy scanning and delivery of documents into the company’s billing system with alerts to the pre-defined person who will act on it. This makes the workflow for the office administrator simple and fast, see Figure 2.
Figure 2. Delivery of digital documents into a billing system.
In the fourth and final article, we will look at how YSoft SAFEQ scan workflows are easily created and assigned to users or groups of users.
One Platform, One Interface, One Contract
At Y Soft, we pride ourselves on keeping things simple. As with all our solutions, the YSoft SAFEQ scan workflows are fully integrated with the major multifunction printer vendors and third party partners.
Our platform approach to print management and scan workflows means the easy-to-use interface is integrated for both users and IT administrators. If you choose to start with scan workflows and add print management, you can easily add new services under your existing contract. A key difference is that our pricing is on a “per device” basis, for all our solutions. You do not have to worry about the number of users or pages growing over time. If the number of MDF devices remain the same then so do your costs.
YSoft SAFEQ scan workflows can be found in these two product suites:
Learn more about YSoft SAFEQ Workflow Suite.
Learn more about YSoft SAFEQ Enterprise Suite (scan workflows + print management)
Part 1: The power of simplified scan capture
Part 2: The power of enhanced document capture processing