This was the title of a blog by Bob Larrivee at AIIM that caught my attention this week.  The opening paragraph of his February 12 blog brought back memories of implementing an ECM system at a previous employer:

"This term made famous by Wendy’s Hamburgers, is a common question in ECM. Many times senior management will ask you what is the value in your proposed ECM environment or where’s the beef? They want to know how it will bring benefit to the organization as a whole. If they are going to invest time and money, what will they gain?"

I found myself in a similar situation years ago in trying to convince business leaders of the benefits of an ECM system.  Many could certainly relate to version control, reduction of the possibility of duplicate files, audit trails and even some of the higher level benefits like records management.  But that wasn't quite enough for some to see the benefits of an ECM system.  To them, these were the condiments that Bob speaks about, but not the real efficiency gains from where they sat.

We were looking for something that could touch as many people in the organization as possible in bringing about substantial efficiency gains.  We began reviewing document centric processes to determine if we could improve upon them with either electronic forms or automation through workflow.  We found the AFE or Authority for Expenditure process touched almost every department in the organization.  And the process was largely inefficient for almost every one of those departments involved with it.

The process was largely a paper-based manual process.  The AFE forms were completed in an electronic format, printed and routed to the appropriate departments depending on the type of expenditure.  All supporting documents, including drawings or other files, were also printed and routed as part of the AFE package.  The users reported these problems with the current process:

• The AFE package didn't always follow the route it was supposed to.  Approvals were frequently made out of order (meaning a department that was supposed to approve after another department's review was complete did it before the review).
• It was difficult to know where to route an AFE to if it was beyond the approval authority of a particular approver.  The approval limits were in a manual, paper based system.
• It was difficult to know where a particular AFE was in the process.  If an AFE had a due date that was approaching, it took a lot of manual effort to find exactly where the AFE was in the approval process.
• AFE packages were susceptible to being lost, particularly when people took them home to review or travelers took them on out-of-town trips

Needless to say, this was a great process to automate with our ECM system and to bring the value that our business managers were looking for.  Some of the functions we provided in this new system include:

• We captured the AFE information in a form as the starting point in the workflow. 
• Users could attach any supporting documents to the workflow package so they could be routed with the AFE. 
• The departments that an AFE would route to were predetermined by the type of AFE. 
• There were lookups to an HR-related system to determine who the approver in a department needed to be based on the dollar amount of the AFE and their approval authority limits. 
• There was a full audit trail of every person that had a role in the approval of that AFE. 
• There was full visibility in where every AFE was in the approval process.  No more calling around to the various administrative assistants to see if was in their department.  It was as simple as clicking on the AFE number to determine exactly who the performer was for the current step.
•  Due dates could be set on AFE's that had time limits and the system could manage to those dates, alerting administrators when AFE's were approaching their deadlines or were over their due dates. 
• Approvers could review AFE's anywhere, including all supporting documentation, as long as they had a network connection.  There were no more "lost" AFE packages as everything was now electronic.

This was the beef that our business users were looking for to justify the investment in an ECM system.  This automated workflow greatly improved the process from their point of view and also added value through efficiency gains.  It was one of our most successful workflows and one we enhanced and improved on over the years.

How about you?  What have you used in your business case for ECM?