DM Jan-Feb 2021

DOCUMENT 

M A N A G E R 

Dm 

www.document-manager.com 

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT 

IMAGING & CAPTURE 

WORKFLOW/BPM 

CONTENT MANAGEMENT 

Postal order: 

Digital mailroom to the rescue 

for locked down businesses 

Future shock: 

Predictions for an unpredictable year 

The AI opportunity: 

Bringing intelligence to document 

processing 

Digital transformation: 

The low-code lowdown 

NEWS • PRODUCT FOCUS • USER PROFILE • INTERVIEWS 

ISSN 1351-3222 Vol 29 No 1 January/February 2021

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Dm 

COMMENT 

Editor: 

Dave Tyler 

david.tyler@btc.co.uk 

Sub Editor: 

Mark Lyward 

mark.lyward@btc.co.uk 

Our first issue of a new year often 

Publishing Director: 

John Jageurs 

includes a roundtable type feature in 

john.jageurs@btc.co.uk 

Sales Manager: 

which we get to ask a selection of 

Abby Penn 

industry experts for their predictions for the 

abby.penn@btc.co.uk 

Lead Designer 

year ahead. This time round we almost 

Ian Collis 

thought 'What's the point of asking when we 

ian.collis@btc.co.uk 

Circulation/Subscriptions: 

know that everyone's responses will be shaped 

Christina Willis 

by the ongoing pandemic?' But ask we did, 

christina.willis@btc.co.uk 

Managing Director: 

and I'm glad we persisted: you'll see 

John Jageurs 

throughout the feature (starting on page 6) that while yes, the virus 

john.jageurs@btc.co.uk 

and its impact does loom large over much of the conversation, it is 

Published by: Barrow & 

in fact a largely positive piece, with various contributors agreeing 

Thompkins Connexion Ltd 

35 Station Square, 

that the technologies we focus on in DM are likely to have a good 

Petts Wood 

influence on how businesses manage the ongoing difficult 

Kent BR5 1LZ 

Tel: 01689 616000 

circumstances. 

Fax: 01689 826622 

Elsewhere in this issue you'll notice there is a recurring theme across 

Subscriptions: 

several of the editorial pieces, whether bylined opinions or case 

UK: £35/year, £60/two years, 

£80/three years 

studies: everyone seems to be talking about digital mailrooms! The 

Europe: £48/year, £85 two 

unprecedented rise in people working from home has thrown a 

years, £127 three years. 

ROW:£62/year, £115/two 

spanner in the works of organisations that were used to moving large 

years, £168/three years 

volumes of physical correspondence around an office network - a 

Published 6 times a year. 

Single copies can be bought 

digital approach is an obvious solution. 

for £8.50 (includes postage & 

As Storetec's Amy Wright says "Employers are still facing the 

packaging). No part of this 

magazine may be reproduced 

difficulty of sending staff to the office to collect office post and the 

without prior consent, in writing, 

from the publisher. 

odd bits of paperwork to assist with day-to-day queries. Whilst this 

©Copyright 2021 Barrow & 

may seem like a 5-minute task, the time taken to travel to the office 

Thompkins 

in addition to the hours spent self-sorting and scanning the post, 

Connexion Ltd 

makes this a very inefficient way of working. For departments with 

Articles published reflect the 

post arriving frequently such as Accounts who process sensitive and 

opinions of the authors and are 

not necessarily those of the 

confidential paperwork, weekly or even daily trips may be required. 

publisher or his employees. While 

every reasonable effort is made 

Furthermore, employers are risking the health of individual employees 

to ensure that the contents of 

by asking them to visit the office amid the height of the pandemic." 

articles, editorial and advertising 

are accurate no responsibility can 

We also feature a case study from EDM Group that was a close 

be accepted by the publisher for 

errors, misrepresentations or any 

runner-up in the DM Awards at the end of last year, involving a 'rapid 

resulting effects 

installation' digital mailroom set up for Direct Line Group, which has 

helped the insurer to continue operations throughout the crisis. 

Direct Line Group's Andy Payne explains: "When the Covid-19 

pandemic emerged, we urgently implemented a home working 

strategy to adhere to government guidelines and to ensure the safety 

of our people. With thousands of mail items being received into our 

offices across the country it was imperative we found a way to make 

physical mail available to staff at home to keep the business moving." 

EDM was able to get the emergency digital mailroom up and running 

within a week. 

It is innovative approaches like this that will help all of us to get 

through the current situation. 

Dave Tyler 

Editor 

david.tyler@btc.co.uk 


January/February 2021 

@DMMagAndAwards 

3

Dm CONTENTS 

C O N T E N T S 

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 

14 

16 

18 

25 

28 

..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 

ROUNDTABLE: 2021 PREDICTIONS…………...............................................……….6 

Our annual get-together of industry leaders yielded a number of topics likely to be on 

everyone's minds in the coming year, with the recurring theme of Covid-19 running 

through almost every aspect of the discussion 

TECHNOLOGY: AI…..…...................................................................................…..10 

Ashley Keil, ibml's VP sales, EMEA/APAC, discusses how AI platforms can radically change, 

improve and automate how documents are handled and processed 

MANAGEMENT: BUSINESS CONTINUITY………...........................................…….12 

Businesses need to find a smarter way to work in 2021 - one that's flexible and adaptive to 

their needs, argues Jason Rowles of PFU (EMEA) Limited 

MARKET FOCUS: ACCOUNTS PAYABLE..............................................................…14 

A/P departments lag behind in AI automation, according to a new survey from Ephesoft: 

two-thirds of accounting departments still process invoices manually, while only 15% are 

fully paperless 

CASE STUDY: ROCHDALE BOROUGH COUNCIL……......................................……16 

Rochdale has selected Lexis Visualfiles to support remote working, standardise processes, 

and improve operational efficiency of legal services 

OPINION: DIGITAL MAILROOM ……..............................................................……18 

Amy Wright of Storetec argues that the potential benefits of a digital mailroom can vastly 

outweigh the factors that may have prevented organisations from looking at automation in 

the past - especially in the current business climate of increased home-working 

CASE STUDY: GRAND UNION HOUSING………............................................…….20 

A UK housing association has achieved estimated annual savings of £8,500 with agile 

postage cost control, and empowered employees to send post from wherever they are 

without leaving their desks - invaluable when the pandemic kept staff out of the office 

in 2020 

RESEARCH: AUTOMATION………...................................................................…..22 

The newest Intelligent Automation Benchmark Study from Kofax reveals that 

automation initiatives involving document intelligence, process orchestration and 

connected systems are yielding the greatest ROI 

CASE STUDY: DIRECT LINE GROUP…................................................................…..24 

EDM Group has helped Direct Line to empower its workers with a 'rapid installation' 

digital mailroom that has enabled the business to continue operations throughout the 

Covid-19 crisis 

OPINION: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION…….......................................................…26 

Christopher McLaughlin of Nuxeo explains how low-code development can drive digital 

transformation in 2021 

CASE STUDY: WHEATLEY PARK SCHOOL……................................................…….28 

The key thing about using PaperCut print management software at Holton's Wheatley Park 

School is that it is simple to deploy, and even more crucially, 'it just works' 

EVENT PREVIEW: IRMS 2021……......................................................................…30 

MARKET FOCUS: LEGAL……............................................................................….32 

Electronic document bundling technologies have helped law firms to mitigate the impact 

of working from home during the pandemic, according to a survey from Zylpha 

ANALYSIS: EMAIL MANAGEMENT………....................................................……..34 

New research finds 32% of employees spend nearly one working day per week managing 

email inboxes 

4 @DMMagAndAwards January/February 2021 www.document-manager.com

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Dm ROUNDTABLE: 2021 PREDICTIONS 

What's in the stars for 2021? 

Our annual get-together of industry leaders yielded a number of topics likely to 

be on everyone's minds in the coming year, with the recurring theme of Covid- 

19 running through almost every aspect of the discussion 

If there's one thing we can all agree on, it 

is surely that 2020 was a year like no 

other: the pandemic impacted every 

aspect of our work and personal lives in a 

way that very few of us had ever 

experienced before - and certainly none of 

us wanted to go through again! 

It is therefore no surprise that when we 

asked a panel of industry experts for their 

thoughts on what 2021 might bring to the 

sector, the shadow of Covid-19 hung over 

every response in one way or another. 

Mike Nelson of PFU EMEA summed up 

the general feeling: "Many of us have spent 

the last few months managing an 

appropriate return to work. Particularly in 

the services industry, this experience has 

also helped us advise our partners and 

customers travelling on the same journey. 

For those of us dealing in equipment, it 

does however present a clear challenge; 

how do we make sure our solutions can 

operate as effectively in the new normal? 

The return to a blended form of work will 

be a challenge for many companies moving 

into 2021, and it is why we expect to see 

far more blended IT offerings come to 

market where organisations don't simply 

purchase devices for the office, but the 

home as well." 

BACK TO THE OFFICE? 

Home working then is here to stay, in some 

form at least, even as businesses try to 

prepare for some kind of return to the 

office this year. Amanda Holmes of Kodak 

Alaris comments: "Whilst flexible working 

has long been a mainstay of many 

organisations, mass home working as a 

result of lockdowns has completely 

changed where work gets done - perhaps 

forever. The coronavirus pandemic has 

normalised remote work, and as a result 

much has been written about the demise of 

the traditional corporate office. It is highly 

likely that post-pandemic, we will see a new 

hybrid work model that blends in-office 

work with remote work. But for the hybrid 

workplace to be successful, it must be well 

planned and executed; business leaders will 


ROUNDTABLE: 2021 PREDICTIONS Dm 

"TO THIS POINT, A.I. AND M.L. ARE VERY MUCH NICHE - REQUIRING HAND- 

HOLDING AND SUPPORTING SPECIFIC USE CASES. TO BE SUCCESSFUL THIS 

HAS TO MOVE TO A MODEL WHERE THEY ARE FULLY EMBEDDED INTO THE 

APPLICATIONS WE USE DAILY. THE USER DOESN'T NEED OR WANT TO 

THINK ABOUT A.I. - THEY WANT SYSTEMS THAT MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM 

TO COMPLETE THEIR TASKS." - FERGUS WILSON, REPSTOR 

be looking for ways in which to securely, 

cost-effectively and efficiently provide 

hybrid workers with access to the right 

technology and services on demand - 

wherever they are." 

For many, this 'blended' future approach 

will of course mean an even greater 

emphasis on the cloud, as Hyland's Tim 

Hood explains: "Cloud solutions provide 

remote employees access to information 

they would traditionally leverage in the 

office environment. Access to information 

and the ability for team members to 

collaborate are essential in driving 

businesses forward in a year like no other." 

Collaboration, for long a partiallydelivered 

buzzword for so many 

organisations, will be central to IT 

planning for the future. "The sudden shift 

to telecommuting due to the COVID-19 

pandemic forces enterprises to rethink the 

way their teams work together," says 

Stéphan Donzé of AODocs. "With the 

absence of the physical meeting room, 

modern collaborative tools like Google 

Workspace are no longer a 'nice to have' 

and will play an increasingly important role 

in a company's ability to operate efficiently. 

"Collaboration platforms that allow a 

team to work together on the same single 

version of a document, spreadsheet, or 

slide deck - with each contributing 

simultaneously to the content - become a 

real differentiator, compared to the 

traditional model where each person 

works separately on their own copy of the 

document and contributes a sprawling 

chaos of countless copies and versions." 

CHOOSING TEAMS 

EASY Software's Tony Cheung agrees, at 

least in part: "The importance of 

centralised corporate information 

management has never been highlighted 

more, especially since the impact of 

managing through the lockdown. There 

has been an explosion of users relying on 

their collaboration platforms such as 

Microsoft Teams which came with their 

Office 365 subscriptions or the use of 

Salesforce for their Customer related 

activities. However the lack of organised 

information management for their key 

corporate documents in these new 

information silos will need to be addressed 

quickly before subscription costs spiral." 

Fergus Wilson of Repstor also sees an 

increasing role for the Microsoft tool: 

"Teams changes everything: its adoption is 

key to successful implementation of 

content services systems. Existing content 

systems suffer from unfamiliar interfaces 

and inadequate integration with Office 

applications. Now we have Teams - 

familiar, easy-to-use, and always open on 

the user's desktop. It is designed to give 

seamless access not just to Office, or 

Microsoft 365, but to other systems within 

an organisation. Content system vendors 

will be scrambling to provide their 

functionality in Teams. Customers will start 

to think of Teams as the new, easy-to-use 

content system." 

Kofax's Liz Benson goes further still: "Pre- 

COVID, organisations were obsessed with 

driving efficiency, collaboration, and 

innovation through analogue strategies 

like smart office equipment and innovative 

office design. Open floorplans, bean bag 

chairs, latte machines and electronic 

whiteboards were just some of the tools 

that supported employees in generating 

more agile and competitive ways of 

working and thinking. Fast forward to 

2021 when employees and customers are 

virtual: there's now a premium on digital 

transformation as the vehicle for driving 

employee productivity and customer 

experience. Organisations mastering the 

digital landscape - from collaboration tools 

(Zoom, MS Teams, etc.) to automation 

tools (intelligent automation, financial 

process automation and enterprise output 

management) are thriving. Companies 

stuck in analogue business models are 

falling farther behind. This trend will 

accelerate in 2021 and will continue even 

after offices open up again. Digital 

workflow transformation is here to stay." 




7

Dm ROUNDTABLE: 2021 PREDICTIONS 

"ANY ORGANISATION THAT ISN'T USING R.P.A. IS MISSING OUT ON SERIOUS 

AUTOMATION QUICK WINS. THE PANDEMIC GAVE COMPANIES ADDED 

MOTIVATION TO AUTOMATE IN GENERAL, ESPECIALLY AROUND MUNDANE 

TASKS, THE TYPE THAT ARE IN R.P.A.'S WHEELHOUSE. EVEN THOSE WITH AN 

AUTOMATION SOLUTION IN PLACE WITH TRADITIONAL TOOLS LIKE WORKFLOW, 

WILL BENEFIT FROM THE 'AUTOMATION EXTENSION' PROVIDED BY R.P.A." - TIM 

HOOD, HYLAND 

TAKING A LEAD 

Digital transformation itself could be a 

trend that really takes off in 2021 and 

beyond, thanks in part to the demands of 

a post-pandemic shift in how we all work. 

As Amanda Holmes of Kodak Alaris adds: 

"2020 forced businesses around the world 

to hit 'fast forward' on their digital 

transformation plans. Facilitating effective 

remote working on a scale never seen 

before placed IT departments under 

massive pressure to very quickly ramp up 

the use of digital-first technologies to keep 

business moving. For companies 

committed to digital transformation before 

the crisis hit, the transition was 

undoubtedly much smoother than for 

those whose transformation efforts were in 

their infancy. 

"2021 will be the year that separates the 

digital leaders from the digital laggards. 

Lessening reliance on paper-based 

workflows, eliminating manual processes 

and replacing them with streamlined 

digitised alternatives that seamlessly 

integrate into line of business operations 

and enable faster access to information; 

will be critical to maximise organisational 

efficiency, employee productivity, and most 

importantly, profitability." 

Sean Baird of Nuxeo agrees: "The major 

changes to the workplace environment in 

2020 have accelerated the focus on digital 

transformation in many organisations, and 

I expect that we'll see a continued focus on 

adoption of the technologies that enable 

firms to achieve this. Content will continue 

to be critical, and the organisations that 

can bring content-centric applications to 

market quickly will be well-positioned for 

2021 and beyond. In addition to the need 

for content services, organisations are 

increasingly looking at artificial intelligence 

to help automate their content-centric 

business processes. I expect AI to become 

mainstream in 2021, as an increasing 

number of organisations achieve real AI 

successes." 

LEARNING TO SUCCEED 

Several of our panellists cited AI and 

machine learning as technologies that will 

help organisations to get the most from 

their content, including Max Kelleher of 

Generis: "AI/ML solutions will absolutely 

become a commodity over the next 5 years 

for the large majority of standard use 

cases. While before customers were forced 

to reach out to specific AI-focused 

companies in order to run POCs with 

crossed-fingers, now vendors are taking up 

that role and integrating algorithm services 

directly into their platforms for a 

repeatable and consistent quality of 

product. With that, the market 

competition will resolve not around who 

can understand or implement the 

technology, but the accuracy of the results 

and the ability to provide greater value 

beyond standard methods." 

AODocs' Stéphan Donzé agreed: "AI will 

play an increasing role in automating 

manual and mundane tasks, which 

continue to increase efficiency and 

accuracy while enabling information 

workers to focus on more strategic and 

high-level activities. In particular, AI will be 

leveraged in 2021 - and beyond - to 

substantially reduce manual data entry 

where human fingers would have been 

used to enter information into a database 

from an invoice, a W9, a scanned driver's 

license, and so on. The nature of AI is that 

it continues to get better and better at 

understanding and processing 

unstructured documents, and this is a 

game changer for enterprises that are still 

tethered to manual processes." 

Repstor's Fergus Wilson also feels that AI 

is on the verge of becoming a commodity 

service: "To this point, AI and ML are very 

much niche - requiring hand-holding and 

supporting specific use cases. To be 

successful this has to move to a model 

where they are fully embedded into the 

applications we use daily. The user doesn't 

need or want to think about AI - they 

want systems that make it easy for them 

to complete their tasks. So AI and ML will 


ROUNDTABLE: 2021 PREDICTIONS Dm 

"CONTENT MANAGEMENT AND DATA MANAGEMENT HAVE BECOME 

COMMODITIES. THE VALUE THAT BUSINESSES WILL BE LOOKING FOR IN 

THEIR SYSTEMS IS TO BE ABLE TO STEP THROUGH THEIR ENTIRE BUSINESS 

PROCESS, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER INDIVIDUAL STEPS INVOLVE 

CONTENT OR DATA - AND TO DO SO IN AS FEW DIFFERENT 

SYSTEMS/USER INTERFACES AS POSSIBLE." - MAX KELLEHER, GENERIS 

become seamless - and this will be 

helped by commoditisation of this 

technology with initiatives like Project 

Cortex from Microsoft." 

AUTOMATION FOR THE PEOPLE 

Alongside AI, RPA was one of the topics 

we returned to again and again 

throughout 2020, so it was no surprise to 

see it feature in the thoughts of many of 

our panel. Amanda Holmes of Kodak 

Alaris said: "Intelligent capture in 

combination with RPA will be particularly 

powerful in areas such as finance, IT, 

operations and information governance 

that have large process volumes and 

amounts of unstructured information and 

content tied to critical processes. RPA 

technologies which can automate 

repeatable processes, uncover efficiencies 

and provide insights, will make the path 

to digital transformation faster and more 

cost-effective, enabling companies to take 

information capture to the next level, by 

making total automation and paper-free 

processes a business reality." 

Hyland's Tim Hood agrees: "Any 

organisation that isn't using RPA is missing 

out on serious automation quick wins. 

The pandemic gave companies added 

motivation to automate in general, 

especially around mundane tasks, the type 

that are in RPA's wheelhouse. Even those 

with an automation solution in place with 

traditional tools like workflow, will benefit 

from the 'automation extension' provided 

by RPA. A typical use case is integrating 

with an otherwise inaccessible application 

to copy and paste data from one system 

to another. The future of RPA will have 

self-learning bots with the integration of 

AI, especially machine learning. Systems 

and bots will learn from previous 

decisions to handle more and more rulesbased 

processes independently. " 

Liz Benson of Kofax expands on this 

theme: "RPA has caught on like wildfire, 

because it made automating routine, 

mundane tasks fast, easy and dare I say, 

fun. It made motivation-killing work like 

monotonous, cut-and-paste data entry a 

drudgery of the past. Where does RPA go 

from here? It's all about workflow." She 

goes on: "For savvy companies, 2021 is 

about harnessing their RPA automation 

expertise - and leveraging it with 

complementary technologies like process 

orchestration and document intelligence 

to automate their mission-critical 

business workflows." 

For some, the idea that certain 

technologies are on the verge of being 

seen as commoditised is not limited to 

emerging tech such as AI and RPA. 

Generis' Max Kelleher again: "Content 

Management and Data Management 

have become commodities. The value 

that businesses will be looking for in their 

systems is to be able to step through their 

entire business process, regardless of 

whether individual steps involve content 

or data - and to do so in as few different 

systems/user interfaces as possible: 

meaning a true enterprise workspace is 

the shape of the future, not as an empty 

phrase but really as a space to do all your 

work. The lines between content and 

data will become increasingly blurred: it 

will be essential to be able to extract data 

from documents, manipulate and 

manage the data through complete 

workflows and lifecycles, and then build 

documents from data." 

PFU's Mike Nelson sums up the general 

view of most of our experts: "Solely 

embracing digital technologies will not 

help businesses adapt to the new normal. 

A significant 86% of decision-makers say 

that managing the amount of 

information in their business is a 

challenge, and almost a quarter cited 

inaccurate decision making and lost 

documents as a result of 'information 

overload'. Therefore in 2021 we expect to 

see more organisations look to harness 

their collective organisational intelligence, 

breaking down silos and creating 

opportunities for the document 

management industry as a result." 




9

Dm TECHNOLOGY: AI 

AI offers a galaxy of 

opportunities 

Ashley Keil, ibml's VP sales, 

EMEA/APAC, discusses how artificial 

intelligence platforms can radically 

change, improve and automate how 

documents are handled and processed 

Don't panic! You might recall the 

famous inscription on the cover of 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 

a classic sci-fi book written by the late 

Douglas Adams which charts the 

adventures of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect 

after the Vogons demolish Earth to make 

way for a new hyperspace bypass. 

Published in 1979, what might not be 

quite so well-known is just how prescient 

Adams was in terms of referencing 

technology which has subsequently been 

developed. The fictitious Hitchhiker's Guide 

itself was almost a precursor to the Kindle 

- a handheld electronic book able to serve 

a million pages via a four inch square 

screen. The information stored in it is usergenerated 

and constantly updated - 

exactly the approach adopted by 

Wikipedia - and the Babel Fish introduced 

the idea of putting something in your ear 

which could then translate languages - a 

concept actually brought to market in 

2016 by Waverley Labs with the Pilot 

Smart Earbuds. 

And talking of Babel Fish, rapid 

developments involving self-learning 

artificial intelligence (AI) platforms - which 

solve complex problems automatically - are 

now enabling information and business 

managers to quickly gain real insight from 

documents irrespective of the language, 

the computer file format used and whether 

documents contain machine print or 

cursive handwriting or both. 

This is set to radically change how 

organisations cope with recognising and 

classifying millions of documents and then 

extracting and validating information 

without any manual intervention at all, 

thereby increasing productivity, accuracy 

and saving money. 

10 



www.document-manager.com

TECHNOLOGY: AI Dm 

RECOGNITION IS LIMITED 

To date, a vast amount has been invested 

deploying traditional recognition 

technologies such OCR, ICR and intelligent 

word recognition to analyse the content of 

documents and boost automation. It's still 

very much a growth area. Research shows 

that the global OCR market is expected to 

reach $13.38 billion by 2025 - increasing 

at a CAGR of 13.7% from 2019. 

Despite this, there are limitations. Many 

ICR/OCR engines struggle to process a mix 

of documents - encompassing structured, 

semi-structured and unstructured data - 

along with cursive handwriting, historical 

and old documents especially when the 

legibility of the paperwork is poor. The 

situation is exacerbated when volumes are 

high. And no one traditional ICR/OCR 

engine can seamlessly process a variety of 

languages - jumping from documents in 

English to Chinese, German and so on. 

With such variability, correct read-rates 

drop markedly - it's still tough to get 

more than 90-95% accuracy today - such 

that staff are required to then manually 

re-key information in. This is time 

consuming, costly and begs the question 

of whether enough trained employees 

are available to do it. 

Of course, crowdsourcing approaches are 

a good and cheaper work around than 

actually hiring people to enhance accuracy. 

Snippets of data are sent to online entry 

clerks logged into an Internet-based system 

who then check it prior to inputting it into 

line of business systems. 

But the promise - and now reality - of AI 

is that these challenges are also resolved 

using powerful cognitive systems. 

AI-POWERED SOLUTIONS ARE 

ALREADY HERE 

Utilising neural networks, AI-driven 

document processing platforms offer a 

leapfrog advance over traditional 

recognition technologies. At the outset, a 

system is 'trained' so that a consolidated 

core knowledge base is created about a 

particular (spoken) language, form and/or 

document type. In AI jargon, this is 

known as the 'inference'. This knowledge 

base then expands and grows over time 

as more and more information is fed into 

the system and it self-learns - able to 

recognise documents and their contents 

as they arrive. 

This is achieved using a feedback 'retraining 

loop' - think of it as supervised 

learning overseen by a human - 

whereby errors in the system are 

corrected when they arise so that the 

inference (and the metadata underlying 

it) updates, learns and is able to then 

deal with similar situations on its own 

when they next appear. 

It's not dissimilar to how the human brain 

works, for example how children learn a 

language. The more kids talk, make 

mistakes and are corrected, the better they 

get at speaking. The same is true with AI 

when applied to document analysis and 

processing. The inference becomes ever 

more knowledgeable and accurate. 

AI-based systems can be trained to 

automatically recognise specific forms, 

review specific content and its layout on 

the page and then convert cursive 

handwriting into standard electronic 

formats such as PDF or JSON for analysis or 

workflow purposes, with validation and 

verification also taking place. This can also 

be done at a field-based level so that key 

value extraction can be completed. 

Admittedly this is something that ICR/OCR 

systems can also do but they struggle to 

recognise cursive handwriting and require 

complex algorithms to find the fields. 

Key value extraction on a form, for 

example, could be a generic box for 'name' 

or 'age' - the key - and then the specific 

values would be 'Mr John Smith' and '50'. 

Or on an invoice, the keys are items 

purchased and the values are the prices 

paid for each different one. 

The benefits here are clear. Governments, 

healthcare providers, banks and insurance 

firms have to process a vast number of 

handwritten forms with identical formats 

for various purposes like questionnaires, 

applications, personal loans, mortgages or 

claims. Retrieving the handwritten 

information from them and converting it 

into a digital format without human 

intervention reduces manual errors, lowers 

cost, allows big data analytics and makes 

turnaround considerably faster. 

And the speed of this AI-based processing 

is impressive. Anywhere up to 50,000 

pages per hour can be completed using a 

single server, with bigger deployments and 

cloud delivery also possible when more 

compute power is added. 

Multiple different common files can be 

ingested for analysis such as plain text, PDF, 

TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PPM, PNG and so on with 

several neural nets then reading the text 

and classifying the type - whether it be 

handwriting or machine print - with 'fuzzy 

search' aiding the text-to-digital conversion 

process. And class-leading AI systems, in 

addition to handling paper documents, are 

designed to cope with pictures, video and 

audio, too. Put another way, they are 

content-agnostic and can handle any 

source content. 

AI IN PRACTICE 

This is real stuff. One German insurance 

firm is working over the next six years to 

shift its entire claim process to use an AIpowered 

system such that claims under a 

certain value will be handled automatically 

based on information extracted, assessed 

and approved from a form with no human 

involvement required at all. This will be 

accomplished as the AI solution 

automatically checks the name, address, 

insurance number and other key details 

about a given incident - capturing all the 

data from the form correctly first time 

every time. 

When it comes to document processing, 

seeing AI in action is impressive. It's magical 

stuff to watch a machine 'read' a scanned 

paper document and extract data from it. 

One of the consequences of the Covid-19 

pandemic and the economic fallout from it 

is that many companies will want to 

improve efficiency in a bid to save money. 

Those who have a significant cost and 

operational overhead processing forms and 

other documentation many feel a sense of 

corporate anxiety or even alarm about how 

to do this. 

As The Hitchhiker's Guide helpfully advised 

on its cover, don't panic. AI has sufficiently 

matured such that it is now a real-world 

performant and reliable option for 

companies tasked with grappling and 

dealing with millions of paper documents. 

More info: www.ibml.com 




11

Dm MANAGEMENT: BUSINESS CONTINUITY 

Is 2021 the year of remote business continuity? 

Businesses need to find a smarter way to work in 2021 - a way that's flexible and 

adaptive to their needs, argues Jason Rowles of PFU (EMEA) Limited 

The past year has forced organisations 

to adjust their business strategies 

overnight, shifting their businesses 

online with employees working out of 

home offices wherever possible. The results 

have been mixed, as over a third of UK midmarket 

businesses are estimated to have 

been forced to reduce capacity or 

close/suspend operations. 

This is sobering, but it's not just a global 

health crisis that can cause severe 

disruption to business. Erupting volcanoes, 

earthquakes, or political upheavals can 

have a similar effect on transport and daily 

commutes. This year has been a live test 

for business continuity plans and how 

effective they really are, what works and 

what doesn't. From homeworking 

equipment that is fit-for-purpose to 

reliable communications infrastructure - if 

it wasn't already in place when lockdown 

started, then the scramble was on to 

enable productivity. 

THE CALL CENTRE CASE 

The disruption caused by the shift to 

homeworking was particularly noticeable 

in the contact centre sector, which employs 

more than four percent of the UK's 

working population. Organisations that 

couldn't change to the new way of 

working descended into turmoil and, 

although the public had a high level of 

acceptance with the extended call waiting 

times and poor customer experience at 

first, tolerance levels have been fading 

through the autumn and winter. 

It's been tough on contact centre remote 

agents. Closing brick and mortar retail 

outlets led to a massive increase in online 

shopping and an equivalent need for online 

sales assistance. For many contact centre 

employees, finding themselves working 

from home for the first time and having to 

handle some tough customer calls must 

have been hard especially when no team 

members are around to offer support. 

When working from home is necessary, the 

right technology to keep remote workers 

more connected to their colleagues and 

their organisations is critical. It's just as 

12 




MANAGEMENT: BUSINESS CONTINUITY Dm 

important from a customer experience 

point-of-view; just because a contact 

centre agent is working from home, the 

experience for the customer doesn't have 

to be compromised. 

REGULAR FLEXIBLE & REMOTE 

WORKING 

Business continuity plans need to be in 

place, tested and working, not just as a 

response to health pandemics - or the 

more traditional disruptions such as 

floods, fires or power cuts - but more 

generally, so that organisations are 

covered for when employees might need 

or want to work remotely. 

An updated business continuity plan is 

one that is not just taken down and 

dusted every now and then. Putting 

resilient systems in place that have the 

flexibility and adaptability to support 

employees and their changing 

circumstances, including family and heath 

situations, is a good way of also ensuring 

an organisation has the best systems in 

place to help it recover from much more 

dramatic shocks. 

The most important ability during a crisis 

is adaptability as when things suddenly 

and rapidly start changing, it's vital to that 

organisations are fluid enough to be able 

to keep up with new conditions. This 

means that flexible work schedules should 

not just be in place only during times of 

crisis. Having a flexible working policy in 

place during so called 'normal' times, is 

proof that when that normality changes, 

everyone is familiar with working flexibly 

and understands the processes involved. 

With robust remote working technology 

up-and-running and a flexible working 

policy being used as a matter of course, 

the next step is to test crisis procedures 

using a variety of scenarios so that 

business recovery can be maximised 

regardless of what might happen. There is 

no point having state-of-the-art 

homeworking solutions if a fire in the 

physical office destroys vital paper-based 

legacy information. Businesses need to 

find a smarter way to work in 2021 that's 

flexible and adaptive to their needs. 

"WHEN WORKING FROM HOME IS NECESSARY, THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY 

TO KEEP REMOTE WORKERS MORE CONNECTED TO THEIR COLLEAGUES 

AND THEIR ORGANISATIONS IS CRITICAL. IT'S JUST AS IMPORTANT FROM A 

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE POINT-OF-VIEW; JUST BECAUSE A CONTACT 

CENTRE AGENT IS WORKING FROM HOME, THE EXPERIENCE FOR THE 

CUSTOMER DOESN'T HAVE TO BE COMPROMISED." 

DIGITISATION'S ROLE IN BUSINESS 

CONTINUITY 

According to Statista, the world's paper 

and cardboard consumption increased 

to almost 422 million metric tons in 

2018. This is not to say that all paper 

use is bad thing, but it is an indication 

of just how much we still rely on paper 

and need better access to the 

information stored on it. 

In business and the public sector, the 

information held on paper is often 

required again after its first use. Patient 

notes need to be referred to, lesson 

plans repurposed, and client campaigns 

refreshed. This means that, ideally, the 

information should be easy to both 

access and share. 

The need to be able to easily use, 

store, access, share - and keep 

protected for legal as well as business 

continuity purposes - all the valuable 

data held on paper, points to 

digitisation as an ideal answer. One of 

the best and simplest ways to digitise 

paper-based information is to use a 

smart document scanner, which can 

save scanned document to the cloud, 

automatically naming and filing them in 

the correct predefined place. 

Business continuity plans don't have to 

be complex or convoluted. 2020 will 

have shown most companies where their 

weaknesses lay and what steps they may 

need to take to better secure their 

future. If part of that plan is to protect 

and make data held on paper more 

versatile and useable, then an investment 

in document scanning might just be the 

deceptively simple, but decisively crucial 

step that was missing. 

More info: www.ScanSnapit.com 




13

Dm MARKET FOCUS: ACCOUNTS PAYABLE 

Where are you on the AI journey? 

Accounts Payable departments lag behind in AI automation, according to a new 

survey from Ephesoft: two-thirds of accounting departments still process invoices 

manually, while only 15% are fully paperless 

Despite the increasing need to 

process invoices remotely as 

more employees are urged to 

work from home, the majority of 

companies are still lagging behind in 

automation implementation. Accounts 

payable departments are still largely 

processing invoices manually, 

according to a recent survey of 

accounting and finance professionals 

published by Ephesoft. 

The survey gathered responses from 

200 accounting and finance 

professionals from 26 countries. Key 

findings include: 

DISTRIBUTING OR PROCESSING 

PAPER DOCUMENTS 

Businesses are shifting to automation 

of their processes - especially for highvalue, 

high-volume documents such as 

invoices. However, the survey results 

indicate that companies are slow to 

change when it comes to digitally 

transforming invoice processing and 

other financial documents. 

Only 15% of respondents said that 

their organisation is fully paperless, 

which means the majority of 

businesses (85%) are not. 

Of those who are not, just slightly 

over 50% are actively pursuing a 

paperless environment. 

One-third (33%) of companies are 

predominantly paper-heavy, still far 

from intelligent automation. 

With an average cost to process per 

invoice at about £11, a lack of 

automation is likely to keep company 

growth limited, leaving room for a 

significant increase in productivity. 

Modern automation has been proven 

to cut costs significantly, often by 80% 

or more, which can be reinvested in 

other areas. 

CURRENT TECHNOLOGIES 

When asked whether their businesses 

currently have document management, 

14 




MARKET FOCUS: ACCOUNTS PAYABLE Dm 

"THIS SURVEY CONFIRMS THAT THE ACCOUNTING PROFESSION HAS LAGGED IN 

ADOPTION OF NEWER TECHNOLOGIES SUCH AS AI/ML, CLOUD AND LOW-CODE/NO- 

CODE ARCHITECTURE LIKELY IMPACTED BY TRADITIONALLY LONG IMPLEMENTATION 

CYCLES AND COMPLEX INTEGRATIONS. THE ACCOUNTS PAYABLE SPACE IS AN IDEAL 

EXAMPLE WHERE MANUAL STEPS LIKE ENTERING INVOICES INTO AN ERP SYSTEM CAN 

GREATLY IMPACT EFFICIENCY, SO IT'S EXCITING THAT WE ARE FINALLY STARTING TO SEE 

INNOVATION IN THIS SPACE WITH POINT SOLUTIONS THAT ARE UP AND RUNNING IN 

HOURS, ELIMINATE MANUAL TASKS AND ALLOW ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS TO 

FOCUS ON HIGHER VALUE-ADD FUNCTIONS." 

workflow, AP automation, RPA or 

artificial intelligence technologies in 

place, a majority of companies report 

having some type of document 

management and workflow tools 

system in place, but AI applications are 

still underutilised. Here's the 

breakdown, further showing a lack of 

current automation tools: 

Less than one-third (30%) employ 

accounts payable automation. 

Only 12% utilise RPA tools and just 

slightly less (11%) report using AI. 

While these findings are 

understandable and relatable, Ephesoft 

predicts that new AI-powered lowcode/no-code, 

cloud technology, which 

is evolving at a rapid pace, will remove 

barriers to entry into AI. 

STARTING THE JOURNEY 

When the question was posed, "What is 

your organisation's location on the AI 

journey?" responses were split, with 42% 

saying they were in the planning stage 

and 40% saying they were not planning 

on implementing AI tools at all. 

We can conclude from the data that 

AI has still not been widely adopted, 

but many organisations have plans to 

invest in it. 

"This survey confirms that the 

accounting profession has lagged in 

adoption of newer technologies such 

as AI/ML, cloud and low-code/no-code 

architecture likely impacted by 

traditionally long implementation 

cycles and complex integrations," said 

Naren Goel, chief financial officer, 

Ephesoft. "The accounts payable space 

is an ideal example where manual 

steps like entering invoices into an ERP 

system can greatly impact efficiency, so 

it's exciting that we are finally starting 

to see innovation in this space with 

point solutions that are up and 

running in hours, eliminate manual 

tasks and allow accounting 

professionals to focus on higher valueadd 

functions." 

The survey on digital transformation, 

AI, technology and automation was 

conducted in November 2020 by 

Accounting Today on behalf of 

Ephesoft. Responses are from 200 

accounting and finance professionals 

from 26 countries, including CEOs, 

CFOs Partners, CIOs, CTOs, CPAs, 

accountants, controllers, auditors and 

consultants in a variety of industries, 

including banks, energy, government, 

healthcare, technology, accounting 

services, airlines, auto, education, large 

global consultancies and many others. 

More info: www.ephesoft.com. 




15

Dm CASE STUDY: ROCHDALE BOROUGH COUNCIL 

Ticking all the boxes 

Rochdale Borough Council has selected Lexis Visualfiles 

to support remote working, standardise processes, and 

improve operational efficiency of legal services 

The legal department of Rochdale 

Borough Council is deploying legal 

workflow and case management 

solution Lexis Visualfiles from LexisNexis 

Enterprise Solutions as its electronic file 

system. With Visualfiles as the single 

repository for all matter-related 

documentation, the legal department 

will benefit from a modern system that 

will standardise the way the teams work, 

significantly reduce the use of paper and 

facilitate efficient remote working. 

The legal teams will gain a digital and 

uniform business environment, 

facilitating a 'paper lite' office. Staff will 

be able to work efficiently and 

productively from anywhere and at any 

time. Pauline Tarrant, Project Manager at 

Rochdale Borough Council, explains, 

"These are key operational requirements 

for the department, moving forward." 

A metropolitan borough council in 

Greater Manchester, Rochdale has 

undergone major investment and 

transformation in recent years. The 

council delivers services to over 220,000 

people living in over 95,000 households, 

and for around 8,000 businesses. 

The legal department at Rochdale 

comprises 22 lawyers and administrative 

staff across two teams, who deal with a 

broad spectrum of cases - from property 

sale and purchase, regulatory crime to 

employment tribunal matters. The 

department chose Visualfiles for its 

superior functionality, modern 

"IN CURRENT TIMES, WITH DEMANDS ON PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANISATIONS 

INCREASING, DIGITAL CAPABILITY IS ESSENTIAL TO DELIVERING A SUPERIOR 

SERVICE. ROCHDALE BOROUGH COUNCIL RECOGNISES THIS AND HAS A 

CLEAR VIEW ON HOW IT WANTS TO APPROACH TECHNOLOGY 

DEPLOYMENT TO ENHANCE THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT'S ABILITY TO DELIVER 

THE BEST POSSIBLE SERVICE." 

technology, customer support and 

LexisNexis' firm commitment to invest in 

the solution for the foreseeable future. 

Lexis Visualfiles is a legal workflow and 

case management system that can 

optimise almost any process in any 

business to help save time and money, 

use resources more effectively, and 

provide client service excellence. More 

than 30,000 individuals in over 200 

organisations use Visualfiles today. 

"Visualfiles ticks all the boxes," Tarrant 

says. "This will allow us to adapt and 

evolve the solution to meet our 

changing business needs. This initial 

deployment is only the start of our 

digital journey." 

SEAMLESS INTEGRATION 

Visualfiles will seamlessly integrate with 

Microsoft Outlook, allowing users to 

access their matter files without the 

need to log into a separate system. 

Users will greatly benefit from Visualfiles' 

sophisticated search functionality, 

enabling lawyers to quickly surface 

information from across the electronic 

file repository. They will also make 

productivity gains resulting from the 

speed and performance of Visualfiles. 

"In current times, with demands on 

public sector organisations increasing, 

digital capability is essential to delivering 

a superior service," Simon Farthing, 

Commercial & Marketing Director of 

LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions, 

comments. "Rochdale Borough Council 

recognises this and has a clear view on 

how it wants to approach technology 

deployment to enhance the legal 

department's ability to deliver the best 

possible service. We will work with them 

in partnership and play our part in 

assisting them to achieve their goals well 

into the future." 

More info: www.lexisnexis-es.co.uk 

16 




Fujitsu 

Scanning 

Solutions 

Fujitsu scanners have a well deserved reputation 

for being the most reliable and hard-wearing 

devices on the market, offering transparency, 

compliance, efficiencies and cost savings 

iX1500 – Intuitive 

scanning at your 

fingertips 

S1100i 

iX100 – Ideal for 

community workers 

S1300i 

fi-65F – Great for 

customer facing 

ID capture 

fi Series 

N7100 – Information 

sharing made easy 

SP-1120 / SP-1125 / 

SP-1130N 

SP Series 

Day to day budget 

conscious scanning 

SV600 – Perfect 

for the classroom 

fi-7260 / fi-7280 

fi-7140 – Document 

management at it’s best 

fi-7460 / fi-7480 

fi-7600 – A local 

government 

workhorse 

fi-7030 – Ideal 

for GP surgeries 

fi-800R 

fi-7160 – Best selling 

scanner in the NHS 

fi-7300NX – Web based document 

capture and network scanning 

fi-5950 

fi-7800/ fi-7900 – Ideal 

for heavy duty scanning 

environments 

fi-7700 

Fujitsu’s best-in-class scanner driver and document capturing software 

For more information please email us at 

scannersales@uk.fujitsu.com or visit emea.fujitsu.com/scanners

Dm OPINION: DIGITAL MAILROOM 

Digital mailroom: restoring postal order 

Amy Wright of Storetec argues that the potential benefits of a digital mailroom can 

vastly outweigh the factors that may have prevented organisations from looking at 

automation in the past - especially in the current business climate of increased 

home-working 

As we're faced with another 

national lockdown, it would seem 

that some businesses have failed 

to learn from mistakes of the past and 

are still to go paperless. Employers are 

still facing the difficulty of sending staff 

to the office to collect office post and 

the odd bits of paperwork to assist with 

day-to-day queries. 

Whilst this may seem like a 5-minute 

task, the time taken to travel to the 

office in addition to the hours spent 

self-sorting and scanning the post, 

makes this a very inefficient way of 

working. For departments with post 

arriving frequently such as accounts 

18 




OPINION: DIGITAL MAILROOM Dm 

"WITH EVERY DIGITAL MAILROOM PROJECT, WE WILL GUARANTEE INCOMING MAIL IS SCANNED AND 

ACCESSIBLE THE VERY SAME DAY. WITH FLEXIBLE, REMOTE ACCESS TO YOUR POST, YOU CAN RESPOND TO 

CUSTOMERS QUICKER AND ACCELERATE IMPORTANT BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS. EMPLOYEES WORKING 

REMOTELY ALSO HAVE THE GUARANTEE THEY ARE NOT MISSING CRITICAL INCOMING MAIL, WHICH IN TODAY'S 

CLIMATE IS OF KEY IMPORTANCE." 

who process sensitive and confidential 

paperwork, weekly or even daily trips 

may be required. Furthermore, 

employers are risking the health of 

individual employees by asking them to 

visit the office amid the height of the 

pandemic. 

Stepping into the world of 

automation can seem a scary step, but 

the internal rewards of efficiency and 

utilised resources makes the transition 

key for business improvement. 

REDUCED OPERATIONAL COSTS 

With quick, efficient access to 

incoming mail, your business can 

drastically reduce operational costs 

whilst allowing employees to focus 

their time on more important tasks. By 

tailoring each digital mailroom project 

to suit the needs of the business, we 

can optimise processing and deliver 

high-quality scanned mail for 

enhanced workflow. 

INSTANT ACCESS TO INCOMING 

MAIL 

With every digital mailroom project, we 

will guarantee incoming mail is 

scanned and accessible the very same 

day. With flexible, remote access to 

your post, you can respond to 

customers quicker and accelerate 

important business transactions. 

Employees working remotely also have 

the guarantee they are not missing 

critical incoming mail, which in today's 

climate is of key importance. 

ENHANCED VISIBILITY AND 

SECURITY 

Businesses will have the ability to 

review mail entering the business in 

real-time and guarantee confidentiality 

by restricting employee access. 

Storetec's cloud-based document 

management system, FreeDocs, 

facilities such access allowing managers 

determine access levels. Furthermore, 

the digital mailroom solution eradicates 

the risk of accidental loss, damage and 

confidentiality breaches. 

HOW DOES DIGITAL MAILROOM 

WORK? 

Storetec's dedicated project 

management team will handle all 

aspects of your ongoing digital 

mailroom service, from setting up a PO 

box to hosting scanned mail on a 

secure document management system. 

We understand that every project is 

bespoke, which is why we're more than 

happy to tailor the project to suit your 

exact needs. 

Following the arrival of mail items, 

Storetec's processing team will prepare 

all documents (opening envelopes & 

removing paperclips) and scan the 

documents into an electronic format 

such as PDF. All documents are 

scanned in full compliance with 

BS10008 ('Evidential Weight and Legal 

Admissibility of Electronic 

Information'). Scanned documents will 

be indexed with any metadata 

required; for example, the date the 

mail arrived, the name of the individual 

the mail item was addressed to, or 

what the record pertains to (i.e. 

invoice, credit note etc). 

All scanned mail will be electronically 

transferred to the business the same 

working day via SFTP. Alternatively, we 

can create a cloud-based mail receipt 

platform such as FreeDocs, into which 

we will upload mail items on a daily 

basis. Authorised employees will be 

given individual logins determining 

their level of access within the 

database. 

For example, access can be restricted 

so that specific employees can only 

review scanned mail items addressed to 

themselves. As the system is cloudbased, 

employees can access scanned 

mail items whether they are working 

from home or the office. 

FreeDocs enables you to access digital 

mail items 24/7, whether working 

remotely or in between meetings. You 

can also: 

Guarantee confidentiality with 

employee-level file restrictions 

Review and sign contracts on-thego 

with e-signing integrations 

Increase visibility and control with 

detailed audits logs on file & 

document level 

Ensure critical mail items are 

protected behind data & password 

encryptions 

We understand it is a difficult time for 

every business, however, if we can be 

of assistance with digital mail 

solutions, please do not hesitate to 

contact us. It cannot be stressed 

enough that automating the mailroom 

process alleviates one less worry for 

businesses to address during these 

strange times. 

We will ensure all projects of this 

nature remain a priority, alleviating any 

stress businesses may face over 

implementing and maintaining remote 

working. 

More info: www.storetec.net 




19

Dm CASE STUDY: GRAND UNION HOUSING 

Bringing agility to outgoing mail management 

A UK housing association has achieved estimated annual savings of £8,500 with 

agile postage cost control, and empowered employees to send post from 

wherever they are without leaving their desks - invaluable when the pandemic 

kept staff out of the office in 2020 

Housing association Grand Union 

Housing Group provides 12,000 

homes for more than 27,000 

people across Bedfordshire, 

Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire 

and Hertfordshire. For over 25 years, it 

has committed to providing affordable 

homes and support to help build strong 

communities. 

A relocation of its 330 employees from 

four regional locations to one central 

office in Milton Keynes provided an 

opportunity for Grand Union to 

transform its outgoing mail 

management, reducing costs, saving 

time and supporting a more agile way 

of working. 

Grand Union sends out around 3,000 

items of mail a month, mainly to keep in 

contact with customers but also to 

communicate with suppliers. Cost control 

is important to the business, in particular 

managing which items need to go 1st 

class postage, as most can be sent 2nd 

class to keep costs down. Maintaining 

consistency in this was a challenge for 

Grand Union when mail management 

was spread across multiple locations. 

Grand Union is driven to do more, 

empowering staff to help the association 


CASE STUDY: GRAND UNION HOUSING Dm 

"IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A REAL ISSUE IF WE HADN'T TRANSFORMED MAIL MANAGEMENT BEFORE THE PANDEMIC 

STRUCK. WE WERE AT A MAXIMUM 25 PER CENT OCCUPANCY FOR SOCIAL DISTANCING WHEN WE WERE ABLE TO 

START RETURNING EMPLOYEES TO THE OFFICE. AS IT WAS, WITH IMPRESS DISTRIBUTE, WE COULD STILL STAY IN 

TOUCH WITH OUR CUSTOMERS THROUGHOUT. WE NOW MANAGE OUTGOING MAIL IN A VERY AGILE WAY; 

WE'VE REDUCED OUR COSTS AND GIVEN STAFF TIME BACK IN THEIR DAY." 

become more efficient, flexible and 

ambitious, to have a positive impact on 

its customers and communities. To 

achieve this, Grand Union works to 

support agile and flexible working with 

employees equipped to work from 

different locations. It needed an 

outgoing mail management system 

that would support the company's 

strategic objectives. 

Efficiency was also a big consideration, 

as manual mail management was a 

considerable time investment across 

Grand Union's employees. By 

centralising outgoing mail management 

through a single system, Grand Union 

expected to see efficiency 

improvements, time savings and greater 

cost control. 

THE AGILE APPROACH 

"We had the opportunity to set one way 

of managing outgoing mail when we 

centralised our operation," explains 

Richard Pearce, Procurement, Facilities & 

Insurance Manager at Grand Union 

Housing Group. "This would give us 

greater visibility into our mail 

distribution, but we also wanted to 

equip our employees to work in a more 

agile way - not to be tied to a particular 

location by manual processes." 

Grand Union had an existing 

relationship with Quadient, so Richard 

spoke with their account manager and 

initiated discussions with other 

suppliers. Richard involved Grand 

Union's IT director from the start to 

ensure any resulting solution could be 

smoothly implemented within the 

company's existing infrastructure. 

Richard was impressed that Quadient 

demonstrated its recommended solution 

at Grand Union's site. 

"The discovery process was good," says 

Richard. "Quadient spent time 

understanding our needs, the account 

manager was approachable and the 

whole engagement was very 

straightforward. The solution Quadient 

recommended made sense for what we 

wanted to achieve." 

MAKING MAILING FAST AND 

SIMPLE 

"We were up and running within three 

months," Richard went on. "Impress 

Distribute is straightforward to use - 

most staff are self-taught from simple 

instructions we were able to share on 

our intranet - and it's helped us 

transform mail management in the way 

we wanted to." 

Impress Distribute from Quadient takes 

care of preparing and sending mail, 

freeing up busy employees to focus on 

other activities. Instead of printing out 

documents to put into envelopes and 

post themselves, staff at Grand Union 

securely 'print' them to Quadient's stateof-the-art 

mail production facility which 

takes care of the rest - printing, 

envelope-stuffing, applying postage and 

posting. In this way, mail is prepared 

and sent without staff having to leave 

their desks. What's more, they can 

manage the activity from wherever they 

are, and have visibility into what has 

been sent and at what cost, across the 

whole business. 

VISIBLE RESULTS 

Grand Union has transformed the way it 

manages outgoing mail with the 

flexibility to send documents from 

wherever staff are and time saved that 

was previously spent putting documents 

into envelopes and applying postage. 

The housing association estimates 

annual cost savings of £8,500 since it 

made the switch to Quadient’s Impress 

Distribute solution. 

Richard Pearce explains further: "It 

gives us postage cost control. We can 

set the default for postage to 2nd class 

and staff simply change this if they're 

sending urgent items. That way, we 

have consistency in the way we send 

post and visibility into where spend is 

occurring." 

With staff no longer reliant on being 

in the office to send mail, letters and 

documents can go out as soon as 

they're ready. This flexibility proved 

invaluable in 2020 when staff couldn't 

be in the office. 

"It would have been a real issue if we 

hadn't transformed mail management 

before the pandemic struck," Richard 

concludes. "We were at a maximum 25 

per cent occupancy for social distancing 

when we were able to start returning 

employees to the office. As it was, with 

Impress Distribute, we could still stay in 

touch with our customers throughout. 

We now manage outgoing mail in a very 

agile way; we've reduced our costs and 

given staff time back in their day. 

Working with Quadient has been a 

good experience." 

More info: www.quadient.com/en-GB 




21

Dm RESEARCH: AUTOMATION 

Chris Huff 

Prioritising high value business 

workflows accelerates digital 

transformation 

Newest Intelligent Automation Benchmark Study from 

Kofax reveals that automation initiatives involving 

document intelligence, process orchestration and 

connected systems are yielding the greatest ROI 

Kofax has announced the latest part 

of its Intelligent Automation 

Benchmark Study, a Forrester 

Consulting thought-leadership paper 

commissioned by the company. As the 

global pandemic pushes organisations to 

accelerate digital transformation initiatives, 

business leaders increasingly must decide 

which automation projects to fund. 

According to the study, the guidance is 

clear: automating workflows with a 'DNA' 

including document intelligence, process 

orchestration and connected systems 

yields the greatest return on investment. 

"Companies seeking to remain relevant 

and competitive in the digital economy are 

aggressively investing in low-code 

automation platforms to digitally 

transform internal operations and 

customer interactions," commented Chris 

Huff (pictured), Chief Strategy Officer at 

Kofax. "Industry winners will leverage 

automation with a focus on outcomes and 

experiences increasing organisational 

capacity, driving operational efficiency, 

empowering employees, and enhancing 

customer experiences." 

When asked to rank automation 

technology use cases in order of 

importance, the top responses cited 

those requiring document intelligence. 

These are workflows ingesting, 

classifying and extracting unstructured 

content from documents and other 

sources, and turning that information 

into actionable data insights for further 

processing. Those use cases include: 

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) - 61 

percent 

Artificial Intelligence (AI)/machine 

learning - 43 percent 

Digital Process Automation (DPA) - 40 

percent 

Respondents also said they're prioritising 

automation capabilities focused on 

process orchestration to ensure successful 

ongoing management of the digital 

workforce at scale. The top process 

orchestration needs cited in the study 

include the ability to: 

Mitigate disruption to automated 

processes due to changes in 

underlying connected systems and 

applications - 35 percent 

Centralise analytics addressing 

productivity of the digital workforce 

and all automation technologies 

deployed, including its utilisation 

within the enterprise - 28 percent 

Orchestrate multiple vendor solutions 

in a centralised manner - 20 percent 

Study respondents are also prioritising 

workflows that depend upon connected 

systems - the ability to connect people, 

digital workers, systems, data and 

applications. Specifically: 

54 percent of respondents prefer 

automation platforms with 

complementary solutions preintegrated 

with each other and/or 

external solutions 

61 percent of respondents want 

automation vendors to have strong 

ecosystems including marketplaces 

and/or communities 

When asked what specific types of 

workflows respondents are automating, 

use cases fell into three primary categories: 

customer engagement, finance and 

operations. Example workflows within 

these categories include: 

Invoice Automation 

Accounts Payable Automation 

Bank Statement Processing 

Customer Onboarding 

Loan Processing 

Claims Processing 

Digital Mailrooms 

Document Security Management 

Transaction Processing 

The Kofax Intelligent Automation 

Benchmark Study is based on a 2020 

survey of 450 automation and AI decision 

makers, and 450 individual contributors in 

North America, Australia, France, 

Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, 

Sweden and the United Kingdom. It 

provides insights into the current state of 

enterprise automation. 

More info: www.kofax.com 

22 




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Dm CASE STUDY: DIRECT LINE GROUP 

Keeping the mail flowing 

EDM Group has helped Direct Line Group to empower its workers with a rapid 

installation digital mailroom that has helped the business to continue operations 

throughout the Covid-19 crisis 

Direct Line Group is a leading UK 

insurance company that provides 

policies in four areas: motor, 

home, rescue and other personal lines, 

and commercial. Headquartered in 

London, the group has more than 

10,500 employees based in offices 

around the UK. 

CRISIS MANAGEMENT 

When the Covid-19 crisis emerged in 

March 2020, Direct Line Group took the 

decision - following government 

guidelines - to realign its operations 

and put into action a strategy to enable 

its employees to work remotely from 

home. This included five business 

centres that processed physical mail 

from customers and businesses. 

With the operations no longer open, 

there would potentially be around 

4,000 items of post arriving each day 

via Royal Mail that could not be 

processed and ultimately not available 

to staff. The solution to the challenge 

was to set up an emergency digital 

mailroom through which physical mail 

items could be re-routed, digitised and 

then made available and processed by 

staff working from home. 

Direct Line approached EDM for a 

digital solution, as an existing supplier 

which has provided records 

management services to their firm for 

many years. The requirement was for a 

digital mailroom which needed to be 

operational as quickly as possible so 

that business correspondence could be 

dealt with swiftly and effectively. 

EDM Group is a leading international 

provider of digitisation, digital and 

information management solutions. 

24 




CASE STUDY: DIRECT LINE GROUP Dm 

"WITH THE OPERATIONS NO LONGER OPEN, THERE WOULD POTENTIALLY BE AROUND 4,000 ITEMS OF POST 

ARRIVING EACH DAY VIA ROYAL MAIL THAT COULD NOT BE PROCESSED AND ULTIMATELY NOT AVAILABLE TO 

STAFF. THE SOLUTION TO THE CHALLENGE WAS TO SET UP AN EMERGENCY DIGITAL MAILROOM THROUGH 

WHICH PHYSICAL MAIL ITEMS COULD BE RE-ROUTED, DIGITISED AND THEN MADE AVAILABLE AND PROCESSED 

BY STAFF WORKING FROM HOME." 

Through a combination of innovative 

technology and deep industry 

knowledge, EDM Group provides 

highly customised solutions that help 

organisations automate and streamline 

business processes and workflows. 

As a key supplier to both the private 

and public sectors, EDM is deemed by 

the government to be providing 

essential services, so was able to 

continue operating during the crisis 

with Covid-secure measures in place. 

EDM was able to get the emergency 

digital mailroom up and running 

within a week. Initially, mail was 

collected by EDM's in-house transport 

division and taken to their scanning 

and mailroom operations based in 

Wolverhampton. Within two weeks all 

of the organisation’s mail was being 

redirected to EDM through a Royal 

Mail PO box re-routing service. 

This mail is delivered to the scanning 

facility before 9am with the aim that 

all circa 4,000 mail items are opened, 

prepared and scanned by experienced 

EDM staff before being uploaded into 

EDMonline - the company's proprietary 

hosted document management 

platform - by 5pm the same day. As 

each item is scanned, the digital 

images are immediately uploaded into 

EDMonline and made available to the 

client's remote working staff. 

It is also important to note that each 

of the individually scanned mail items 

are encrypted as part of the process to 

ensure full compliance with data 

protection and information security 

protocols. During the mail sortation 

and scanning process 'cherished items' 

such as cheques, passports and birth 

certificates are also scanned but the 

physical original items are then logged 

and securely packaged for return to 

the client on a daily basis. The final 

part of the process is that all the 

original mail items are boxed up and 

relocated to one of EDM's off-site 

document management facilities for 

their secure storage and retention. 

IMMEDIATE, COMPLIANT RESULTS 

"When the Covid-19 pandemic 

emerged, we urgently implemented a 

home working strategy to adhere to 

government guidelines and to ensure 

the safety of our people," says Andy 

Payne, Head of Logistics at Direct Line 

Group. "With thousands of mail items 

being received into our offices across 

the country it was imperative we found 

a way to make physical mail available 

to staff at home to keep the business 

moving. We approached EDM with this 

challenge and within one week they 

had implemented an emergency 

mailroom solution, and inbound 

correspondence was available to staff 

electronically the same day it was 

received. We were very impressed with 

the speed of implementation and the 

management of the project 

considering no company was immune 

to the effects of the recent pandemic." 

The emergency digital mailroom 

service provided by EDM delivered an 

immediate solution to Direct Line 

Group's home working strategy in 

compliance with Government advice 

and directives, and also ensured that 

important customer and business 

correspondence continued to be 

processed, ensuring staff could 

continue in their roles and the business 

was functioning as fully as it could 

under difficult circumstances for all. 

https://www.edmgroup.com/speak-toan-emergency-digital-mailroomspecialist 




25

Dm OPINION: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION 

Transforming how we look at application 

development 

Christopher McLaughlin of Nuxeo explains how low-code development can drive 

digital transformation in 2021 

Few would argue that the COVID- 

19 pandemic has greatly 

accelerated many changes that 

were already taking place across 

different areas of life and business. One 

such area is digital transformation. 

This is something that most 

organisations have been approaching 

with differing levels of success and 

commitment for years now, but the 

events of 2020 have brought the need 

for greater digitalisation into much 

greater focus. As each new wave of the 

pandemic compounds the impact of 

the original lockdowns - and cements 

more permanent changes to the way 

the world works - organisations have 

found that they now have no choice 

but to reinvent their established 

practices and client services. 

As organisations strive to make these 

changes, the focus falls on how best to 

approach doing so. Low-code 

development tools have grown in both 

prominence and use and are regarded 

as increasingly important in 

accelerating the pace of change of 

digital transformation. 

A NEW BUSINESS LANDSCAPE 

Not only did the pandemic catch many 

organisations by surprise, but it also 

affected their revenues and positioning 

because they were not ready or did not 

have a Plan B when circumstances 

called for it. That new digital service, 

channel, or app they were devising: if 

it was not primed to go live, it is likely 

to have been put on pause as 

businesses redirected energy and 

resources to firefighting. 

But now it has become clear that 

companies and their customers are in 

this for the long haul, which means 

organisations must adapt and innovate 

today if they still want to survive. This, 

in turn, is putting pressure on 

software development teams to move 

quickly: they need to find ways to 

deliver new digital capabilities and 

services in a matter of weeks rather 

than months or years. 

This is where low-code development 

tools have proved to be so effective, 

especially in the context of contentbased 

applications, where low-code 

introduces the ability to create a new 

digital customer or supply-chain 

experience with a very rapid 

turnaround. 

26 




OPINION: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Dm 

"IT HAS BECOME CLEAR THAT COMPANIES AND THEIR CUSTOMERS ARE IN 

THIS FOR THE LONG HAUL, WHICH MEANS ORGANISATIONS MUST ADAPT 

AND INNOVATE TODAY IF THEY STILL WANT TO SURVIVE. THIS, IN TURN, 

IS PUTTING PRESSURE ON SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS TO MOVE 

QUICKLY: THEY NEED TO FIND WAYS TO DELIVER NEW DIGITAL 

CAPABILITIES AND SERVICES IN A MATTER OF WEEKS RATHER THAN 

MONTHS OR YEARS. THIS IS WHERE LOW-CODE DEVELOPMENT TOOLS 

HAVE PROVED TO BE SO EFFECTIVE, ESPECIALLY IN THE CONTEXT OF 

CONTENT-BASED APPLICATIONS, WHERE LOW-CODE INTRODUCES THE 

ABILITY TO CREATE A NEW DIGITAL CUSTOMER OR SUPPLY-CHAIN 

EXPERIENCE WITH A VERY RAPID TURNAROUND." 

THE VALUE OF LOW-CODE TOOLS 

This focus on digital experiences is 

illustrated by research Nuxeo 

conducted in Q4 2020. It revealed that 

for seven in 10 organisations, digital 

transformation has become more of a 

priority since the threat of COVID-19 

first emerged. This in turn had a direct 

effect on development teams and what 

is expected of them. 

37% of software developers 

confirmed they were under renewed 

pressure to enable more effective 

collaboration across their organisations 

as people continued to work from 

home, while 32% were being called 

upon specifically to facilitate more 

effective use of content while teams 

were dispersed. 

The research also revealed the value of 

low-code development tools to a 

business. The principal benefits included 

simplifying the development process 

(cited by 35%); accelerating digital 

transformation (by 25%) and boosting 

innovation (also cited by 25%). 

Tools that speed the development process 

are hugely impactful in terms of helping 

companies transform and innovate, which 

has a knock-on effect in improving the 

customer experience. This all helps make a 

business more competitive - always 

important but especially so in this current 

period of uncertainty. 

A DIGITAL FUTURE 

COVID-19 did not create the need for 

businesses to digitally transform, it is 

just one more contributing factor. But 

if it was necessary to be agile, create 

new services and experiences to 

respond to the market demand quickly 

before COVID-19, then it has now 

become essential. 

The future of business is 

undoubtedly digital and low-code 

development tools can help hugely in 

making this happen. In simple terms, 

they accelerate digital transformation 

and the value they provide to business 

is huge. 

More info: www.nuxeo.com 

WHAT EXACTLY DO WE MEAN BY 'LOW-CODE'? 

The phrase low-code simply refers to a software development approach designed to deliver applications faster and with 

much less hand-coding than would traditionally be the case. 

A low-code platform comprises a set of tools which make it easy to develop applications visually through the use of 

extensive modelling and some form of graphical interface. 

In essence then, low-code means that developers no longer need to code line by line, thus facilitating the process of 

getting their application into production. 

According to Gartner, low-code will be at the heart of over 65% of application development by 2024. 




27

Dm CASE STUDY: WHEATLEY PARK SCHOOL 

Top marks for print management at 

Oxfordshire school 

The key thing about using PaperCut print management software at Holton's 

Wheatley Park School is that it is simple to deploy, and even more crucially, 'it 

just works' 

Wheatley Park School, situated in 

Holton, Oxfordshire, is one of the 

UK's Google reference schools. 

The 1,150-pupil school pioneered the 1:1 

Chromebook program in the UK. Running 

for five years now, the program draws 

visitors from around the world to observe 

Google Workspace and Chromebook 

integrations in education. 

After using PaperCut in conjunction with 

Google Cloud Print for years, the 

impending deprecation of Google Cloud 

Print at the end of 2020 meant that the 

school needed a robust replacement. 

Sourcing one fell under the responsibility 

of Roger Nixon, Director of IT for the River 

Learning Trust (RLT) - a multi-academy 

trust responsible for 20 schools. Roger is 

based at Wheatley Park, one of the 

schools under RLT's purview, where he also 

teaches Chemistry. 

Roger stated: "Wheatley Park is a Google 

reference school. We have a one-to-one 

Chromebook program that we've had 


CASE STUDY: WHEATLEY PARK SCHOOL Dm 

running for four or five years. We 

essentially pioneered that program in the 

UK. We have people come and visit the 

school from across the UK and also from 

other countries - well, prior to COVID-19 

we did! Our visitors see how we do things 

with Google Workspace and Chromebook 

and other integrations that we've built. 

We also show them some of the things 

we do with PaperCut as they are always 

interested in printing solutions with 

Chromebooks." 

CHROMEBOOKS & PAPERCUT: THE 

DEFAULT SOLUTION 

Talking about why he choose PaperCut, 

Roger explained: "We've been using 

PaperCut for a decade or more. Prior to 

that, there was no printing solution at the 

schools. So when charming students 

printed a hundred pictures and sent them 

to a classroom printer you'd get all this 

garbage appearing at the printer. Or you 

would find piles of other people's printing 

when you went to pick up your printing. 

We thought there had to be a better way 

of doing this and that was when we went 

to PaperCut. 

“Over the years we have developed and 

built on our use of PaperCut especially as 

we've had lots and lots more 

Chromebooks. It's now the default print 

solution that we roll out in schools." 

Like many, Roger had to consider his 

options when the time came to replace 

Google Cloud Print. "We run a one-to-one 

staff and students with Chromebook 

program, so we needed something that 

was quite robust printing-wise. We used 

Google Cloud Print for a number of years 

- it's been fine and had a lot of good 

points but also had the occasional trip up 

and failover which meant you needed to 

restart stuff. Mobility Print is generally very 

solid. Cloud Print is being killed off by 

Google so it's really no longer an option. 

In terms of a managed print solution for 

Chromebook, Mobility Print is the obvious 

choice. We have looked at other print 

solutions but none of them work as well 

as Mobility Print." 

SIMPLIFYING THE TRANSITION 

Making the transition from Google Cloud 

Print to Mobility Print was made simple 

by how easy it is to use, as Roger 

explains: "You install it, pick your printers, 

push it out on the Google console and 

that's it. It takes minutes. There isn't 

anything to it. It's one of the simplest 

things I do. It just works. I have to deal 

with lots of technology companies and I 

have two categories of technology 

companies - those that I can trust that 

'just work' and are no hassle, then there 

are those that I have to hassle all the 

time to make things work. PaperCut, 

fortunately, falls into the first category 

where things generally just work and if 

they don't, you fix it pretty quickly. We 

do have some complicated deployments 

at the bigger schools where you have a 

gazillion accounts and it does take a bit 

of set-up and management but even 

then, it isn't that difficult to set up once 

you've done it a couple of times." 

RELIEVING THE PAIN OF PRINT 

Like many in a similar professional 

position to his, Roger has strong view on 

IT: "From my perspective, printers are one 

of the most hateful things in the known 

universe - they are the bane of my life. 

Mobility Print takes a little bit of that 

hate of printers away." 

He commented that printers are just 

mechanical things that go wrong and 

cause hassle. If there is anything that 

can take some of that hassle away at 

least in terms of deploying printers , 

then that simplifies his life considerably. 

"That's what Mobility Print brings to the 

table," Roger stated. "If I had to try and 

deploy printers to lots of different 

devices and we didn't use Mobility Print, 

it would be a complicated technical 

challenge and it would be different for 

every site. Whereas with Mobility Print, 

you just install and away you go. You 

can be pretty much certain it's just going 

to work." 

Roger has been reassured by the 

dependability of the Cloud Print feature, 

knowing that "This comes down to the 

simplicity of deployment, and just 

knowing it's going to work - because at 

the end of the day, people just want to 

be able to print without any hassle." 

He added that: "Mobility Print's Cloud 

Print is really good because teachers can 

send a load of print jobs at home the 

night before and collect them in the 

morning without having to spend time 

in the day onsite doing it." 

SATISFIED USERS 

Roger is also encouraged by the 

feedback from users; or, rather, the lack 

of it: "You mainly hear when people can't 

print. That's the way it goes with IT. If 

everything is quiet that's a good thing, 

you can sit back and have a cup of tea. 

It's when printers don't work you have 

endless issues. Sometimes we get some 

feedback that it's nice to be able to scan 

to Google drive which we put on the 

copiers that support that and that works 

really well. The school business manager 

also wants to be able to follow up with 

someone over why they've printed so 

much. And they can do that because I 

give them a login to the backend and 

they can review the reports and cost 

centres and they can actually see that." 

The real proof, though, is whether 

Roger would recommend PaperCut MF 

and Mobility Print to other schools. 

Already within the trust, it is the default 

printing solution. For any site that gets 

taken on, PaperCut is used. Only a 

couple, with a very good reason not to, 

don't have it - e.g. if a school doesn't 

have a physical server or is very small. 

"Whenever anyone asks me about print 

management solutions, it's PaperCut I 

would suggest. In education in the UK, 

it's pretty much the go-to solution. If you 

go on one of the forums like EduGeek 

and you ask 'What print management 

software should I use?' you will have 

about 10 replies all saying PaperCut. 

There may be some others that people 

mention occasionally but generally 

speaking, it's PaperCut that's 

recommended." 

And it looks like it will remain that 

way for some time, thanks to PaperCut 

having 'a product that just works', as 

Roger concludes: "PaperCut is one of 

the things that just does what it says 

it does." 

More info: www.papercut.com 




29

Dm EVENT PREVIEW: IRMS CONFERENCE 2021 

A matter of records 

The IRMS Conference has always been the centre of 

gravity for information and records management 

professionals working in the public and private sector, 

to congregate and collaborate on the important matters 

impacting the organisations they represent 

The Information and Records 

Management Society (IRMS) is 

focusing on ensuring new digitally 

transformed workplaces are protected by 

strong information governance, and is 

welcoming members and non-members 

working in the sector to its annual IRMS 

Conference 2021. 

If you work in an organisation that is 

harnessing digital tools, technologies and 

techniques to transform its record 

management processes, or you are a 

supplier who can demonstrate best 

practice, then you really need to be at this 

year's IRMS Conference. 

This highly topical three-day conference 

aims to provide record management 

professionals with the latest insights, 

ideas and best practice into the key 

challenges that underpin the IRM 

agenda - presented by leading thinkers 

and practitioners. 

The informative and inspiring 

conference will highlight how putting 

information and data at the heart of the 

organisation can drive effective business 

processes that meet the demands of the 

changing world. 

Reynold Leming, Chair of the IRMS, cites 

new challenges facing the sector since 

March 2020: "Information governance 

professionals have had to adjust to 

remote working while at the same time 

addressing a number of different recordkeeping 

challenges. These include 

ensuring that access to confidential 

business information is kept secure; 

making sure that important content 

created in collaborative environments is 

properly captured; addressing and 

managing the shadow record-keeping 

practices that emerge at home; and 

creating policies for newly created records 

relating to health, facilities, and more." 

Leming adds: "The world of work has 

changed, perhaps forever, but the 

imperative of good practice in 

information and records management is 

stronger than ever." 

The IRMS will be promoting, 

supporting, and sharing good practice 

when it brings together practitioners, 

compliance managers, senior executives 

and information and records 

management professionals for its annual 

conference in 2021. 

The three-day conference will also help 

delegates get to grips with the key 

technologies that underpin this rapidly 

evolving discipline by demonstrating 

many of the latest innovations within a 

colocated information market area 

WHAT TO EXPECT AT IRMS 2021 

including new developments from leading 

solutions providers such as OASIS, Iron 

Mountain, Records Transformation, ACT 

NOW, Aaris, Arkivum, DPO Centre, eCase, 

Equiniti, Freevacy, PFU Fujitsu, Harwell, 

OneTrust, Oyster IMS, Preservica, Restore 

and others. 

The conference programme also 

features confirmed keynote speakers 

including Calum Liddle, Data Protection 

Officer at Bolt, Judith Ellis, Managing 

Director, Enterprise Knowledge and Chair 

of the ISO Committee for Records 

Management Standards; and Ivana 

Bartoletti, Technical Director - Privacy at 

Deloitte. 

Leming concludes: "Later this year will 

be one of the first opportunities to meet 

face-to-face to share our experiences and 

consider the wider theme of how 

information, people, technology and 

regulation combine to create business 

processes that meet the demands of our 

changing world." 

More info: www.irmsconference.org.uk 

Three days of high-quality content and networking 

High-level insights from industry thought-leaders 

Interactive sessions & breakout discussions 

Real-life case studies from industry innovators 

Hands-on demonstrations of the latest technologies 

Social events including Gala Dinner and IRMS Awards 

Premium facilities in an easy to access Birmingham location 

Covid-secure protocols will be in place 

30 




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Dm MARKET FOCUS: LEGAL 

Technology 'counters pandemic' 

for legal firms 

Electronic document bundling technologies have helped 

law firms to mitigate the impact of working from home 

during the pandemic, according to a survey from Zylpha 

Corrie Robinson 

Zylpha's annual 'legaltech' survey has 

revealed that in supporting practice 

staff's ability to work from home 

continuously, Legal Document Bundling 

technology has helped many law firms 

to follow government WFH (Work From 

Home) guidelines. In doing so, it has 

enabled practices to mitigate much of 

the business impact of the pandemic. 

The survey, which was based on a user 

sample from 23 UK legal practices, 

revealed that 78% of those questioned 

felt that Covid-19 has had a significant 

impact on their business. Prior to the 

pandemic though, just 9% of those 

surveyed had staff that routinely worked 

from home. In contrast, at the height of 

the pandemic's first wave, over 82% 

were able to continue their business 

remotely by using electronic bundling to 

send and receive document files online. 

And whilst most practices used their 

existing systems more fully to 

accomplish this, there was an increased 

purchase of bundling technology by 

26% of respondents. 

The primary motivations cited to switch 

to using electronic bundling were both a 

need to uphold business service level 

requirements in adverse times, along 

with a personal desire to stay safe and 

support the government WFH 

guidelines. 30% said the primary 

motivation was the introduction of the 

national lockdown. 

By using electronic bundling, practice 

staff can send, retrieve and access 

practice case management system 

content securely whilst working from 

home or away from the office. 

Professional bundling software such as 

Zylpha's digital bundling software 

should contain everything that practices 

need to create the highest quality 

document bundles either on site or 

remotely. 

Data can be accessed from a 

dashboard-like screen at any location, 

with clear, concise and easy-to-use 

instructions for creating bundles 

remotely, be that at home or elsewhere. 

This is because the system's unique 

single-view digital approach streamlines 

and simplifies the arrangement and 

pagination of documents, saving a 

considerable amount of time and 

removing any complexity involved. 

Typically, this process delivers time 

savings of over 80% when compared to 

traditional office-based manual 

bundling. 

Commenting on the survey results 

Zylpha's Corrie Robinson (pictured) 

noted, "To move to continuously 

working remotely, practice staff have to 

be able to securely access, use, update 

and repaginate complex bundles, 

without breaking step. This was always 

very possible with professional high 

quality legal bundling software like 

Zylpha. However, it has been the 

pandemic that has created a wholesale 

change to working practices. We do see 

some evidence that the ability to 'Work 

From Home' will continue across the 

sector. Not only does it counter the 

pandemic, it also saves on office costs 

and commuting times." 

The full survey results can be seen at 

the URL below. 

More info: www.zylpha.com/clientsatisfaction-survey-results-2020/ 

32 




Dm ANALYSIS: EMAIL MANAGEMENT 

Poor email management 

draining productivity 

New research finds 32% of employees spend 

nearly one working day per week managing 

email inboxes 

Email remains easily the most-used 

and most important 

communication tool but a lack of 

email management is having a major 

impact on business productivity. These 

are among the findings of research 

published by Mail Manager which 

surveyed more than 1,000 decisionmakers 

from organisations in the UK 

and USA. 

The Email and Document Management 

Usage Benchmark report found that 

more than nine out of ten employees 

(91%) use email to communicate with 

their clients, while 61% prefer to use it 

more than any other form of 

communication tool. By comparison, 

11% of respondents said their preferred 

medium was Skype and WhatsApp and 

5% prefer to use Slack. 

However, the continued inefficient use 

and management of email has led to it 

having a major effect on businesses' 

efficiency and productivity. One-third of 

respondents (32%) spend at least one 

hour per day - the equivalent of nearly 

one working day per week - managing 

their email inboxes and 70% believe it's 

one of the biggest productivity drains on 

the workforce. Furthermore, 73% of 

respondents say that too much time is 

wasted on trying to find emails and 38% 

believe 'it's not very easy' to find 

information in their inbox. 

Jacob Wardrop, Commercial Director at 

Mail Manager said: "Email is the letter of 

today. While tools like Slack and 

WhatsApp are great for informal 

correspondence and chat, email remains 

the core correspondence method for 

formal communication. Before the 

digital era, companies would send 

formal correspondence as letters, which 

would be physically stored. Now, email 

is the tool for formal correspondence, 

but the need for filing and securely 

storing this communication remains, 

even though it's digital." 

Less than half of organisations (46%) 

use a formal, paid-for email 

management solution and only 35% use 

a dedicated document management 

solution. As a result, 46% of the 

respondents said they save or store less 

than half of their emails, while 62% still 

keep hard copies of emails. 

Furthermore, nearly a quarter of 

respondents (23%) said that email filing 

isn't considered part of their quality 

management procedure. 

The knock-on effect of this is 

employees being left frustrated by not 

being able to find specific documents in 

their inbox (56%), which ends up with 

them wasting time (60%), being less 

productive (50%) and losing visibility of 

project information through the lack of 

a paper trail (52%). 

EMAIL VITAL TO BUSINESS 

COMMUNICATION 

Email continues to be used for a wide 

range of business purposes, with the 

most common being internal and team 

communications (74%) and client 

communication (70%). 

It's also vital to tasks like sharing 

project work internally (68%), sharing 

contracts (65%) and important 

documentation (63%), and sharing 

project work with clients (62%). 

The research also highlighted the 

importance of managing email, with 

respondents claiming it's essential to 

delivering good record management 

(87%), providing better information 

visibility (86%) and quality management 

(84%). While 84% of respondents also 

claimed that poor email management 

could have significant consequences for 

their business. 

"This insight from businesses in the UK 

and the US shows they face common 

issues when it comes to email and 

document management", commented 

Wardrop. "It's clear that email remains 

vital to employees being as effective as 

possible and maintaining strong 

relationships with their clients. However, 

businesses still aren't deploying effective 

email and document management 

solutions that make their employees' 

lives easier and help them quickly find 

the documents and information they 

need when they need it. As a result, 

people are still being frustrated by 

wasting time digging through their 

email inboxes, which means they can't 

be as productive as they and their 

employers want them to be." 

More info: www.mailmanager.com 

34 




Versatile 

scanning 

for versatile 

businesses 

Discover Brother scanners, 

made for small businesses. 

brother.co.uk 

As a small business 

owner, you’re used to 

performing many roles. 

For technology that does the same, 

choose Brother’s compact scanner 

range. From digitising multi-page 

contracts to filing online tax returns, 

they have all the features you need. 

The small footprint saves on space, 

while a handy touchscreen and 

automatic document feeder save time 

and let you focus on what’s really 

important – running your business. 

Available from 

bmi 

solutions

DM Jan-Feb 2021

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