To project cost savings for a document and records management system, see our Cost Savings worksheet.

Here are some examples of a cost benefit analysis:

• A typical manual forms processing system, processing 1.4 million paper documents annually requires, on the average, 99.7 full-time equivalent employees at an annual direct labor cost of $2,917,200. Price of an EIM system is estimated to be about $2.4 million.

• Based on annual labor savings of $806,000, an imaging-only work process system pays back in 36 months.

• When Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is added to the Imaging System, 1.4 million documents can be processed by 50 full-time equivalent employees, at an annual labor cost of $1,463,000. The annual cost savings in labor alone is $1.454 million. Price of an OCR/EIM system is estimated to be $3.0 million.

• Payback for OCR and imaging, based on labor savings alone, is 24 months.

• Operating efficiency and operating work process productivity are not included in this savings calculation. Also not included are cost savings from space and utilities reduction and the savings from reduced employee training and personnel recruiting.

• Major expense is not in the equipment, but the cost of developing work process software required and integrating it into the user's current system.

• Solution: Use EDMS designed and installed by experienced professional systems integrators in the Information Industry with proven track records for successful EDMS installations.

• Eliminating labor-intensive tasks means that individuals can focus on improving the overall scope and quality of their work.

• A DM system is a savings of time, an increase in productivity and the decrease in frustration because users can retrieve with a few keystrokes the files that they once had to retrieve from filing cabinets.

• Five minutes of searching are saved each day by a salesperson. The yield is substantial savings, adding that the time savings in actuality is greater.

• By dramatically reducing operator indexing, a EDM system reduces data entry costs 50% to 75%, and increases productivity up to 600%. Data retrieval is faster, for a 30% to 200% improvement in customer service.

1. A Human Resource firm - Receives more than 3,000 resumes a week. In one office, the 170,000 resumes alone add up to almost 1 million pages. With old system, could not search outside of keywords, therefore couldn't zero in on candidates with the right skills in the right industry who had the experience necessary for the job criteria.

• With an EDM system, users can search the entire database of 150,000 records in five seconds.

2. A mortgage company - Loan processors work one file at a time, with some files containing more than 2,000 fields. Approving a loan required the review and updating of about 50 underwriting conditions. The estimated cost of producing a retail mortgage loan was approximately $3,274. The costs associated with the loan approval process and the time spent awaiting loan approval -- 14 or more days -- decreased the company's ability to perform.

• By automating as much of the loan approval process and its workflow, the company could recover the most precious ingredient to effective customer service: time.

3. A multimedia communications distribution company - Serves more than 500 partner companies and 20,000 professionals. Aim: to distribute critical business information to the channel in the form of product schedules, application notes, price bulletins, parts lists, sales reports, etc.

• Used a DM and workflow system to automate processes, increase collaboration and remove traditional barriers to communication with partners and customers.
• Identifiable business benefits:
• Increased revenue from a distribution channel that is better informed.
• Reduced operating costs through streamlining and automating processes that shorten cycle time on the creation and delivery of documentation.
• Stronger customer relationships through a fast and efficient communications system.

4. A top 100 law firm - It uses EDM to search for new client "similar cases" and decisions.

5. A Sheriff's Office Forensic Section Crime Scene Unit - Originally meant to reduce paper and speed access to information.

• The DM system automates the capture of the Uniform Crime Report required by state and federal agencies (asking for statistics on local police activities to aid in investigations).
• Uses information for strategic deployment of the department's resources.

6. A healthcare company - Using "telework centers" to manage the remote, home-based processing of HCFA claim forms. A workflow and DM system sped up the claims process.

7. A City Clerk guidebook - A how-to guide for newly elected council members. Used to gather information relating to a municipal recreation activity evaluation when preparing a new budget, resulting in the discovery of "why" the program was beneficial. This led to the decision to keep the program available.

8. A leader in the design and manufacture of railroad and transit control technologies - Produces a multitude of documents daily and needed to control the flow of their vital company information.

• With a DM system, they were able to:
• Retrieve the latest version of documents electronically, saving their technicians 300 hours a year.
• Maintain "paperless" engineering specifications, saving the company about 1 million pages of printed paper a year.
• Generate reports and making them available to everyone who needs it, saving about 400 printed pages or 15 copies with a couple of pages for a 15 person-distribution.

9. A systems developer for communication providers - Deployed an EDM system to over 100 employees in engineering, manufacturing, operations and marketing.

• The companies ECO (Engineering Change Orders) was reduced from one week to one day and the company saved $500,000 dollars in increased productivity from employees who can now access information they need.

10. A merged bank - Amassed 53 years of experience in development issues, with knowledge and expertise contained in a multitude of documents (conveying strategies and lessons in development projects, furthering long-term economic development, instituting large-scale economic reform, and so on).

• Timely and cost-effective sharing of development expertise in an EDM system helped build useful collections of unique information on best practices and/or a wide range of topics.