Service
Factors in Selecting an Imaging Partner
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Length of time and continuity as a an Imaging Service provider?
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CD-COM Systems has been providing imaging service in Indiana since 1993. During that time its management and ownership structure have remained stable and are projected to continue.
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Experience with the particular application, industry?
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CD-COM has focused on general business applications including Finance, Engineering, Human Resources, etc. This technology allows for wide degrees of specialization, but we have elected to focus on core business applications.
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Legal Standing of work provided? In Indiana does it comply with Administrative Rule 13?
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CD-COM has worked closely with the Indiana Supreme Court systems to ensure that our process is fully in compliance with the above ruling. The Court's Information Management Group has signed off on this compliance.
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Does the Service Supplier own, or have rights to, the source code of both the production system and end user solution?
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Building on industry standards (Windows, Foxpro, C++, etc.) CD-COM is the author and owner of all software it uses and provides to clients.
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Continuity of technology platform? Have newer SW releases required the reprocessing of earlier work, or precluded being able to access old CDs altogether?
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CD-COM's evolutionary growth path has allowed even its oldest CDs to be used in their original form, or accessed by the very latest program releases.
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Does Imaging Vendor provide all services themselves, or subcontract certain parts of the solution?
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CD-COM is committed to providing all services to its clients, from pickup and delivery, through processing, and document storage and destruction.
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Does Vendor's solution fit into your technology environment or does it require additional hardware and software to run? (and at what cost?)
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CD-COM's solutions require no additional HW or SW other than what comes with each CD.
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Contract length and terms.
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CD-COM is easy to do business with. We guarantee the quality of our work and the confidentiality of your valuable information and you are never locked into long-term contracts that inhibit the flexibility of your business decision making process.
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Proximity of production center and support staff?
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CD-COM's office and source of all support is located on the west side of Indianapolis.
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Practical Cost Reduction and Productivity Improvements
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Provides significant cost and time savings in all data access operations.
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Rapid payback, eliminates fiche and hardcopy related labor costs.
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Eliminates the costs associated with the "care and feeding" of your paper files. No original filing, accessing, refiling, etc.
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Improved Customer Relations - Questions are answered immediately, no costly callbacks because information is usually accessed within seconds.
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Cash flow improvement - copies of requested data are sent immediately to facilitate payment.
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Multiple copies of paper and microfiche documents can be eliminated. Information is never misfiled or lost. Virtual 100% integrity of the information is assured.
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Form Overlays can be incorporated onto the CD to allow viewing, printing and faxing of documents that match your original.
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Frees up mainframe disk and tape storage, PC hard drive and the space consumed by filing cabinets in your office.
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Provides the ability to keep years of information in an "on-line" mode. No more trips to the basement or waiting for boxes to be returned from off-site storage.
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Multiple indices and cross referencing of data facilitate easy access by different users.
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IMAGING & Cost Justification
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Implementing Imaging is a relatively easy project to justify. It's ROI is typically greater than 300% and payback period less than one year. Savings are a mix of hard dollars and soft benefits, primarily in the area of significantly increased productivity. They occur in three main areas:
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Direct Savings - File creation
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Productivity gains from normal usage
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"Power" Savings
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A final area of benefit also accrues to the user from the migration to this exciting technology. While it's dollar value has not been calculated or included in this justification analysis, it should not be ignored when considering a move to replacing paper and microfilm files with digital imaging. For the purpose of this analysis, we have measured the costs and benefits of storing the documents that would typically be found in a four-drawer filing cabinet. This would average some 15,000 papers which are kept for an average of seven years or longer. It would cost about $2250 to image these files.
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Direct Cost Savings
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The initial creation of a file represents almost twenty percent of the cost of maintaining that information for seven years. This is all "hard" dollar, one-time costs or savings.
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The initial creation of a file represents almost twenty percent of the cost of maintaining that information for seven years. This is all "hard" dollar, one-time costs or savings.
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Filing Cabinet $ 150
Floor Space 90
Cost of Filing 900
$1,240
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Floor Space is calculated at six square feet per cabinet and assumes an annual cost of office space of $15 per year. Cost of Filing is calculated assuming that a clerk can file 200 documents per hour and carries a weighted cost of $12 per hour.
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Productivity - Accessing and Refiling
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The frequency of accessing any particular document in a file varies significantly, company to company and the type of application being considered. However, for sake of this analysis, we have assumed that just three percent of the documents in this filing cabinet are accessed each year. The bulk of this access would occur in the first couple years which would have the positive benefit of improving the payback timeframe. The savings used hear assumes an office worker making $20 per hour and that they save fifteen minutes for each document accessed.
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Savings 3% x 15,000 x $20 x .25hr. = $1,800
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"Power" Savings
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As imaged data accumulates, new things become possible which might not, or could not, have been done in the old paper or microfilm system. "I'd like all the invoices for Customer X", or "I need to print a copy of the detail pages from the payroll reports for John Y". This is where the real power of imaging becomes available. In our analysis we assume a professional costing $30 per hour, that one percent of documents are accessed each year for this type of query, and that one hour is saved with each one. Actually, the times savings can be even greater, presuming the old filing system would support the question being asked.
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1% x 15,000 x $30 x 1 Hr. = $4500
Total Savings $ 7,450
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Other Considerations
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In addition to the above, Imaging has several other advantages which should be considered, if not included, in the cost justification.
Security - Paper files on easily subject to loss or theft. Someone may forget to return them to the file or leave on vacation. Usage is limited to one person at a time. Whether intentional or not, lost or misfiled documents are gone forever, and cost a great deal to replace (as much as $200 per page)
Portability - With a CD a filing cabinet truly can fit in your pocket, a storage room in your briefcase. Import records can now travel with you to home or remote offices. These important files are also now accessible to remote users without having to create expensive duplicates and wait for someone else to access the information and remember to get it back to me.
Backup - Few applications can justify duplicating still valuable business records. A duplicate of the CD replacing the filing cabinet costs less than $50.
New Possibilities - As users become familiar with the powerful combination of imaging with a relational database, new things become possible. Questions that could never have been considered before now can be posed, answered and refined, quickly and easily.
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