Each property in this client’s portfolio is managed by an agent who processes tenant issues and payables, generating a significant amount of documentation for each site. Over time, it became increasingly difficult to manage the documentation, much of which must be maintained for legal purposes.
Our client’s main areas of concern were accounts payable and tenancy agreements for each new tenant. Each of these document packages needed to be maintained and organized by the agent at each location and then brought physically to the head office, where an administrative staff member would gather and sort the documents and scan them to email. The documents were then checked again for scan quality. Once the quality was confirmed the document was saved from the email into the shared network folder. Since this was done by different administrative employees different naming conventions were used, and as a result, searching for documents became very difficult and cumbersome.
Our client’s leadership team recognized that to be more efficient they needed to reduce the number of human touchpoints in their process. Furthermore, they wanted to reduce the significant amount of time spent simply saving documents to their server with a standardized naming convention.
To help our client achieve their goals, we implemented scanning and document capture software. With this system, they can use coversheets for each of their scan processes: one is a full-page cheque used to scan vendor payables, and the other is a tenancy checklist used to scan tenant documentation. The scan solution uses the coversheets to extract key index fields that are used to route the document packages to their correct folders. The extracted index fields are also used as naming conventions for the documents. This process removes many manual steps for administrative staff and agents as well as greatly reduces manual entry and misfiling errors.
Our client’s document management process now consists of two simple and quick steps: select the desired workflow on the multi function printer and scan the appropriate documents. The software processes the documents and places them in their respective network folder using the standardized naming convention.
Since partnering with West X Business Solutions, this property management firm has realized the following benefits:
- Reduction in time required for administrative staff to sort and organize both document packages
- Eliminated the need to scan to email and transfer to network folder
- All documents now have a standardized naming convention
- Reduction in time searching for documents
- Reduction in response time for customer inquiries
- Reduction of manual labour involved in a traditional paper-based invoicing process
As the leaders of a forward-thinking not-for-profit organization, Our client’s executive team acknowledges the importance of continuous improvement. With the consulting efforts and support of West X Business Solutions, they have selected new problem areas with traditionally document-heavy processes and are planning to continue their journey to a more digital and paperless office across the entire organization.
