by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Jan 17, 2022 | Client experience, Digital transformation, Document Management, enterprise content management, M-Files, metadata driven, Uncategorized
Independent Research Shows Customers Using M-Files Experience Over $5 Million in Benefits, Including Enhanced Compliance and Audit Processes, Increased Revenue, and Improved Client Experiences
AUSTIN, Texas – November 22, 2021 – M-Files Corporation, the intelligent information management company, today announced findings from newly published research revealing the cost savings and business benefits enabled by M-Files. The Total Economic ImpactTM of M-Files, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of M-Files, determined that the M-Files metadata-driven document management platform can deliver nearly a 270% return on investment (ROI) over three years to midsize and enterprise customers. In addition, the November 2021 Forrester study concluded companies using M-Files accrue quantified benefits of over $5 million, consisting of better documentation and search functionalities, improved compliance and audit processes, and increased revenue. The research also found customers achieved $3.68 million in net present value (NPV) savings.
According to the study, “The M-Files metadata-driven document management platform allows content to be organized and processed based on what it is and does not depend on where it is stored or require a complex folder hierarchy structure. With this metadata structure, M-Files enables organizations to streamline and automate locating information, categorizing and indexing documents, assigning permissions, initiating workflows, and more… Prior to using M-Files, the interviewees’ organizations had legacy document and information management solutions, but still struggled with disorganized documentation, locating and exchanging documents, meeting high security and compliance standards, and instituting efficient documentation processes.”
The Forrester Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study shows many quantifiable benefits achieved by companies using M-Files. Examples of these customer benefits include:
- Improved categorizing and indexing of documents, by 60%. With AI and automation features embedded at the core of the solution, M-Files automates the process of categorizing and indexing documents across departments to enable better client experiences.
- More efficient searching for documents and information by 40%. M-Files is built on a foundation entirely driven by metadata, so users don’t have to worry about where to find information because the right content is readily available in the context the user needs, when they need it.
- Enhanced compliance and audit processes, by up to 25%. M-Files provides enterprise-level security to safeguard the security and privacy of an organization’s and its customers’ data, with full audit trails for every document that reveals who has accessed the document, and what actions they took.
- Added revenue because of better documentation. M-Files provides users with a single source of truth to view all information needed to make informed business decisions that drive better business outcomes.
For the analysis, Forrester developed a composite organization based on data gathered from customer interviews to reflect the total economic impact that investing in M-Files technology could provide. The findings demonstrate that customers in the TEI study significantly improved search functionality, increased productivity, and enabled employees to collaborate on task-based work efficiently – all within a convenient, all-in-one platform. One customer noted, “with our previous document management system, you could store the same document six different times. It wasn’t as efficient as M-Files where you store once and have many, many different ways to find it.”
“The Forrester study highlights how our unique differentiation and metadata-driven approach provides our customers with greater functionality and usability, improved employee satisfaction and the ability to provide enhanced client experiences,” said Antti Nivala, founder and CEO, M-Files. “The TEI study found that customers achieved $3.68 million in net present value savings with M-Files, which they attributed to advanced workflows, automated processes, improved collaboration, and eliminated inefficiencies.”
To learn more about cost savings and business benefits enabled by M-Files, download the full Forrester Total Economic ImpactTM (TEI) of M-Files study.
Source: https://resources.m-files.com/press-release-en/the-m-files-metadata-driven-document-management-platform-delivers-nearly-270-roi-according-to-new-tei
by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Nov 22, 2021 | collaborative platform, content management system, cx, Data Security, Digital transformation, Document Management, enterprise content management, information governance, information management, M-Files, Uncategorized
In this age of 24/7 Client focus, it is easy for Practice Management to lose sight of the fundamentally important job of looking for internal systematic operating process bottlenecks.
In many cases hidden away in the business, there are functions that remain supported primarily by a mixture of seemingly permanent ‘temporary Shadow Systems” such as spreadsheets and shared drives, all supported by manually driven processes.
Quite often, due to budget prioritization, resource focus or simply not allocating “your own business review time”, opportunities to introduce robust, low-risk digital solutions to help improve productivity and bottom-line profitability are missed.
Typical questions that need to be asked include:
- Can we ensure our compliance and governance processes are adhered to?
- Are our data sources secure and controlled?
- Are we maximising the value of our data?
- Do our processes work seamlessly across the Practice and externally to our Clients?
- Can we guarantee that GDPR request can be answered?
- Am I sure that my KPI’s are based upon fact?
- How can we work smarter?
Many organizations do not have an accurate accounting of their own IT estate. How many and what types of servers? How many and what types of applications? How well utilized is the IT estate? Are there redundancies in application licenses and maintenance? How much of the estate is at the end of service life (EOSL)? Can the estate be consolidated based on newer infrastructure?
Regular analysis of the costs and performance of your legacy applications identifies the gaps, performance degradation, outages, and service interruptions that inevitably arise. The resulting analytics highlight areas that need to be modernized to improve the performance, availability, and support of your systems.
Importantly, the benefits of process optimization have a wider reach than just the business processes. The operational knowledge and experience needed to manage and oversee people-dependent processes tend to be concentrated in the heads of a few key individuals. This results in greater risk to the business.
Ironically, fewer people with complete knowledge of key processes, also complicate succession planning, making transitions prone to disruptions, relationships with partners strained, and general discontent within the organization.
Ultimately, a more structured, stress-free working environment that enables your teams to function effectively, enhances well-being, and can contribute to staff retention, will enhance productivity, increase customer satisfaction and contribute to greater profitability.
Source: https://resources.m-files.com/blog/productive-processes-and-profit-begins-at-home
by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Oct 25, 2021 | content management system, customer experience, Digital transformation, enterprise content management, M-Files, Uncategorized
At M-Files, our goal is to provide knowledge workers with the connected content and intelligent automation they need to empower a smarter way to work. However, we wouldn’t be who we are today without our amazing customers. Our customers are our guiding “why” — and as of today*, we are proud to share that because of them, we have achieved a 4.4 out of 5-star rating in the Content Services category on Gartner Peer Insights[1], which documents customer experience through verified ratings and peer reviews from enterprise IT professionals.
The satisfaction of our customers has, and always will be, our number one priority. We’re humbled that as of August 1, 2021, 88% of Gartner Peer Insights respondents would recommend M-Files as a Content Services Platform, based on 78 reviews over the past twelve months. We believe achieving such a reputable Gartner Peer Insights rating showcases our on-going commitment to providing customers with new, innovative ways to manage, secure and collaborate around content.
The reviews speak for themselves, and we couldn’t be more humbled our customers think so highly of us:
- “It is a mastermind software to have when it comes to managing data. I have used M-Files for a long time and I am completely satisfied with the breadth of functionalities it offers.” – Consultant, Services [read full review]
- “One of the best document management system available in market. Easy to store and manage large files in this application. Collaboration made easy with this application.” – Senior Analyst, Services [read full review]
- “M-Files is one of the best content management software which lets users to create, manage and store the data. The product is very easy to use and implement.” – Analyst, Services [read full review]
- “M-Files is a document management software where users can firstly and quickly manage and organize electronic documents. The user interface is very good and the user can perform the multi-task at one time directly from the central dashboard.” – Software Engineer, Services [read full review]
We strive to provide a modern approach to information management that increases the productivity of knowledge workers, ensures a seamless digital experience, strengthens collaboration, enables business continuity, and reduces business risk. Over this past year, it has been our greatest pleasure helping organizations navigate, control, and manage overwhelming amounts of data brought on by digital transformation and the pandemic. We are humbled our customers see the value in our metadata-driven approach and look forward to helping our customers continue to see greater productivity and ROIs across their organizations.
*August 1, 2021, based on 78 reviews
[1] Gartner Peer Insights reviews constitute the subjective opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences and do not represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates.
Source: https://resources.m-files.com/blog/our-take-gartner-peer-insights-and-our-amazing-customers
by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Oct 15, 2021 | case management content, content management system, enterprise content management, M-Files, Uncategorized
Over the past few years, content services have fallen into one of two different categories: transactional or collaborative. Transactional content, as the name suggests, directly relates to the case management content that businesses are working with on a daily basis. Collaborative content, on the other hand, has to do with all of those project-related documents that people are tracking to actively do their jobs.
In the past, both of these would have been handled by way of an enterprise content management system, otherwise known as an ECM for short. Unfortunately, this had led people to attempt to divide up their workflows based on which technologies help to solve their content problems. In reality, things would be much more productive if efforts were divided up based on the content type they were working with.
To that end, there are three main content types that any modern enterprise needs to be aware of: collaborative content, archival content and transactional content.
The Building Blocks of Collaborative Content
As stated, the first main type of content that most enterprises work with has to do with collaborative content. That is, the type of content that exists in the types of systems that people use to more efficiently work with one another on projects. Examples of these systems include but are not limited to ones like Slack, Teams and even “old school” email collaboration.
The purpose of these systems is clear: they’re supposed to optimize the way people work together.
The issue is that especially in the fast-paced modern era we’re currently living through, collaborative content is the type that is most likely to get “lost” over time. People are collaborating on so many different documents across so many systems that organizations don’t really have a sense of what they have – let alone where it happens to be.
Their collaborative content is growing faster than they realize and, coupled with a lack of efficient storage and effective categorization, means that most businesses are soon left with a large stockpile of content and no real way to make sense of it all.
Archival (Read: Old) Content
This segues directly into the next most common type of content: archival content. This refers to those documents or other materials that may not have a pressing short-term need, but that businesses still don’t want to just get rid of.
Usually, archival content is either that which has been retired from an ECM solution or that which has been gleaned from file shares, collaborative solutions and other areas where people just get overloaded with content.
To successfully manage an archival system, people need to be able to identify and categorize content, all so that they can determine when it is best to permanently dispose of it. Automatic metadata classification tools are essential to that end, as they not only help sort high quality data from its low quality counterparts, but they can also help remove duplicate content and solve other challenges.
The Era of Transactional Content
Finally, we arrive at the idea of transactional content: that is, content services that are built to support all of these different content systems. Solutions like M-Files bring the best of CRM, ERP and even custom case management systems together, all in a way that breaks down data silos and makes sure that businesses have complete visibility over their enterprise at all times.
The main benefit here is that employees can work within just a single system and have access to all of the critical data they need, regardless of where that data is housed. Not only do you still maintain the benefit of allowing people to better work together, but they can do so remotely from literally any device on Earth with an active Internet connection. Here, data is stored externally from the moment of its creation – meaning that anytime, anywhere access to key insights and other important documents is all but a forgone conclusion.
In the end, it’s important to understand your options when picking the right content services and solutions to meet the ever-changing needs of your business. When executed properly, most employees shouldn’t be interacting with content services directly. They shouldn’t have to use seven different systems just to get work done on a single file.
They should have access to a single point that gives them everything they need to interact with their content and conduct business, all while staying in sync with the rest of the enterprise as well. That’s why solutions like M-Files are so essential: they go a long way towards guaranteeing precisely that.
Source: https://resources.m-files.com/blog/the-three-main-types-of-content-services-collaborative-archival-and-transactional
by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Sep 20, 2021 | Data Security, Digital transformation, Document Management, enterprise content management, information governance, M-Files, Uncategorized, work remotely
Social distancing measures taken by responsible employers have greatly increased the number of employees working remotely. Even in the midst of this crisis, some companies and their employees can enjoy the objective benefits of not having to waste time and money on long commutes. At the same time, plenty of businesses really didn’t have the structure in place to support a vast, full-time work-at-home workforce with the security of business processes they needed.
Remote Workforce Security Challenges During the Coronavirus Outbreak
Because employees or departments scrambled for ad-hoc solutions to remote working, they sometimes sacrificed robust security to get up and running as quickly as possible. Sadly, cybercriminals can also work from home or other remote locations, and many saw the rise in remote workers as an opportunity.
For example, one survey of security professionals found:
- A majority of security employees struggled to offer strong security solutions to remote employees.
- At the same time, almost half of the respondents reported seeing an increase in phishing attempts.
- Most of these corporate security pros had concerns about their ability to scale security, respond to abrupt environmental changes, and the difficultly of controlling employee use of unknown and untested software.
Five Best Security Practices for Remote Employees
With the increase in cyberthreats and the concerns of security professionals in mind, it’s a good idea to consider some best practices to help keep business systems free of threats and just as important, to ensure compliance with rules that govern privacy and security in different industries.
1. Two-Factor Authentication
With two-factor authentication, sometimes called 2FA, users have to finish their login with a code that gets sent to another device, typically a cell phone. It takes a few seconds longer to access the system, but it provides better protection against phishing attacks. One CTO found that this simple measure reduced security problems in his company by almost 40 percent.
2. Use Secure Connections
Obviously, most of these home workers will rely upon their home Wi-Fi connections. Without any other protections, your security will only be as good as whatever the employee’s home internet company, router, and password can provide. To boost security, you might have employees log in through a VPN or other method of encrypting communication between their home device and your corporate systems.
3. Endpoint Security and Monitoring
No matter how well you protect logins and communication, you still can’t always avoid the threat of malicious code entering your system. On your server end, you can employ software to block threats and monitor system usages.
Even though most threats may stem from accidental vulnerabilities, it’s impossible to ignore the rise of inside jobs as a source of risks. Not only will these systems provide a firewall against malicious software, they can also send automatic alerts for unusual data use and provide a clear audit trail just in case something does happen.
4. Develop and Create Clear Security Policies
Even before the coronavirus outbreak, companies grappled with security issues that stemmed from remote workers and the rising use of personal devices.
For example:
- In some cases, you may allow personal devices, so long as employees adhere to other security policies. For instance, you may require installation of approved security software and only let employees login to your network through your corporate VPN.
- In other cases, you may ask employees in sensitive areas to only use the laptops or other devices that you have issued to them and to only use them in approved ways. For example, you may restrict these company-issued devices to work and not allow employees to use them to watch videos or browse social sites.
In any case, it’s important to develop clear policies. In addition to communicating these rules, you should also ensure that employees understand why they’re important and that they can incur consequences for ignoring them.
Deploying intelligent and robust document and data management systems may not take as much of an effort as you think it will. These systems come designed and built to offer robust security and rule-based access for both in-house and remote workers. They also provide audit trails and guarantee recoverability, so if something suspicious happens, it’s easy to trace the issue to its source and remediate it.
How M-Files Offers the Best Solution for Remote and In-House Employees
Companies that already employed a smart data management system like M-Files didn’t have to worry about an abrupt change from working in a corporate office to a home office.
For example:
- Access to documents could already have been set by role, so the people who needed information would have an easy time accessing it, according to their security levels. To others, that same information would be invisible. The right people could view, change, add, or delete information, and others would not even see it exists.
- With built-in encrypted access and simple rollbacks for recoveribility, M-Files also has already been certifed as an ISO-27001 Certified Provider. This standard meets the requirements for the most sensitive data and systems.
Besides security, the intelligent features of M-Files can help improve your business processes. To learn how M-Files can help protect your business, employees, and information, schedule a custom demo today.
Source: https://resources.m-files.com/blog/5-best-security-practices-for-remote-teams-during-coronavirus-and-beyond
by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Aug 16, 2021 | Data Security, Digital transformation, enterprise content management, information governance, intelligent information management, M-Files, Uncategorized
Anyone who has ever spent an appreciable amount of time working with business information knows full well that the sheer volume of content within their deployment is growing by the day. But at the same time, the variety of content is also on the rise — which can easily lead to governance issues before you know it.
This was always an issue for organizations in the process of scaling, but it has become increasingly difficult in the wake of the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. With more employees working from home than ever, information management solutions have become more than just tools to store important files in the cloud. They are literally the foundation of your workforce right now, allowing people to better communicate and collaborate with one another during a time when they’re not going to be able to get back in the same shared space for the foreseeable future.
This, in essence, is why ‘Set It and Forget It’ governance is so important. Every minute that you spend trying to make sense of your infrastructure or trying to get third-party add-ons to work the way you want, is a minute that you’re not actually acting on the insight contained in your data and using it to propel your business forward. Thankfully, most IT leaders seem to understand the gravity of the situation.
The Power of ‘Set It and Forget It’ Governance: An Overview
M-Files intelligent information management solution helps achieve a ‘Set It and Forget It’ governance strategy. With workflow rules, organizations can maintain consistent records management policies. Documents in a governance workflow would be governed by a ruleset whereby any of the following would happen automatically:
- Records would be disposed of or retained according to policy
- Stakeholders would be notified to review batches of documents designated for a certain disposition
Files can automatically be added to this workflow, as well, through metadata. If, for instance, a file matches certain criteria — say, a type of contract — it would automatically be applied to a governance workflow.
Thanks to a lot of these features, information in all repositories across the organization are standardized with common ‘Set It and Forget It’ governance standards. Really, what this means is that there is now no longer a need to transfer important information like records or compliance documents to a totally separate repository. This approach to governance only ever worked with records that you didn’t need to use that often and created quite a significant challenge in terms of management for everything else. Active records obviously need to be available with their critical context intact — meaning in a way that allows you to retrieve all relevant documents and see all crucial tasks also quickly. Now, these types of records can be actively managed within the M-Files platform — which is really the most important advantage of all.
In the end, ‘Set It and Forget It’ governance is all about breaking down yet another data silo so that information can move freely across your organization for the first time. Rather than forcing your employees to use a number of different tools just to get work done — thus increasing the time it takes them to complete those important tasks to begin with — they should have access to absolutely everything they need, all under one roof.
But you also shouldn’t have to work very hard to get to this point — which is really what ‘Set It and Forget It’ governance is all about. It’s about making it easier to get the highest return from your IT spending and from your technological investment, not harder. You’ll still need to make sure that the business strategies that are driving your technology investments are carefully thought out, of course. You should never invest in a solution because you think you need to — it should be the right move to make given whatever you’re trying to accomplish at the moment.
Thankfully, “simple” has emerged as a recurring theme when it comes to businesses who are embracing cloud platforms and process standardization — and it absolutely could not have come at a better moment.
Source: https://resources.m-files.com/blog/why-set-it-and-forget-it-information-governance-matters-more-than-you-realize
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