A Compelling ROI for Document Management

By Mark Brousseau

Organizations hungry for productivity gains in light of the economic downturn will likely find a compelling return on investment from document capture solutions, Andrew Pery, chief marketing officer at Kofax said this morning during a keynote presentation at TAWPI’s Capture Conference.

“If document capture is looked at as part of your mission-critical business process, and you integrate that into your business applications, then the savings are quite significant and compelling,” Pery said.

One common measure of a return on investment calculation is the average total savings over three years, divided by the cost, Pery told attendees. What factors drive this return on investment?

… Breadth – “How many people will the application affect?”
… Repeatability – “How many times a day will people use it?”
… Cost – “Is this a costly task?”
… Collaboration – “Will employees need to collaborate?”
… Knowledge – “Can I reuse the information I create?”

“One of the most important metrics is the payback -- the time period needed before net savings equal initial cost,” Pery said. “Organizations tend to pay a lot of attention to this because the shorter the payback the higher the probability the project will be adopted,” Pery explained to attendees.

Key to this payback is productivity gains from reductions in cost (direct savings), expected reductions in cost, increases in worker productivity, and increases in manager productivity.

“When someone creates an ROI analysis, particularly in these tough economic times, the focus primarily is on direct savings,” Pery said. And this is a reason for the growth of document capture. “Document capture, in terms of annual growth potential, is expected to outperform virtually every other segment of the software market because users recognize the potential direct cost savings.”

For instance, the economic value of automating invoice processing is increased processing efficiencies, improved ability to audit, improved visibility across AP, and streamlined research.

The bottom line, Pery said is to choose products and services that consider document-driven process automation as a strategic investment.

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