Océ Business Services: Success is Well Documented - Joe Marciano




Outsourcing has delivered tangible gains for many processes, but the case for outsourced document management is among the strongest. Joe Marciano, president and CEO of Océ Business Services, explains.

CEO: What is driving CEOs to consider outsourcing their document management processes?

Joe Marciano: CEOs view strategic outsourcing as an important tool in reducing costs, improving operational efficiency and gaining access to innovative technology, particularly with outsourced document management processes like mail management, document imaging, print and copy management, and records management.

Documents flow like platelets through the veins of an enterprise. They exist in multiple locations, formats and media – electronic and paper. Most of a company’s value is based on the information it contains. Yet despite its importance, few organisations take the time to analyse and optimise document processes or reduce costs.

What is the cost of this oversight?

Lost opportunities for CEOs, who almost universally view tight cost control and higher cost efficiencies as top priorities in this challenging economy. Combining these priorities with the importance of document management to the overall success of an enterprise makes CEOs more willing to look at document process outsourcing as a tool to drive business performance. Furthermore, for most organisations, effective enterprise-wide management of information and records is not a core competency.

What challenges must companies overcome to implement effective document management?

Many companies lack effective policies and procedures to control, manage, preserve and retrieve vital corporate records. Consequently, they can waste a lot of valuable time and money searching for important information.

For example, industry analyst IDC observes that companies spend about 10% of revenue on document management, production and distribution, and that knowledge workers – your highest paid employees – spend around 20% of their day looking for documents, yet about 50% of the time they cannot find what they are looking for.

This situation is compounded by the growing ‘information glut’ that businesses face. The University of California, Berkeley, estimates that the worldwide production of paper office documents contains over 1,397 terabytes of information. Consider that 10% of this information equals all of the print collections in the US Library of Congress.

If a company decides to outsource its document management processes how can it be sure it has a service provider that will deliver value?

You should ask document process outsourcing providers how they could specifically help you reduce costs, increase productivity, manage document risks and enhance business performance. Prime document process outsourcing providers should excel in each of five key areas:

They should have strong expertise in document-intensive business processing, and a deep understanding of industry requirements.

They must be able to offer a comprehensive solution that manages documents as valuable strategic assets through their whole life cycle from creation through disposal.

They need world-class technology, and innovative, unbiased solutions.

They should be knowledgeable, and experienced.

They should provide a quality management system to measure, manage and optimise document management processes.

What does Océ Business Services offer by way of a performance measurement system?

We consider our system to be a key differentiator over other document process outsourcing providers. Our system is called Océ MAX, and it is the first comprehensive system designed to manage document processes and outsourcing service providers. It incorporates a Six Sigmabased methodology, enabling companies to systematically measure, manage, and continuously improve document processes.

Can you demonstrate in tangible terms the benefits of document process outsourcing?

We implemented Océ MAX in 38 offices in 18 states for a Fortune 50 company, which can now monitor document processes in multiple locations, save money and reduce the amount of time spent by staff on these processes. Because the client now has an up-to-date, aggregate view of postage balances across all locations, it has identified around $250,000 in excess postage sitting dormant on its postage meters. The client also saved over $400,000 annually through more efficient, accurate tracking of outbound overnight packages sent by employees.

Joe Marciano, Océ Business Services.