For me it wasn’t about the magic of Disney. I simply enjoyed seeing my kids enjoy Disney and wear non-stop smiles for the entire week.

I also had fun seeing all the technology in action.  It’s hard to send the technology side of my life on vacation.  I always end up coming up with new ideas.

 From a technology perspective I was amazed by the way Disney has integrated technology into their systems by giving you a key to the world when you check in to your hotel.

Your room key gives you access to the hotel, parks, stores and all things disney.  They also use biometric fingerprint security to insure the person holding the key is the right person with each park re-entry. Cool stuff.

What I am thankful for this year is a wonderful family, good friends and another year of building technology solutions that help our customers streamline their businesses.

Happy holidays to all. We at RJS look forward to working with you in 2012 to make all your technology dreams come true.

 Let’s look at a common scenario where automating the assembly and distribution of documents can streamline paper flow and greatly reduce manual labor and errors when assembling paperwork for the shop floor..

 Manufacturing Customer X has to generate shop floor paperwork to be sent to the shop floor with every custom order being processed for the day. Employees then manually mark up the documents and scan the completed paperwork. The customer doesn’t feel the environment is conducive to touch screen terminals, so they currently still generate paperwork. Since each order requires a generated system report, paired with a copy of an electronic CAD drawing and work instructions, the process is very laborious. Each night the system documents are printed. At 5 am each morning, someone from engineering picks up the stack of documents and manually prints the CAD drawing to go with each order. Then another clerical person prints the appropriate machine instruction documents and staples the entire paperwork package together. Each day there are over 1000 job packets generated based on the job scheduling system, so repeating this process manually wastes at least 9 hours per day since there are three people involved in the paperwork assembly process. Since the highly paid engineer holds the key to the CAD drawings, they are directly involved in the print and assembly process rather than spending their valuable time working on CAD drawings.

 Even though Customer X doesn’t want to go entirely paperless with their paperwork generation process, they can easily reduce or eliminate the 9 hours per day being spent manually assembling paperwork. Imagine a scenario where each night the 1000 system documents are generated in the evening. As soon as each system document is generated it identifies which CAD drawings need to be assembled and printed with the system document. Then the work instruction documents are called in and printed in sequence. Finally each document is auto-stapled by the printer so nobody needs to be involved in the assembly process unless the printer jams, runs out of paper or toner.

 This story is true however the customer names have been removed to protect the innocent. If you think your company could benefit from automated document assembly and automation technology, contact the experts at RJS to help you capture, manage, secure and distribute your important business documents

The current process may go something like this:

- An order is received by email, phone or fax for your product or service.

- In some instances, the product is mass-produced and can just be grabbed from the shelf and shipped. This particular order however, requires a quote for product customization.

- Because of this, the quote request needs to be routed from sales to the development or engineering team for a review to make sure they can fulfill the customer’s special order.

- Once engineering has determined they can configure or build the product to specifications, the accounting team needs to estimate the product cost, margins needed and the final pricing for the product.

- The order can finally get entered into the order entry system for processing, shipping and billing.

Because these steps are likely done via paper documents being passed around in a manila folder or a steady stream of “reply all” emails, the chance of errors or the quote request getting lost in translation is very high. Problems are often found in customer support prior to shipping or even worse, by the customers themselves. Not only are these mistakes completely avoidable, but companies can lose considerable profits and damage brand equity when employing imperfect order-to-fulfillment processes. Unfortunately, this scenario may sound all-too-familiar. Don’t worry, we can help!

A new streamlined process using WebForms might look like this:

- Customer goes to your website and fills out a new order or quote request, or simply calls a salesperson who takes their order.

- In either case, the order or quote information is immediately captured to a web-based form where it can be monitored and tracked until the order is completed.

- Once captured, the order form is electronically routed to various departments where they add their information to the all-encompassing form.

- Once it clears these steps, the quote or order can be entered or captured automatically into the order processing system and fulfilled.

By capturing the quote information at the beginning of the process and tracking it until the time the order is entered and shipped, we have averted the dreaded “you screwed up my order” call and have delivered the product correct to specifications and on time.

If you’re looking to improve your order-to-fulfillment process and want keep your customers happy, contact RJS to learn more about our WebForms product and how you can streamline your customer and vendor business processes.

On the plus side, Company X sends the documents in PDF format which saves paper and speeds response time. However, PDF files do not contain a mechanism that allows customers to simply respond to questions and click a button to submit answers. Of course they could attempt to use fillable PDF files, but that still requires a manual step to print and email or fax a response.

When I saw the business requirements Company X was asking for, I immediately knew our WebForms product would be a perfect solution.

Here’s how I envision the process working: The customer changes their document generation process to utilize a web form document instead of a PDF file. A web form is simply an XML data file that gets published on the RJS WebForms Server. Once created, a unique dissolvable link is sent to the end-user so they can click on the link and enter their individualized responses on the web form. Once completed, they simply submit the feedback form back to Company X. That’s it. No printing, no scanning, no email replies, no faxing. Immediately upon submission, the RJS WebForms server interprets the form, updates the designated IBM i or SQL Server database with the responses and deletes or dissolves the unique web form as it’s no longer needed.

Does this scenario sound familiar? If you are trying to improve two way communications with your customers while reducing or eliminating data entry bottlenecks, contact us to see how WebForms can help streamline your customer and vendor business processes.

Wachtendorf brings more than 19 years of experience designing and implementing “paperless” solutions to his new role. Working at IBM, and most recently serving as the Director of Sales and Chief Solution Architect for Quadrant Software, Wachtendorf developed an outstanding reputation as a leading Certified Document Imaging Architect (CDIA+) in the ECM industry.

“Kurt brings RJS a level of expertise and integrity in the ECM industry that is second to none,” said RJS President and CTO Richard Schoen. “He will be critical to helping our customers understand the benefits and ROI of automating Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and other business processes.”

Wachtendorf’s duties will include working with the RJS sales team to provide document management and workflow design solutions to customers during the sales and implementation process. Kurt will also host a series of regional workshops in 2011 on how companies can go paperless to streamline operations.

“Kurt’s experience in understanding business processes, and expertise in matching those business requirements to our products will ensure our customers receive the highest quality of service and attention,” said Mike Bergstrom, V.P of Sales and Marketing.

About RJS Software Systems
RJS provides software solutions that help manage the entire lifecycle of a company’s businesses information. From front-end data capture and forms creation to managing, storing and distributing information electronically, RJS provides solutions that help businesses improve productivity, save money and make better decisions. For more information about RJS Software, visit http://www.rjssoftware.com.

Media Contact:
Joel Sawyer
RJS Software Systems
952-736-5836
joel@rjssoftware.com

I always like to see what else a scripting language is capable of when I am testing. 

I figured since we use QSH and PASE all over the board, then PHP should be able to participate in this mix. 

Feel free to download and use the PHPRUN command.  Source code is included for the CL script if you want to modify and enhance it. 

There’s also a README source member in the source file RJSPHP/SOURCE

Basically the PHPRUN command will run any PHP script with parameters and will allow you to send output back to the regular 400 job by placing STDOUT into a physical *OUTFILE and rolling through the file and processing results. This is a great way to intermix, RPG, CL and PHP. The command also bubbles back the PHP return codes to a data area so you can monitor for a successful script completion from a CL or RPG program. 

PHPRUN Command Download  – Contains RJS FTP Library Installer for RJSPHP library http://downloads.rjssoftware.com/files/commonclasses/rjsphp/rjsphp.exe

REQUEST: If you make any changes or tweaks to the scripts or add any additional functionality, please send them to me so I can incorporate them into the library. I already have several ideas for how to make this more useful, but let’s have some outside input. 

Have fun and send your feedback to me via email.  richard@rjssoftware.com

Imagine gaining more insight into your company’s performance by generating multi-page spreadsheet reports that contain month-end numbers with negative numbers highlighted in red.  Think of how much more informed you’d be if you could create daily sales summary spreadsheets that were automatically updated each night.  RPG2SQL Integrator accomplishes this by automatically updating MS Excel spreadsheets with data directly pulled from RPG programs.

RJS Software’s RPG2SQL Integrator provides the ability to read and write to SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL and other database formats.  The recently added integration with MS Excel helps your business get even more functionality from an already robust product.

RPG2SQL reads and writes directly to Excel spreadsheets so no data gets missed, and you have the full power of Excel available to your RPG application developers. Contact RJS to schedule a web demo and learn more about the ROI you can achieve by better communicating your key business indicators via RPG2SQL and MS Excel.

Imagine completing an order and having all the required shipping and certification documentation, such as Material Safety Data Sheets, automatically printed along with a packing list to hand to the truck driver at your loading dock. Or, perhaps, you’re an insurance company that wants to assemble related policy documents into a single document that can be printed and archived without scanning.

RJS Software’s Document Assembly solution provides this functionality and delivers instant ROI by allowing your employees to spend more time helping customers instead of manually assembling packets of paper.

Contact us to see how we can help you achieve fast ROI.