I recently read an interesting article that discussed how our local school district was considering the purchase of 11,000 iPad devices so each and every student could enhance their learning with a mobile textbook. I happen to be the parent of two five-year-olds who will be starting school next year, so naturally I was very excited by this development.

My kids like to use our family’s iPad to watch videos on YouTube, or to visit PBSKids.org for all sorts of fun. It’s neat to watch them sit together at the kitchen counter and play with this exciting mobile technology ‘toy.’ My kids are growing up as “digital natives” right before my eyes!

This digital native generation will arrive in schools or the workplace expecting access to all information at any time and from anywhere. Times have definitely changed. I still remember writing reports by hand and correcting my school papers on the typewriter with whiteout!

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For those who haven’t yet registered:

Don’t miss my 2012 Kick-Off Webcast – A Big Year ahead for RJS and our Customers on Thursday, February 19th at 11am CST. While RJS had a great 2011, we have even bigger plans in place for a fabulous 2012.

I will be addressing the following topics:

• RJS in the cloud
• Expanding WebForms
• Growing SignHere
• Adding mobile functionality
• Enhancing products with Single Sign-On
• And more…

Register today!

To say 2011 was a successful year would be an understatement. With impressive sales of new solutions like WebForms and SignHere, and the continued success of our award-winning WebDocs, we hired several new employees to help with development and implementation. We are also expanding our office space in the upcoming months as well. The future is definitely bright for RJS.

But what does the future have in store for our customers? In 2012, we have several exciting developments already underway.

RJS in the cloud
This might surprise you, but we’ve been offering cloud-based services for nearly a decade! RJS currently supports both WebDocs and WebForms in a hosted model. As 2012 progresses, we look forward to adding additional RJS software products to our cloud line and are excited to assist current customers who are looking to shift their document management strategy from on-premise to the cloud.

Expansion of WebForms
One of our most exciting information capture products is WebForms. Not only has WebForms become a core component to our quote-to-fulfillment and accounts payable solutions, the product is a true differentiator in the document management marketplace. Our web-based forms allow users to collect form, survey and other document data electronically and save that information to any database, ERP or ECM system like WebDocs.

SignHere’s continued growth
Our digital signature capture solution has been a huge hit since its introduction in 2010 and has particularly caught fire in the lodging and gaming industry. With many casinos and hotels looking to automate check-in, SignHere is an ideal fit in a market plagued by an immense paper trail. Not only is SignHere a legal alternative to pen and paper, it also provides strict security capabilities.

Additional mobile functionality
Many of our products can already be utilized with any mobile or tablet device, but we are now diving into apps that will mobile-enable our product suite. We are currently exploring ways to make iSeries and Windows data readily available at your fingertips and are in development of SignHere and WebForms enhancements that will allow stylus or finger signature capture directly on your mobile device.

Single sign-on
Starting this January, we will begin offering single sign-on to iSeries customers with multiple RJS solutions. Single sign-on allows users to provide one password to utilize all RJS software products, eliminating the problem of remembering dozens of user logins and passwords. To learn more about this product enhancement, check out our announcement on December 12.

Investment Protection
Don’t forget, if you’re an iSeries customer looking to migrate to Windows in 2012, all of our products run on any platform. If your business applications are moving to a new platform, your RJS investment is safe because our software can move with you!

Interested in learning more about our exciting plans for 2012? Register for my 2012 Kick-Off Webcast on Thursday, January 19th!

A quick programming note: This will be our last blog post of 2011, since our marketing boys are taking much-deserved vacations. On behalf of everyone here at RJS, have yourself a Happy Holiday, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Almost twenty years after the paperless office concept was born, many companies are still mired in printed paperwork. Orders and invoices arrive via mail and fax. Statements, bills of lading, CAD drawings and other documents are printed and manually assembled to create shop floor paperwork or shipping documents.

Let’s look at a paper scenario that one of our customers is currently facing – they’d like to automate the assembly and distribution of documents, streamline workflow and greatly reduce manual labor or mistakes when assembling paperwork on the shop floor. Manufacturing Company X does not feel their environment is conducive to touch-screen terminals, so they currently generate vast amounts of paperwork. Thus, every time an order arrives, printed documents are sent to the shop floor to be processed. Employees manually mark up these documents and scan the completed paperwork. Since each order requires a generated system report, paired with a copy of an electronic CAD drawing with work instructions, the process is very labor-intensive.

Do you use CAD drawings? We can help you automate document or packet assembly on the shop floor.

Each night, the system documents are printed. At 5 a.m. the following morning, someone from engineering picks up the stack of documents and manually prints the CAD drawing to accompany each order. Next, a clerical employee prints the appropriate machine instruction documents and staples the entire paperwork package together. Each day there are over 1,000 job packets generated based on the job scheduling system, so repeating this process manually wastes a minimum of 9 hours per day with 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 solely working on CAD drawings.

Even though Manufacturing Company 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 the 1,000 job packets are generated automatically. As soon as each system document is created, software identifies the CAD drawings that match 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 an employee need not become involved in assembly unless a printer error occurs. In this scenario, Manufacturing Company X is able to reallocate employees to tasks that better suit their talents while streamlining their assembly process with the automation of several paper processes.

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.

If your company spends considerable man-hours tracking orders between the time a product is ordered and ultimately shipped, RJS can help streamline your fulfillment process. This pain point is particularly acute in industries where products or services are customized. In some cases the order or quote request can get lost before it actually gets entered into the order entry system.

Let’s first look at a fairly common and flawed process and then explore how a solution like WebForms can web-enable order-to-fulfillment, eliminate redundant data entry and electronically route the order between sales, engineering, accounting, order processing and shipping departments.

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 money and damage brand equity when employing imperfect order-tofulfillment 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 unique information is added 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 to keep your customers happy, contact RJS to learn more about our WebForms product and how you can streamline your customer and vendor business processes.

Here’s a helpful tip for our users viewing WebDocs iSeries documents from an iPad web browser. What we found is that the iPad will not render PDF files correctly when launched from a frameset.

Listed below is a workable set of steps to open documents without the frameset:

1.)    Log-in to WebDocs on the iPad.

2.)    Click and hold the “Doc Search” link in the left panel until a popup dialog displays that says: “Open/Open In a New Page/Copy.”

3.)    Click the “Open In a New Page” button and the “Document Search” opens in its own window.

4.)    Do a search as usual.

5.)    Click to view PDF document and it should render as expected. 

This simple bypass should work with other sites that generate framesets as well.

I recently ran into an interesting requirement from a customer. Company X regularly sends letters to their clients looking for feedback on orders placed. Currently, their process works like this: the customer receives a feedback form; he or she fills out the form responses; and then the feedback is returned to Company X. Either the customer prints and scans the responses, sending a fax or email to Company X, or he or she mails back the printed version. Regardless, the process is an ineffecient way of capturing customer feedback. Finally, once a response document is received, the form responses are hand-entered into the database system by data entry clerks.

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.