Winning the paper chase

For small businesses, the biggest potential gains from technology may come from using it to streamline document-driven processes rather than to more efficiently process data and transactions. One case in point is agri-business Kanhym Estates, which has cut nearly R500 000 in printing costs per year, reduced debtor days and sped up processes by implementing a new document workflow solution.

Kanhym Estates grows crops, manufactures animal feed, farms livestock, and distributes meat across the African continent. Like many mid-sized enterprises, it's a paper-driven business that prints more than four million documents a year. Its new document management system enables employees at weigh bridges on its farms to use iPads to complete load forms and sign off orders.

The information is sent to a centralised workflow system for automated processing. The solution gives Kanhym robust document accounting, remote management, electronic feed sale picking slips and electronic proofs of delivery, says Christiaan Groenewald, systems co-ordinator at Kanhym. Managers can easily track documents and view them when they have a query, all from their smart devices.

Before it implemented the system, Kanhym's employees had to process documents manually. Office-bound employees needed to recapture documents manually to make the information available for processing through financial and reporting systems. Kanhym also reduced costs by consolidating its capture and output devices to a smaller fleet of 42 multifunction devices and printers.

This project is one example of how SMEs can use mobile devices, cheaper Internet connectivity and new technology ownership options to run more efficiently, says Dawie Malan, head of software sales at Ricoh South Africa, the company that provided Kanhym's new system. For SMEs, 80% or more of their processes are driven by documents rather than transactions, he adds.

This means improving document management and reducing the costs of managing paper can have a dramatic impact on the business. However, because of a lack of capital expenditure budget, the rapid rate of change and a lack of service providers that understand their needs, many SMEs struggle to put the right systems in place, Malan says.

SMEs are battling to keep pace with the rate of change in the IT industry, but there are a range of cost- effective options available at their disposal, says Malcolm Rabson, MD at Dariel. He says one problem lies in the fact that many SMEs are putting packaged solutions into place that aren't a good fit with their needs.

Then they start writing code to add new functionality to the software to meet their requirements. For many, it might make sense to look at customised solutions from the start, rather than trying to beat a packaged piece of software 'into submission', says Rabson.

Improving internal efficiencies and optimising key business processes are the top two objectives SMEs have in mind when investing in IT