Ask The Expert

Yossi Harel,
EVP GRM EDM DIGITAL DIVISION

It’s no secret that the turbulent economic climate is affecting many aspects of a given company’s fiscal plans.  Is Electronic Data Management still a viable financial expense?
Yossi Harel:    Actually, the current economy is driving EDM services, especially if a company produces a large amount of documentation and information.  Businesses of any kind – legal, medical etc. – can save time and money if this information were to be stored digitally.  It’s a more efficient way of managing the information.  By using our document web hosting service with 24/7 internet access a company can simultaneously decrease the amount of information that taxes its own IT resources as well as their need for physical storage capacity.  It’s the idea of automated tasks versus manpower.  You can also cut costs by maintaining frequently used data in a 24-hour accessible capacity while storing any less regularly needed documents in a facility designed for more intermittent access.

Can you talk a little bit about some new features GRM is offering to its client base?
Yossi Harel:    Absolutely.  We’ve been doing a lot recently; in fact our entire product set has been completely upgraded over the last six months.  One of the things we’re most excited about is our new document web hosting service, the GRM Online Record Center.  It’s an easy to use interface that allows browser-based access with no extra software needed for the clients; it’s all on the internet.  Another upgrade that we’re offering is Digital Delivery; we call it “Scan On Demand.”  Basically any documents stored with us are scanned and ready for delivery via fax or email immediately.  We’ve also made it easier for clients to get to their information.  With concurrent access, multiple companies have instant access to information.  This saves tons of time and money by eliminating a need for one client to retrieve information and send to another company and another etc.

Given that ease of access, is the information secure?
Yossi Harel:    The simple answer is yes.  But there are two types of security, and we take both very seriously.  In terms of keeping sensitive material protected, every one of our secure data centers is SAS 70 Type II compliant and each has the highest level of fault tolerancy.  If you think about it in these terms, when it comes to information of any kind – credit information, medical records and financial documents – we need to keep it all protected, so generally speaking, we have a higher level of security than a company would have on its own.  The other side of security deals with disaster recovery.  With natural disasters or even the threat of terrorist attacks, a company needs to think about business continuity planning and with our off-sight storage, document imaging and internet access we make sure that there is are back-ups of back-ups for our client’s data.

What is EDM planning in the next few months?
Some new functionality that customers will see in the coming months include newer and more powerful document capture tools.  We are going to expand the methods used to automate loading documents to the OnlineRecordCenter.  We will also be offering more applications that are targeted to specific vertical markets, such as Medical Records and Legal Documentation.  There’s also going to be an increased focus on automating business processes like Accounts Payable Invoice processing.