Document Viewers & Your Enterprise Content Management System
By Simon Wiecnzer, president & CEO, Snowbound Software
Making Beautiful Music Together for a Harmonious Relationship
Much the same way as the pieces and parts of songs such as the melody, lyrics and chorus must complement one another for the proper flow and composition of a tune – so too should the components of an organization’s content management system. To maintain peak workflow and processing efficiency as well as ensure the document lifecycle steps of correct content capture, delivery, management and archiving; integrating the appropriate document viewer into an ECM can make the system really sing!
ECM systems are employed to both organize and store an organization’s documents and other content throughout the document lifecycle – and most of these perform these tasks pretty well. But for day-to-day document and image file access, retrieval, viewing and expediting – a document viewer integrated with a well-chosen content management system (versus an Adobe or Word viewer with all the dependencies and support issues than can entail) can be very beneficial.
The right document viewer coupled with an existing ECM system can assist with a great many workflow and processing tasks – ensuring efficient and more collaborative expediting of a host of business documents processes. Off-the-shelf document viewing applications provide fast ‘out-of-the-box’ implementation to get up-and-running quickly. SDKs, on the other hand, may be employed for more complex enterprise environments to more fully leverage existing applications with their ability to build custom functionality into the process. Both solutions can feature the ability to access and display information via a universal viewing interface – even from disparate repositories, systems and servers – no matter the file format.
Viewing technology is used in a number of industries to review and process claims, forms, records and other documents every day to keep the business of doing business moving smoothly. Healthcare organizations retrieve patient records across diverse systems for a more complete medical history – for better care. Companies in the banking and financial services industry employ document viewers to review and process a wide variety of forms, loan and portfolio information, while firms in the insurance sector rely on viewers to expedite volumes of claims – all to enhance customer service. And transportation and shipping businesses rely on document viewers to retrieve and track bills of lading – to help ensure on-time delivery.
Where would we be without complementary technology? Smartphones have a wide variety of apps from diverse sources to perform a number of specific easy-to-use tasks, but how useful are they without a reliable service provider? Your television and computer rely on channel providers and applications respectively to perform. The services provided by document viewers for ECM – such as extending system capabilities and investment, and streamlining file processing – optimize their use as well. And isn’t that music to all of our ears?
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President & CEO Simon Wieczner, Snowbound Software
Simon's background includes over 25 years of software industry experience. His management and marketing experience spans a number of companies including First Data, Computervision, ADP, BSO/Tasking, Numonics, Ergo Computing, and AccuSoft as well as his own ventures. He has extensive experience developing start-ups into profitable, growing enterprises. Educational credentials include a BS in Management and an MBA in Marketing from MIT.