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Cost savings

The cost savings from the new document management system dwarf the installed cost of the system. Document storage costs have been reduced from more than $2,000 to under $100 per month because the need to retrieve stored documents has been reduced from several times a day to almost never. Significant time savings have been achieved throughout the company. Included in these savings are branch administration, customer service and document imaging personal. The amount of paper needed for reports has been reduced from about 15 boxes to two or three boxes per month. There are many other savings that come from having instant access to information.

"A good example came a few months ago during a state sales tax audit," Gucciardo said. "We were asked to produce tax-exempt certificates for several hundred customers. In the past we would have had to send a team of people to the storage site for weeks to locate the documents. With Metafile one person was able to locate all the documents in a day or two. This saved us weeks of man hours and proved our compliance."

Jerry Fireman has a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from Wayne State University and a masters of business administration from the University of Michigan. He worked four years as engineering editor for The Valeron Corporation, a cutting tool manufacturer, and seven years for French & Rogers, a high tech advertising and public relations agency ending as vice president/account supervisor. He founded Structured Information in 1984 and is president. Fireman has written more than 6,000 articles for more than 1,500 trade journals in 24 countries.

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