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Archive for September, 2011

Given the explosive growth of electronic information in corporate America, managing electronic discovery is increasingly a challenge for corporate IT departments, in-house and outside counsel, each of whom are stakeholders. In December of 2006, the Judicial Conference of the US amended the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) to clarify the roles, responsibilities and discovery obligations of the various parties to litigation. The amendments, for the first time, made specific reference to electronically stored information, or ESI, as it is now commonly known. The changes in attitudes toward e-discovery are noticeable and the amendments have, without question, helped create an unprecedented level of dialog and collaboration to understand how electronic information is created, used, managed and disposed of in the corporate environment.

Why, then, have the amendments, intended to reduce confusion, also introduced a level of complexity to the e-discovery process that has left a lot of people scratching their heads?

For example, corporate counsel in a defense posture is keyed in on everything from creating corporate data maps to handling multiple and complex litigation holds, as well as establishing repeatable and defensible guidelines for discovery. What happens the following week when the storage administrator retires a key server and implements his data consolidation strategy? How good is the data map then?

Records retention managers have also been significantly affected. For years, they have been seen as silent corporate operatives who had murky roles and dealt with boxes of old documents. Today, nothing could be further from the truth. They are on the front lines of protecting an organization from a data management policy perspective.

Another role that has seen significant evolution is that of the “storage administrator.” Corporate data storage administrators are IT personnel whose roles are largely characterized by their knowledge of an organization’s data growth and proliferation patterns – key factors that allow them to make recommendations as to how, when and if an organization’s data management hardware and associated software platforms need modification or change.

Another driver is the evolution of technology for e-discovery to serve both proactive and reactive use cases. The vast majority of matters today are addressed in a reactive fashion with a mind to quickly address pressing, active concerns that demand rapid retrieval of responsive ESI for early case assessments, meet and confer and other matter-specific requirements. However, the future is clear in that there is a need for consistent, repeatable and targeted e-discovery processes that can also be deployed across a company, creating an “e-discovery ready,” proactive environment.

Therefore, the answer may lie in the fact that while the amendments impose obligations on the parties, they don’t specifically state how one should go about fulfilling them. When it comes to corporations today, the old silo-based information management paradigms will not work when it comes to information discovery of any kind, for any reason. The bottom line is: litigation, storage management/data consolidation, records retention, regulatory responses, internal investigations, information security initiatives, personnel policy management, business intelligence, data mining, compliance and monitoring are all effectively subsets of what we call “e-discovery.” This new paradigm of e-discovery subsumes many previously compartmentalized departmental initiatives that are under the auspices of legal, IT, records management, HR and finance. It is predicated on the degree to which an organization has information access and the ability to perform effective data classification. In short, companies should be able to leverage enterprise data for multiple business needs from a common underlying information access and classification platform.

Reduce sales outstanding time, increase cash-flow and maximise your working capital

As ever-increasing numbers of organisations are looking to lower administration costs whilst continuing to meet their CSR targets, many overlook the financial and environmental rewards of electronic document management.

We live in an age where everything needs to be greener, faster and of course, cost efficient. So developing systems and strategies for delivering and managing financial documents; such as invoices, remittance advice and other receivables, is essential.

Effective invoicing software and systems can automate and streamline an organisations entire accounts process. Enabling businesses to automatically capture purchase orders and issuing invoices to controlling debtors and collecting payments electronically online is a must for any business looking to be green and streamlined.

By introducing an electronic billing system,which integrates with existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) or invoicing software systems, a business can deliver a paperless and economic electronic invoicing process to their customers- e-Billing.

In addition to reducing workforce, material and delivery costs associated with paper based invoicing, businesses also benefit by reducing errors, accelerating settlement times and enhanced brand visibility. But it’s not just businesses that gain here, e-Billing really does represent a win-win scenario for both businesses and customers.

Consumers also benefit greatly from this combined service, enjoying instant delivery or access to their accounts, electronic or online storage, download features (which can plug into a wide range of finance systems) and a much more efficient dispute resolution process.

Key Features of e-billing:

Send electronic invoices and present online Real-time on-line management of all documents & transactions for customers Customers can download and interact with data in multiple formats Full document archiving with search and store features Automated debtor control and notification Range of reporting features including document status (delivered, opened, paid) Scalable multilingual, multi-currency opportunities Easy to use web screens with corporate branding throughout

Integrated Payments

Along with reducing administration costs and lowering environmental impact e-Billing represents the greatest value in the speed of payment and reconciliation. By enabling your customers to pay an invoice in real-time over the internet significantly speeds up the settlement time-line and drastically improves cash flow.

E-Billing system can handle Credit and Debit cards (and a variety of other methods), thus allowing organisations to provide customers with a broad spectrum of payment options and all invoices are reconciled much sooner.

Fast Customer Enrolment with 100% Coverage

Customers can access their online banking modules from hand-held devices in the blink of an eye-lid. Naturally they will expect the same services from their other suppliers. The customer enrolment process through most e-billing systems is straight-forward, timely and simple. In most cases, all a new customer needs to enrol on the e-billing platform is an email address.

Branded registration screens integrated onto your website A swift and simple online enrolment process for customers enables instant access to invoices

Summary of Benefits

Save up to 50% per invoice on processing Instant and traceable invoice delivery Quicker dispute management Significantly reduce input errors Optimise outstanding debtor management Up to 10 years online archiving Faster and effortless access for customers Marketing opportunities through electronic documents A greener, more sustainable process