Category Archives: Distribution

How paperless office solutions can help Wall Street

After Hurricane Sandy impacted many states along the Atlantic Coast, especially parts of New Jersey and New York, businesses had to delay many of their operations. Flooded buildings and damaged records made it difficult for business owners to bounce back to normal operations.

Wall Street in downtown Manhattan found itself in the position to halt operations for two days—it was the first time NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) closed its doors since the Great Blizzard in 1888, ComputerWorld explained. Though many trading centers had business process software capabilities from offsite data centers in parts of New Jersey—NASDAQ's backup center is in Virginia, officials decided not to complicate the commute for many of these traders.

Also, if Wall Street's all-electronic trading system had glitches, unfavorable work conditions could have caused "a disorderly closure," Alex Tabb, partner and chief technology analyst at Tabb Group, told the source.

Since Hurricane Sandy, these businesses have installed backup power grids and generators, to ensure that the system could be powered up and actively utilized during a major natural disaster. This measure should increase certainty, but David Weiss, an analyst with the Aite Group, mentioned that "It doesn't do much good to have data centers up and running if no one else can get to them."

Additional staff members and document hosting providers can further assist these companies to continue their daily routines during the most crucial situations. During the storm, many buildings within the Financial District were hit because this part of Manhattan is located near the Hudson River.

Offices inside 111 Wall Street, which were flooded, and a Verizon switch station, which lost power, were among the many structures dealing with the cleanup process.

Study: Invoice imaging software saves costs within six months

Filling out invoices is a part of businesses' daily routines, whether they are ordering a new batch of supplies or mailing contracts to a new client. However, these small expenses accumulate over time and deplete a company's IT budget. Instead, departments can save 60 to 80 percent from their allocated resources just by using invoice imaging software.

Earlier this year, a study from Billentis, an electronic billing business explained that chief financial and information officers can see a return on this investment. But this does not have to be a long-term improvement—respondents saw a change in six months, according to Supply Chain Digital.

"Today's finance departments face a complex and challenging business environment that requires tremendous business savvy, making innovation an essential driver of the department's excellence," Billentis owner Bruno Koch told the source. "Erratic markets, the globalization of trading, new regulation and compliance issues, increasing complexity of business processes and steady change/transformation have forced the function of finance to redefine its role in the organizations."

In the world of logistics, organized invoices are important to ensure inventory is accurate. On top of that, paying for separate expenses like postage, photo copies and printing can become a thing of the past with e-invoicing technologies. Instead of paying employees to complete tasks by hand, paperless office solutions can help companies keep expenses low and hold onto their profits.

To take it a step further, departments can organize their invoices on cloud-based servers. This way, every e-invoice is recorded into their database in case a vendor mentions there was a discrepancy in a recent order. Software like these have updated search fields that will help employees find the information they need.