VisualVault gives you the ability to design a document & record integrated management system that utilises the advantages of business process automation systems. It is a single solution for integrating your document management, records management and business workflow.

What sets VisualVault apart is that is must be configured for each application. At first this may sound difficult, but what it really means is that it will always meet your business requirements.

There’s no longer any need to change the way you work just because a software system won’t adapt to your needs.

Information Capture & Business Process Design Requirements

We’ve talked about building custom cloud based applications and services in previous posts, so let’s look at how we commonly implement the design process using VisualVault.

1. Outputs

Let’s work backwards! First we need to identify the information you need to ensure a chosen business requirement is being met. Outputs are the reports and charts you want to see when logging into the system. We’re looking for the key information that will tell you if your business is operating the way you need it to.

Questions:

• What information do you want to report on?
• What insight does this data provide and is it actually useful?
• What supporting data and level of detail (granularity) does your reporting require?

2. Inputs

Now that we’ve found what data we want out, lets focus on what we need to put into the integrated management system. The kind of information you supply to a system is largely dependant on the Outputs, i.e. is the system merely managing documents, business processes or both. Focus on useful information – rubbish in equals rubbish out.

Questions:

• What fields or data are required to achieve reporting outputs?
• Is there data that is required to support the key data? Is it really needed and is it useful?
• Do you need to upload documents and files as part of the data input?

3. Everything Else

Now let’s connect the dots between your inputs and outputs. This final stage is about the business rules and workflow that affect where, what and who enters data during the business process life cycle.

An integrated management system like VisualVault allows data to be captured from multiple sources. This includes other systems through API calls – a form of communication that allows separate systems to share data via the Internet.

Questions

• Who or what will be uploading data?
• What are the business workflow steps relating the information?
• Are the steps serial, parallel or approval?

Implementing business process automation is a continual cycle of implementation and improvement. It’s OK to get it a little wrong on first implementation. Businesses are constantly growing and changing so your processes are going to have to change at times as well. It is important to keep this in mind and ensure any solution is scalable in future.

Setting up a Document Management System in Your Business

The electronic document storage solutions available to you through VisualVault provide enterprise level features for all users.

Using a document library interface that most people are familiar with allows VisualVault users to set document capture and life cycle workflow. Check out the following video to see how easy it is to set up and utilise the VisualVault document library.

Some of the key ‘Out of the Box’ features available in the document library include:

• Organise documents into folders
• Unique and customisable document ID provide intelligent analyses
• Index documents with custom meta-data
• Full text and meta-data searching
• Full document life cycle workflow with release, review and approval processes
• Relate documents to assist with searching of related information
• Document revision
• Bulk uploading

Outsourcing Solutions for Complex Systems

Setting up a business system from scratch is a daunting task if you haven’t done it before (even when using a friendly tool like VisualVault). And, because you’re likely too busy working on your business, why not get some help?

We’ve built VisualVault powered business solutions for some of Australia’s largest companies. Take advantage of our experience, fill out our Contact Form and move towards efficient and traceable business operations.