Believe it or not, more than 5,000 telephone companies in the USA provide long-distance service. There are also thousands of electric, water and gas utilities. The difference between utilities and telephone companies is that you can't chose the utility that provides your water, gas and electricity. At least not yet.
But that's all about to change -- especially in electricity generation. When this happens, consumers will benefit from lower prices and better service. But the real winner will be the imaging industry, because many old-fashioned utilities will be forced to upgrade their systems.
Utilities are embracing imaging not because they want to, but because they have to. What they WANT to do is stay in business. The smart ones are adapting to technological change. The others are still operating in a vacuum, assuming nothing will change.
Until now, many utilities haven't had to work too hard to make a profit. While they scream about government intervention that forces them to operate in unprofitable areas, provide service guarantees and restrict prices, they're often promised a certain return on their investment.
But look out -- the floodgates are opening. Consolidation is rife. Many companies are talking about entering the "new" electricity industry. While the opportunities will be greater, so will the cost of doing business. The new mantra will be cutting costs and improving service. Sound familiar? It should. It's something the imaging industry has been preaching about for years.
And believe it or not, there are huge savings to be made in electronic document management. No matter how you look at it, paper is expensive. It costs a fortune to buy, print, file, retrieve and store. When utilities realize how much paper they're storing -- and the rental cost of this space -- they'll jettison documents by the truckload.
Utilities have information on everything: billing records, installation details, circuit diagrams, plant drawings, manuals, operating records, human resources files. That's the tip of the iceberg. All of this information is vital. It MUST be accessible. Imaging will reduce the time needed to search for documents from hours or days (in the case of lost files) to seconds. And since labor is expensive, the potential savings are huge.
Customer service will improve as clerks answer questions immediately, instead of having to call clients back. Phone bills will fall, because fewer people will have to return calls. Productivity will rise, because a customer's entire history will pop up on the screen immediately, making it easy to make instant decisions on extending credit or returning deposits.
Imaging will let utilities save in just about every area, including correspondence control, billing, check handling, drawing maintenance and procedures. While the savings will be significant, the initial installation may be costly. Previously, utilities were able to avoid new systems due to their legal structure and regulations. Now they need to be cost-competitive.
The most difficult part of installing an imaging and electronic document management system is coming up with an effective plan. Generally, when an imaging installation fails, it's because they manage to identify problem areas but don't come up with a complete solution. Every division has its own needs and unique requirements, so they install a variety of incompatible systems.
These may solve your short-term problems, but they'll cause difficulties in the future when you try to link everything together to provide true enterprise-wide imaging. Answer? Install as few systems as possible. As well as working out how to get your documents into your computer system, work out how you're going to get them out. Without an effective database or viewer, you're just buying an electronic white elephant.
The Big "Gotcha"
Unfortunately, cost is important. Systems generally cost more than everyone expects. Why? People forget to include certain things, change their minds after the system is installed or decide to add new features before it's up and running.
Costs often blow out in the document conversion area. Many utilities decide to operate on a day-forward basis. This means maintaining two systems. Work out the active life of a document and include the conversion cost in your plan.
Remember, to be successful, you don't have to install the latest technology in every area. Almost everything can be automated. Just because it's possible to computerize something doesn't mean it's cost-effective. Converting 20-year-old documents into an electronic format is possible, but it doesn't make sense if they're only accessed once a year. Despite what imaging people say, paper and microfilm still have a place in modern society.
Steven Aparicio is the president of International Technology Corporation (Altanta, GA 770-821-5312), a systems integrator. ITC and Automated Image Management (AIM) are wholly-owned subsidiaries of UniRom (Burlington, CN 905-631-7111).
