What is Electronic Document Management?

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The need and demand for electronic document management systems is growing rapidly, in Malta and abroad. According to a 2010 Gartner CIO Survey, document management placed in the Top 10 technology priorities.

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Digitizing Documents has never been so easy!

Micro-enterprises and small businesses process thousands of documents every year. These may include bills and invoices, delivery notes, applications, letters, email conversations, legal and tax documents, designs, strategy/planning documents, and more. Often times many of these documents are printed or stored on different computers. The result is a system which is time-consuming, wasteful, and complicated.

This is where an electronic document management comes in useful. The purpose of this system is to centralize the task of managing documents. All the documents are stored electronically on a server. This makes the task of both finding AND securing the documents much easier. It is also easier to create back-ups of your documents that you may store off-site just in case of unpredictable events like an office fire.

The most noticeable benefit of electronic document management is the increase in efficiency (i.e. saved time). The most common objection received is that one must scan each document to change it into pdf format. Although this used to take long in the past, nowadays many low cost office scanners can scan papers from both sides at speeds over 30 sheets/minute. One also has to keep in mind that many documents are originally digital in format. Furthermore, documents can be automatically indexed so that the software recognizes what type of document has been scanned and it is automatically stored in the right folder.

When the time comes and somebody needs to find a document, this may be easily retrieved using advanced search functionality. Many systems allow users to tag documents with keywords that facilitate searching. In addition, using OCR (optical character recognition) technology, one may also search the text of the document itself. The bottomline is that users may search large databases and find the right file within a few seconds. With paper documents this process many times takes several minutes or even hours when documents are misplaced or lost.

There are other benefits to electronic document management however these will be discussed later on in this document management series. In the meantime please feel free to forward any questions you may have.

What is your opinion on electronic document management?

Clever Solutions Ltd is a Malta based IT Consultancy firm that offers professional support on the OpenKM document management platform. This is an open-source document management solution, available in 26 languages, and boasts over 1000 active implementations worldwide. OpenKM is an easy to use, secure, and affordable solution for Maltese businesses. Contact us for more information.  

Clever going social !!!

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As people in Malta are becoming increasingly conversent with growing social technologies, we at Clever Solutions Ltd have decided to up our efforts to make the most of this new online reality. Although we are a small company (for now), we know we can still contribute our bit of creativity to the net.

Clever Solutions on Social MediaWe see the Internet as a fantastic platform to create and maintain meaningful relationships with people in Malta and around the world. However, we know that we have a lot to learn about using social media, so your contributions on how you wish us to contribute are welcome. This project is exciting and we really hope that looking back, six-twelve months from now, we shall be pleased with the new people we’ve met and helped.

For now our efforts will be focused on keeping this blog alive (its a lot of work!) and our Twitter account relevent and regular. To a lesser extent you may also find us on Facebook and we’ll also be posting some stuff on LinkedIn.

Since we are undertaking this effort, it would be interesting to get your perspective on whether small B2B companies like us should be bothering with social media. Is it innovative, is it simply expected, or is it still trivial?

What do you think?

Clever Solutions Ltd is a Malta based IT Consultancy with over 25 years experience in Information Technology services from basic system administration to supporting critical security systems to managing software development projects.

Essential free software alternatives for your business

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Anybody who has run a small business will tell you how important it is to make the most of your money. Especially during hard economic times, business owners are always looking for ways to lower costs. This solution is often offered by IT. software that promises benefits such as increased efficiency and productivity, with a good ROI.

Free

Quality Free Software Exists!

As a software development company ourselves, we are not saying that these claims are not true, simply that we understand that the combined initial investment and operating costs for such solutions are not always feasable for bootstrapped companies. Buying software licenses for what we sometimes consider as standard software is not always an option. Furthermore, using pirated copies introduces unnecessary risk to any business. This is why we are listing some essential free software alternatives that your business may use instead of other commercial and more expensive software.

OpenOffice
Branded as “The Free and Open Productivity Suite” this is an excellent alternative to Microsoft Office. The interface is very easy to use and learn, it is rich in functionality, plus there are no serious compatability issues (e.g. you cannot save in .docx although you can open the file and save it in .doc format).

Mozilla Thunderbird
This is a very popular open source email client that is very well supported and has an intuitive user-interface. Migration from other software such as Microsoft Outlook is possible, it offers its users a customizable email experience with various add-ons and smart folders, and it is also a secure solution with updates released regularly.

Paint.NET
If you need a basic photo editing program that is very easy to use, free, and has more functionality than Microsoft Paint, then Paint.NET is a really good choice. It is not as feature rich as Photoshop or GIMP (which is also free) but we love it because its fast and straightforward to use. Worth a try.

AVG Anti-Virus
A quality anti-virus solution, AVG offer a free version as well as other paid options with more functionality and support. If you’re just starting up and you are careful when downloading files and browsing, then this solution should serve your needs well. However, if you are a small business and need to protect several users, we suggest investing in a more comprehensive security solution.

Apart from the above, there are many more popular software that can help your business, most notably: Skype (VoIP / Chat), VLC (Media Player), and CamStudio (Video Screen Recording).  With all these quality solutions freely available, one can take his or her business forward with confidence into 2012.

Do you use any other free software that is fantastic?

Clever Solutions Ltd is a Malta-based IT Consultancy & Support company. If you require support on choosing the right software for your business, feel free to contact us and we’ll do our best to help you make the right decisions.

4 Simple Tips on Maintaining your Office Server

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The costs of running an office are always on the increase. The cost of water, electricity, equipment, stationary, and other essential items bite hard into the company’s bottom line. Some of the first areas targeted for cost cutting include advertising; systems administration, and IT infrastructure.

Although many have a basic knowledge of using a computer, being responsible for the office computer is a different ball game. Here are some tips to help you do just that:

1.    Start off by taking note of the current system. Note how well it responds under normal load. For example, timing how long it takes to open a particular spreadsheet that is saved on the server. Keep a record of these measurements and mark them as your baseline. Later on, when users start complaining of a slow server, you would be able to compare current times with those of the baseline.
2.    Prepare a plan for backups. This is an important function of System Administration. Keep in mind the cost of losing important data. Always keep a backup off site.
3.    Make sure that all computers are protected with up-to-date Anti-virus software.
4.    All servers should be protected with an uninterruptable power supply (UPS). Test the UPS every month to make sure it will do its job during a power loss.

The above points are very basic systems administration tasks which are often overlooked, leaving critical data more prone to loss. These tips by no means cover all aspects required to have a secure working system but they are a start. An IT systems administrator would be required for this.

How well do you maintain your IT infrastructure?

Having a full time systems administrator is beyond the means and needs of many micro and small companies. However, having a professional to sort technical problems, and to perform the necessary repetitive tasks (e.g. on a weekly basis) is important considering the growing significance of IT. Nowadays, a number of companies can provide you with just the right amount of professional systems administration you need. Clever Solutions Ltd is one such company offering this essential service.

5 tips on how to follow up after networking

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For many companies, networking is a very important aspect of their business. In particular, this is especially true for micro-enterprises and small businesses who might not have the resources to splash on advertising.

Considering the annual business networking event being organized by JCI Malta this evening, this is the perfect opportunity to share some tips on how to make the most out of a relationship after first contact.

1) Understand who the other person is and what his/her concerns are.
Networking is not about selling your services but about building relationships between people. The best way to do this is to understand who you are speaking to, find out what they are looking for, and then help them get it. Manage that and the relationship is off to a great start.

2) Don’t dismiss anyone as irrelevent.
A common mistake is that networkers only look for potential customers and suppliers. Being creative and open-minded and allowing yourself to focus on helping others means you’ll be building relationships which may prove valuable in the future in ways you cannot presently imagine.

3) Introduce people you may think the contact ought to know.
The more you meet people, the more you’ll be able to use your network as a resource to help new contacts. Become aware of these possible links of mutual benefit and use them to help out. Something good might be in it for you.

4) Connect online.
At conferences and networking events, you may meet tens of people in one evening. However, after a few days putting faces and names to these people may prove probematic. But what is the point of meeting people if you’re going to forget them in 48 hours? Email and social media such as LinkedIn are very helpful in aiding you to remember important details about your contacts and they also help you to keep in touch. Use  these tools!

5) Meet up.
Despite the rise of online social media, nothing beats an honest face-to-face meeting to get to know somebody. People are some times different online than they are offline. If you’ll be working with a contact it will probably be offline so, this still remains the most important way to get to know people.

What do you think of these tips? Do you have any more of your own?

Welcome to our humble new blog!

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We are very glad to welcome you to our first post on the Official Clever Solutions Ltd blog.

The purpose of this blog is to inform you of company and industry news and also to provide you with valuable IT and business resources. The blog is mainly targeted to entrepreneurs and professionals who work with small businesses in Malta. We sincerely hope that the content that we shall regularly be posting here helps you in your professional endeavours.

Apart from publishing here, we shall also be posting regular updates on our Twitter account (@CleverSolutions).

As maintaining a blog can be a time-consuming task, we encourage you to tell us what you think of what we are posting and also what you would like to see us post about. The discussion that is generated is the best part of social media.

Since this is the first post, give us a shout out in the comments section just so we know somebody is listening. A simple ‘hello’ would be fantastic!