ViewWise Supports Audit Trail for Manufacturing Companies

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by Greg Rapport

Executives come to the realization that their companies need an Electronic Document Management solution from many different angles. Some see Document Management software as the way to resolve overflowing filing cabinets. Some think Document Management software will save them if the need should arise for disaster recovery such as a fire or flood. Others believe Document Management is necessary in cases of eDiscovery due to compliance regulations in their industry or litigation requests. Many simply see Document Management as the solution to improved customer service. All are correct.

When David Smith, Vice President of Taycar Inc., recognized his company’s need for a Document Management solution, the circumstances were unique. A consultant drew a map on the wall of his conference room describing what happens to a document at Taycar. Says Smith, “When the map was complete, the question wasn’t do we need Document Management, the question was which Document Management software should we buy.”

A Success from the Start

Taycar, Inc., is a family-owned manufacturing company located in Albuquerque, NM. It was started in 1983 by David Smith’s father, Jim. The company specializes in precision sheet metal fabrication and assembly. Its main focus is in prototype and small production run quantities. Taycar’s flexibility allows the company to take customers’ requirements in a variety of formats from hand-drawn sketches to CAD formats, such as AutoCAD and SolidWorks, and produce a high quality product with minimal turnaround time.

Taycar was awarded its first major contract in 1984 by the Air Force Weapons Laboratory (AFWL) to modify an aircraft for Electro-Magnetic Pulse testing. The company never looked back. Twenty-five years later, it boasts a client list of almost 500 satisfied customers, many of whom read like a who’s who of heavy hitters, such as the Department of Defense, Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, to name a few.

David joined the company in 1992, after a nine-year hitch as a nuclear weapons technician in the Air Force. Today, he is responsible for all day-to-day operations at Taycar.

The Industry Creates the Need

Issues with document control can arise at any time when doing defense-related and aerospace projects. There has to be traceability. Says Smith, “The paper trail can be extremely complex, and with the old paper file system, if someone misfiled a document, it was like finding a very small needle in a very large haystack. We always found the piece of paper, but the process was difficult and time-consuming.”

The practice of customers requesting paper-trail and processes auditing is a result of the ISO 9001 quality system. Once the ISO standards for quality assurance were authored, more and more of Taycar’s customers required that kind of quality system in place. A client can initiate an audit at any time and ask for back files from previous projects. That’s when the digging begins. Customers want to see a manufacturer’s written quality plan, plus proof that the quality plan was adhered to.

With a proper plan in place, manufacturers can go back and recreate the entire manufacturing sequence, and in the process, discover the root cause for anything that could go wrong. “You can imagine how important this is when you’re designing a part for an aircraft, for example,” says Smith.

Taycar had been through many audits of this type, previously, and they had always done a good job of documentation. Unfortunately, all it takes is one misfiled document to cause hours of wasted searching time and aggravation. Smith soon realized that, with Document Management software, a misfiled document can be found easily using an alternate search function. It’s that simple.

It Better Be Easy

In the fall of 2006, armed with a plan of features he wanted, Smith began searching for Document Management software. Most of his research took place on the Internet where he found many products and companies. Manufacturers referred him to local distributors who offered demonstrations. One local company demonstrated software from three different manufacturers. Smith explained that there were good points about all of them, and he was close to buying, but he had one major concern. Smith wanted a product that offered ease of use for his workers and he just wasn’t seeing it. Smith knew his workers were manufacturing specialists, not technologists. Getting end-user buy-in was paramount.

Serendipity played its part in November 2006 when Smith bumped into local Albuquerque businessman, Mark Fidel. Smith knew that Fidel, a former lawyer, had found a niche consulting with all types of businesses helping them with Document Management in preparation for possible litigation. Smith sensed a similarity between Fidel’s clients hunting for a piece of paper in time for court and his own people hunting for paper for a client audit. Smith wondered if the same solution that worked for Fidel’s clients would work for Taycar.

Fidel told Smith about Computhink’s ViewWise Document Management software and arranged a demonstration. During the demo, Smith recognized several key points that made ViewWise rise above its competitors:

1. ViewWise was more flexible and more adaptable than the other Document Management software programs
2. ViewWise’s physical layout was more similar to programs Taycar was already using. The menus and fill structures worked the same as their existing machine software, similar to Microsoft Outlook
3. ViewWise had the best user interface, enabling people who might not want to have anything to do with computers get involved in data input and retrieval

The decision to buy ViewWise was made after the demo in December 2006. The install began in February 2007. The physical install took approximately four days. With the training, the whole process only took one week. To ease employees into the routine and to mitigate potential gliches, Taycar initially ran ViewWise as a shadow system. “You can’t just flip a switch and expect people to mirror a light switch,” says Smith, who set a target date, April 1, 2007 to “go live.” Since April 1st, the results from using ViewWise have been all good.

Measuring Return on Investment (ROI)

Smith cites several areas where ViewWise already pays for itself:

1. No More Shop Safaris – “A shop safari is Taycar’s term for hunting down a piece of paper,” says Smith. In addition to locating paper files from any desktop, the same file can be accessed by more than one person simultaneously
2. Vastly Improved Customer Service – Questions can usually be answered on the initial call. This saves countless hours for the employees by eliminating callbacks. Customers are amazed by the speed of resolution
3. Hard Dollars – Taycar has greatly reduced their annual expenditure for office supplies. They spent $2,500 for printer toner cartridges before ViewWise. After ViewWise, that amount is down to approximately $250. The same logic applies to paper and file folders. Smith estimates an overall 80% reduction in office supplies expenses

Conclusion

Now that Smith has ViewWise, he is the first to tout its value. Previously, Document Management software would not have been his first choice for spending money. “Manufacturers don’t like spending money on computers,” says Smith, “We want to spend money on machines that assist the manufacturing process, not software. It’s our nature.”

But ViewWise changed all that. Smith recognizes and appreciates its value. He even looks forward to demonstrating ViewWise’s capabilities under actual audit conditions. “I wish they would audit us now, because that would really show us off,” he says. Fortunately, Smith won’t have to wait long. Most of his customers are on a two to three year audit cycle, so some are due, soon.

When issues pop up, Smith calls Fidel. Additionally, Computhink’s technicians are always available. Smith uses design software from top manufacturers and rates Computhink’s service comparable to the other top companies he works with.

In fact, Smith is so satisfied with ViewWise that he does demos for his customers. If his customers use the same system, then the data stream could back up to the customer level. “It’s definitely worth it,” says Smith, “and I take every opportunity I can to try to get customers and vendors onboard.”

In the final analysis, ViewWise helped Taycar become one of three finalists in the entire U.S. for an industry award presented annually by The Fabricator Magazine at this year’s Metal Fabricators Management Summit, hosted by the Fabrication and Manufacturers Association International (FMA). Such high recognition by the industry speaks volumes about how ViewWise made a difference at Taycar.

About Computhink
Computhink provides best-in-class ECM solutions for secure information sharing and compliance, targeting small and medium size organizations. Using state-of-the-art technology Computhink solutions operate on a wide range of platforms, including Windows, LINUX and Novell. The ViewWise Product line includes Email Archiving Solutions for Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise. Founded in 1994, Computhink has thousands of worldwide customers in government, financial services, education, healthcare, manufacturing and utility organizations. For more information on Computhink and its products go to computhink.com.

Reseller Snapshot

Applied Records Management
Albuquerque, NM
Est. January 2004
Mark Fidel, Owner

When Mark Fidel was in law school, you could never have convinced him that one day he’d become a Document Management software reseller. Even after law school, when he was a practicing attorney in Albuquerque, NM, he couldn’t have imagined such a dramatic career switch, but Fidel wasn’t an average attorney.

Prior to striking out on his own, he worked for a commercial defense litigation firm. In the process of trying to defend companies, he couldn’t help but notice the horrendous shape their documents were typically in.

During discovery, he would receive multiple boxes of records that may or may not have been relevant, because clients would give every record to find out what was important. His firm would bill the company hour after hour to pore over the documents and separate the ones they needed from the ones they didn’t. It was a totally unnecessary expense,” says Fidel.

The irony was that even though the law firm capitalized on their customer’s lack of Document Management, their own ability to manage paper was similarly lacking. “The law firm didn’t have a Document Management solution either,” says Fidel. One day, the light bulb went on and Fidel decided to go into business for himself.

Fidel figured there was plenty of room for a consultant who was experienced in knowing how to prepare a company’s documents for possible litigation. No matter how much he charged for his service, it couldn’t come close to the hourly rate of a law firm to sort documents, once it was too late. He decided the businesses that could use the most help are the ones who are the most document-intensive. So, independent insurance companies, law firms, and accounting firms became his primary focus.

What he found was pretty much what he expected. Companies keep piles of records out of fear of not knowing if they should keep them. Some people would keep everything, forever, and turn it all over in the event of a lawsuit. By 2005, Fidel began consulting clients as to statutory requirements for document retention. He kept his license to practice law, but consulting soon became a full-time pursuit.

It was early in 2006 when Fidel realized he was sending his customers to buy software from others. He would help them decide on the best software for their purpose, and his revenue stream would end there. He had been doing so much research on Document Management that he learned what was available, what worked, and what didn’t. What stood out about ViewWise was their end-user ease of use. “Once the set up and configuration is done, ViewWise is tremendously easy to use,” says Fidel. “The promises match up to the performance. There is no way they could make the configuration process any easier.”

Fidel separates the administrative tasks from the end user tasks. “There is a certain expertise expected from the administrative people, says Fidel, “but the end users are not expected to have any expertise at all.” Fidel decided to take his business to the next level by becoming a ViewWise reseller and keep the installation fees for his own company.

In 2007, Taycar, Inc, a manufacturing and fabrication company became his first client as a ViewWise reseller. “I’ve done a lot of demos since then,” says Fidel, “and it’s important to think creatively.” For example, most small law firms don’t have an IT department, so Fidel is exploring the possibility of using ViewWise in an ASP model as a hosted application.

Fidel says Computhink has been very good when it comes to helping him work and manage sales leads. Computhink provides leads, runs demos, offers several forms of training, and provides sales support materials in printed and electronic form. Says Fidel, “Computhink’s technical support is tremendous. They will bend over backwards on technical issues with typically fast solutions. With a client’s permission, they will pop into their environment and fix the problem while educating at the same time so everyone learns.” Smith characterizes his relationship with Computhink as clearly a win/win for him and his customers.

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