The Paper Chase Challenge

    Is paper chase distracting your workgroup from their core activities of servicing your internal and external customers?
    Are your workgroup members stressed due to file location problems causing productivity loss?
    Does your paper leave enough trail to be chased?

Control Your Paper Chase  With FileMon

    FileMon is a physical file( paper based) tracking system targeted towards workgroups that depend on files to carry out their activities. Workgroups using FileMon stands to gain increased productivity, avoidance of unnecessary stress and tension due to not being able to locate/access a file on demand, and better business decision making.  FileMon uses a continuous monitoring technique to accomplish the file tracking. Files under FileMon tracking are tagged using specially designed reusable tags. The uniqueness of FileMon is in its ability to deliver productivity even without tagging the entire file set – for instance if the entire file set size is 8000 and if average number of files in use is 400, then FileMon will  deliver productivity with just ~400 tags.

    The FileMon system consists of

1.A specially designed desk side file holder/file tray  arrangement
2.Files tagged with specially designed tags,
3.Software driver that interface with the electronics,  and application software that interface with the humans.
    The FileMon application running on each workgroup member desktop PC will manage the details of the files under its monitoring. It will also synchronize these details across the network such that members of the workgroup are able to know about each and every file in use with the workgroup.
Product Feature Highlight

1.Reusable tags

This feature makes it possible to use a small set of tags to manage a large set of files. In many real life situations, the number of active files is a minuscule percentage of the total file set. Tagging the entire file set is expensive and wasteful in multiple fronts( tagging, data entry, verification etc). With reusable tags it is possible to realize productivity incrementally.

2.Visual Cue

Electronic tagging makes files visible to the computers; Visual Cue in the tag makes them visible to humans. The combined force of computer and human intelligence wins the paper chase.

3.Enterprise Integration

FileMon is designed to inter-operate with enterprise software and workflow solutions.

4.Flexible Induction of files into the tracking system.

The files information( like title, unique identifier, etc) can be inducted into the system in one go or an "Induct as you use" approach is possible.

5.Minimal user cooperation.

Inadvertent omissions and commissions of just a few workgroup members could  nullify the meticulous contribution of the whole workgroup. The skew caused by such omissions could bring down the faith in the system and induce more such omissions.  FileMon is designed to degrade gracefully with omissions and commissions. With better usability and skew control, FileMon strives to maintain faith in the system and better compliance.

Target Market  

The FileMon could improve productivity in:

• Government Sector operations.
• Customer Relationship Management
• Accounting and regulatory compliance Services provider operations.
• Hospital Record Management
• Employee Record Management
• Financial Services operations.
• Legal Service provider operations.
• Justice System administration including courts and the police
• Process based quality control regimes like ISO standard compliance operations.

Value Proposition

Pricing

    The  FileMon file tracking solution for  a typical workgroup(that need 7-10 holders and about 200 tags) will be priced at ~ Rs 1.2 Lakhs.
Value Justification
    Suppose, for instance an employee wastes an average of 12 minutes per work day  in searching files, and the average workgroup salary is Rs 25,000, and operating cost of infrastructure( Rent, electricity, maintenance, and other lease charges) per month is Rs 50,000.  Then rupee value of the productivity loss due to searching of files is:
    7(number of people in workgroup) *12( minutes wasted) * 24( number of work days per month) /60 =  33.6 Man hours per month. At Rs 25,000 average workgroup member salary per month the productivity loss works out to be Rs 5000 per month. If we factor in the infrastructure cost also the productivity loss works out to be Rs 6428 pm.
     With the installation of File Tracker, the productivity loss is cut and the time is available for productive use. The productivity gain indeed  will be much more than 2x the productivity loss, taking into account the stress saved etc. Thus the productivity gain in rupee terms is Rs. 12,856. Thus the investment in  FileMon File Tracker will payoff in less than 10 Months. The payoff will be more rapid if  the workgroup consists of high ranking personnel whose cost to company(salary + benefits + etc)  are much higher than Rs 25,000.

RFID and other auto-id technologies.

    A description of an electronic tagging based product is incomplete without mentioning RFID( Radio Frequency Identification) tagging technology. Where does FileMon fit into the RFID ecosystem? First, FileMon tags are not RFID based – FileMon uses contact based technology. The underlying purpose of both FileMon tagging and RFID is Visibility. RFID and other automatic Id technologies are indeed complimentary to FileMon tagging. The choice of contact based approach offers richer feature set for lower cost. The choice also brings in its own challenges( like contact reliability, aesthetics, etc)  which are well addressed by the FileMon engineering. In short, FileMon tagging provides active RFID features at the price point of passive RFID and much more.  

Visual Cue

    Electronic tagging makes the tagged item visible to the computer. How about the humans – they overloaded to distinguish between similar looking objects. FileMon features a label that has an iconic image and a textual cue. The FileMon software search reulsts show the visual and textual cue present on the files. This helps the user to quickly locate the file of interest amidst many similar looking files.
Contact

    If you are interested in knowing more details about FileMon or a live demo please contact:

Balaji Sowmyanaryayanan

Phone: 044 – 2231-4514
E-mail: labsji at gmail dot com

Also: Paper File Tracking photos and feedback at the blog.