EASY Discovery: Widening the range of ECM systems

With its EASY Discovery application, EASY exceeds the bounds of traditional document management, moving into the enterprise information management sector. This application provides customers and their employees with information in a new and convenient format. All the user has to do is move within their familiar application programs, e.g. in a CRM system or their e-mail client. EASY Discovery automatically searches different sources for a defined search term, e.g. a customer name, once a specific mask opens in the application. The information will then 'simply be there', just a click away - and with a vastly greater range. It's amazing, you don't even have to open clients or enter search terms.

Before: coping with this data jungle…

Monday morning, 9:10 a.m.: Jim Fox, head of the order processing center, receives a complaint message. A customer is writing that although they received the ordered software, they received only a license for 200 clients instead of their ordered number of 250 clients. Normally, Mr. Fox would now start checking the recent e-mail correspondence and the information in the CRM system. Moreover, he would check the offer and order documents, and might even consult the corresponding sales employee. In short: searching, searching - keep on searching.

After: all available within a single system

But from the moment Mr. Fox has been using EASY Discovery, these searches in various systems are a thing of the past. 'I no longer start searching in the first place,' he says, 'because all the information I need is immediately available. Once I click the customer's e-mail message, EASY Discovery already assembles all information in the background. All I have to do is access it. I just have to move the mouse to the right edge of the screen - lo and behold, the hits for e-mail messages to customers, companies and contact data from the CRM system and the documents from the ECM system are displayed in transparent tiles.' When he clicks the e-mail icon, the application displays the e-mail messages to that customer. Mr. Fox can scroll through them or filter by specific terms. However, more sources are also immediately displayed to him. The in-house license database, for example, which is, of course, of utmost interest to him. He can directly access all information without having to log in to different systems or to use different interfaces. But his system is not only trained to 'respond' to e-mail messages. The same happens when he looks at the company or a contact in the CRM system - or, alternatively, via 'hot key' when a search term is selected in any document.

Customer contacts at a glance

'Instead of looking through 300 e-mail messages I sometimes just want to know what communication took place with a customer during the past few weeks,' says Mr. Fox.

A timeline displays each document and each activity for that customer in chronological order. 'This tremendously accelerates the process of searching, if you like,' comments Mr. Fox. 'I also like the integrated connection to the CRM system,' he adds. 'This allows me to display contact data for each customer and call a customer immediately from the system via a key combination.

Information from a wide range of sources handed to the user on a 'silver platter'

In addition, EASY Discovery provides much more information. Information from business networks like XING or LinkedIn, or simply the hits returned by a search engine are examples of this. The calendar items of the EASY customer supporter who might have another appointment and is therefore prevented from answering the phone also come in useful. Well, he or she doesn't need to because Mr. Fox already has all the information he needs anyway, thanks to EASY Discovery. By clicking the customer's e-mail message, the program provides all the information for Fox in the background - handed to him on a 'silver platter', as it were.

EASY Discovery version 5.1 is available now. During January 2017, EASY will release version 6.0 with extended functionality.