Mosaic Client interview with Felicia Blake

Like most people, until you’ve seen it for yourself, you think it’s a great idea – in theory.
Proclamations and do-gooder intents are simply that without full implementation.

That’s exactly what Felicia Blake thought. Having worked in Accounting for over a decade, she’s heard of other companies offering paperless solutions that never quite fully delivered. She admitted to being skeptical after working with several companies in the past. They claimed and even attempted integration, but, in the end, there was still paper. Maybe a little less paper, but still paper that had to be physically managed, secured, and stored.

Blake shares that her days before Mosaic consisted of “scanning and scanning and scanning and scanning.” Each invoice had to be scanned into the T-Drive. She felt like half of her day was spent standing at the copy machine scanning in invoices so that they could eventually be processed. The scanning was necessary to access the “paperless” system that the company was using. “Today I hardly scan anything,” she says.

Most people say they embrace change, but Blake’s team did experience some pushback at the beginning. A few senior managers were used to bringing their signed documents to her desk with their signatures for processing. They didn’t want to open the platform and apply their e-signature, but once they realized the DocStar platform was loaded onto their computers and they walked through the two-minute process, they were sold.

The secret that Blake keeps is that DocStar has streamlined her workday so much that it doesn’t feel like work. For instance, last week, her boss asked her for a report on one of their vendors from 2019 – Current 2020. In the past, Blake would create an Excel spreadsheet, pull the invoices from their files and begin month by month, transferring the information from the files to the spreadsheet. Then, after double-checking a few times, she could email her boss. With DocStar, she pulled up the business, accessed its information, pulled a report with the correct date parameters, hit enter, and DocStar did the rest. She says “Instead of scanning, scanning, scanning, I go click, click, click. I attached my custom report to an email, and done.”

Blake explains that this has freed up her day to concentrate on the big stuff like audits. She now has the time to prepare for the more important things that affect her company. “Now I pull up my dashboard every morning, and I know exactly where we stand with every vendor,” she says.

DocStar and the Pandemic

When Mosaic brought the DocStar system to Blake’s workplace, there was absolutely no way anyone could have known COVID-19 was on the horizon and the impact it would have on our lives and work.
Blake explains, “I was pregnant when my company considered DocStar. So, I call DocStar my second baby!” It’s one thing to sell us on the system, but another to overcome pushback. We were trained and educated on why and how this system was going to make our everyday lives easier. They listened to our pain points and then created and implemented a system customized with our needs in mind. Blake exclaims that “Our solution is completely ours.”

Her voice fills with emotion when she remembers that without DocStar in place, the change in the pandemic work environment would have presented challenges that would not have supported their team.

“Simply put, it would have been impossible for us to work from home. I would have had to enter the office every day because there are things about the traditional paper platform that you cannot do remotely.”

Blake went on to share that even simple things, such as receiving invoices in the mail, would have been difficult. Our team would have had to physically go into the office to retrieve invoices, scan them, and process them, putting everyone’s family at increased exposure during the pandemic.

According to Corp Magazine, a mere eighteen percent of companies consider themselves paperless, despite the given advances in technology today. Even though the cost of a ream of paper is cheaper than what it used to be, these savings are not translated across the board in managing the created document. Those costs include printer toners and maintenance, filing systems and, believe it or not, staples! These hidden costs can be as much as 31 times the paper’s cost with estimations at $8 billion that companies spend on paper management every year.

If you’re ready to take the paper out of your paperwork, give MOSAIC, the paperless process people, a call today.

Mosaic for Dental Practices

Most dental practices are no longer small enterprises with a single location. The business of dentistry has changed in the last decades and acquisition is one of the popular ways for a practice to grow. Dentists provide a health care service. Health is the product, but dentists, like many health practitioners, are small business owners.

With acquisition being one of the fastest and surest ways to grow your medical practice, the need for customized back-end systems that can speak with each other is paramount for success. For some, this may seem complicated—so complicated that most often inefficiency is the norm as more paper piles up for storage or shredding.

The most impacted back office system you may ask? Accounts Payable. After all, the ability to pay for goods received from vendors is the lifeblood of any business. Business reputations can be ruined with late payments, confusing systems, and high overhead. Research shows that a single employee error can result in frustration, late fees, or even a stop on shipping supplies. Suppliers and doctors talk, and when vendors are not paid in a timely fashion, your reputation and the ability to grow your practice are tainted.

Taking into consideration the often-increased headcount, printing costs, postage, and more instead of growth, your traditional systems may be losing money for your practice, even impeding future growth. The answer may seem complicated if you don’t consider the technological edge available to most small and medium enterprises today. What was a pie-in-the-sky idea just a few years ago is now available to everyone that can use a customized system with less paper, fewer errors, and increased productivity.

Let’s walk through the challenges faced in the AP departments when dental acquisitions occur – Our dental practice is located in Atlanta and has been in existence for ten years. This is a family practice started by two brothers: one went to dental school, and the other has an MBA. They joined forces and, over the last decade through acquisitions, they now own over 175 locations across the country. Dental practice’s digital transformation.

Our dentist focused on making sure that the healthcare providers adopted the best dental solutions, learning from some practices and educating others. Our office/operations manager was great at training the new teams and their customer service was consistent across every office. Our MBA was focused on continued growth when he heard a few rumblings from vendors. After some research, he was able to trace this challenge directly to their AP departments.

Their initial acquisitions were easy to incorporate into their traditional systems. Some acquisitions came with their own proprietary AP software. A few offices were almost in their system, but still had to print out paper to complete their processes. An incorrectly dated invoice had set off a chain reaction, resulting in late payments. Another error resulted in double payments to some vendors. Postage and shipping charges were increasing, and the still necessary manual processes were leading to reduced team morale.

The challenge was clear, but the solution was thought to be complicated.

Was it possible to find a digital system that could be customized specifically for their needs?

A solution that was flexible enough, so their continued growth wasn’t thwarted?

A tool that was easy to use so that employees would embrace the new system?

The MBA reached out to Mosaic. Mosaic implemented the DocStar AP Automation solution. With an internal processing engineer hired to streamline the AP system, the dental office has experienced a savings of over $350,000 in one year.

This resulted in new practices immediately following acquisition being included in the new system, due to the newfound scalability provided. Additionally, the dental practice now:

  • Captures all invoices electronically by using standard MFP copiers at locations or getting vendors to send PDFs
  • Uses intelligent data capture software to harvest all data from invoices using advanced OCR technology
  • Employs DocStar’s workflow to route invoices to approvers who can approve on PCs or smartphones
    Automatically updates to Dynamics GP, eliminating manual data entry and lowering error rates significantly
  • Has increased visibility into accrued outstanding payables and other key info through DocStar’s reporting tools
  • Achieved lowered costs of document storage and printing
  • Created goodwill with employees, vendors, and leadership

Today, a team of three AP people is processing thousands of invoices per month with much lower error rates, much faster pay cycles, almost no printing costs (in AP), and flatlined shipping costs.

The Dental Practice can now acquire a new provider and completely take over the payables to their suppliers in less than 10 business days!

Mosaic would like to work with you to offer our services if your practice is having similar issues. Call us to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals.

Does Paper Have a Hold On Humans?

Papyrophiliac. Yes, there is a word for a person who loves paper. There’s even a word for those people who collect paper, hallmaphiles. This might be hard to believe, especially in the digital age. Every piece of paper that humans used to collect and store, insurance cards, maps, mail, warranties, user manuals, receipts, recipes can all be found in digital form. This raises the question; Does Paper have a psychological hold on humans?

In the 1970’s futurist Faith Popcorn predicted the demise of paper. She predicted that all the things that we now access on our phones, tablets and more would go away. There would simply be no need to use paper anymore. Children growing up today will never have the smear of black ink on their hands after reading the early morning newspaper. “Cracking the spine of a book” is an antiquated phrase that even Generation X may not recognize. Reference books are all online even if you find them in a digital library. Most information that is used by people today is found in digital form or via your home speaker. Another Faith Popcorn quote “Just before consumers stop doing something, they do it with a vengeance.”

Since the late 1970’s when the predictions of a paperless society began it was always with the belief that productivity would increase and cost would decrease. When every desk in the office has computer, it was thought that certain processes bookkeeping, logistics and more would be automated removing the need for paper. What futurist didn’t reckon was that with each of the desktop computers would come desktop printers. Technology brought the cost to printing documents down so low that printing whole documents was inexpensive. Between the 1980’s and 2000’s paper use increased exponentially spawning thriving industries for document storage and shredding.

Have we finally come to paper’s last stand? Since the 2000’s offices in the US are using less paper. Security has increased for storing digital records behind passwords and firewalls. As people become more comfortable with the security of digital storage, the more likely they are to use it not only for personal documents but also in their business. Layer the addition of pandemic where everyone is looking for a way to limit their contact with others digital processes have exploded. From receipts to taxes humans are eliminating the need for hard copy paper documents. For generations we’ve been told to save receipts, file your income taxes and insurance forms many documents receiving favored treatment.

Today you can take a paper receipt, but most opt for a text or email. Business expense reports are automatically done by taking pictures of receipts as you receive them. Before your flight home even lands, your expense report can be filed digitally without you ever missing a beat. For the last decade most people file their income taxes digitally with e-signatures. Payments or refunds are processed digitally with little to no paper. As people navigate life in the pandemic, all are looking for multiple ways to limit their contact…with people. Everything that can be done digitally is being done digitally. Those that embraced technology, using automated processes are ahead of the curve. Some whole industries are playing catch up and those papyraphilliacs are still dancing in their paper chaos.

The paperless office has been moving beyond myths as one-by-one various industries embrace automated digital processes. Completely eliminating the need for paper hard copies can be done. As always thought, those industries embracing digital processes have increased their productivity and decreased their costs. Technology has moved from the Filofax to the Blackberry to Alexa in a short period of time. While we like to believe that these changes were easily accepted, most of us were kicking and screaming to hold on to our favorite technology. Believe it or not, you can still find inserts for your Filofax even if you can’t reboot your Blackberry.

Is it time for your business to go paperless? In a perfect world your team is ready to transition, and everything will happen in a blink of an eye. In the real world a customized solution that includes training and processes for exclusively for you can be found at Mosaic.