CLEVELAND, July 22, 2009 -- So, you want to open the purse strings to the tightly held IT budget. But before putting yourself on the line, you need a solid case made for your recommendation - and having hard and fast return on investment (ROI) numbers for similar projects would surely help. So what if you could say, "a company with departments very much like ours solved their problems using this particular enterprise content management (ECM) solution and realized a 237 percent ROI?" Wouldn't it help make for a strong case, especially if the numbers came from a Hyland commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, a well-known and highly respected independent research company? Hyland Software thinks so, which is why it commissioned Forrester to examine the total return companies like Emerson Climate Technologies may realize by deploying OnBase.

Emerson is the world's leading provider of heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration solutions for residential, industrial and commercial applications. It implemented OnBase in 1999 to capture, route, manage, share and archive high volumes of corporate documents. This was done to eliminate low-value manual tasks in administrative operations, including finance and accounts payable. The Sidney, Ohio-based company, which employs more than 7,500 people worldwide, has implemented 35 OnBase modules to support manufacturing plants in the U.S., China, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Western and Eastern Europe.

Forrester brings its industry expertise in ECM and Forrester's Total Economic Impact(TM) (TEI) methodology to this study. TEI not only measures costs and cost reduction, but also weighs the enabling value of technology in increasing effectiveness of overall business processes. As part of the process, Forrester conducted a series of in-depth interviews with Emerson's IT buying decision maker. Here are key report findings:

Emerson has obtained a risk-adjusted ROI of 237 percent

The present value of Emerson's risk-adjusted total benefits is more than $2.9 million. Savings resulted by reducing capital costs, requiring fewer resources, achieving greater productivity by eliminating low-value-added tasks, reducing external auditor and compliance operational costs and improving eDiscovery

OnBase resulted in a reduction in the number of days and auditors needed to complete seasonal audits; this led to a five-year total cost savings of $950,040

Emerson's revenues have grown from $1 billion in 1999 to $3 billion today without a corresponding increase in the number of accounts payable (AP) clerks. Emerson estimated that it would have had to hire seven additional AP clerks without OnBase. Estimated savings over five years are $681,600 Before OnBase, an eDiscovery exercise that required a team of lawyers to review 2.5 million invoices took 60 days to complete. After OnBase, the team was able to search and identify the necessary invoices in five days, saving an estimated $275,000

Over five years, Emerson realized $1,450,000 in compliance-related savings from the elimination of the need to implement electronic or digitized signatures thanks to OnBase

Moving to OnBase and away from massive amounts of purchase order printing saved Emerson more than $500,000 over five years

If you would you like to learn how Emerson's impressive numbers were calculated, and how organizations like yours may be able to receive similar benefits, read the study for a detailed breakdown of the savings.

In today's uncertain times, IT budgets are tighter and more scrutinized than ever. If projects are to get the go-ahead, they have to meet several requirements: be from stable, profitable vendors with a proven track record of taking care of their customers and delivering promised ROI, not to mention prove that the technology will help to hit revenue targets. ECM is a proven solution that has made companies more efficient and effective for decades, thereby driving savings and efficiencies that help make this possible.

"The beauty of OnBase is that it can grow one department at a time, or it can immediately be enterprise-wide," said Ken Burns, industry communications manager for Hyland Software. "In the case of Emerson, it's important to note that OnBase is still in only a couple of departments. If and when it is implemented more broadly across the company, there are new efficiencies to be had and significant ROI to be gained. Combine a solution that is proven and cost effective and throw in an award-winning, rapidly growing software provider, and you end up at Hyland, a good place, we think, for companies to start their ECM search."

Learn more about total economic impact ECM solutions can offer, and why now may be the best time for your organization to invest in such technology, by registering for the free Webinar on Thursday, July 30 at 2:00 p.m. EDT. To sign-up, go to http://www.OnBase.com/ReportWebinar and complete the short registration form. Should you miss the live Webinar, the recorded version will be available at http://www.OnBase.com/RecordedWebinar. In the meantime, go to http://www.OnBase.com/ForresterTEIstudy to download the full report.

About the Hyland Software solution, OnBase

One of the largest independent software vendors in the world of enterprise content management (ECM), Hyland Software is the developer of OnBase. An award-winning suite of document management and content management solutions, OnBase has a proven record of solving problems resulting from time consuming, costly and error plagued manual tasks. Today, people at more than 8,200 organizations both large and small in 47 countries have the time to do the things that really add value thanks to OnBase. Available on-premises or as software as a service (SaaS), OnBase installs quickly, cost effectively and is designed to grow with organizations.