home > what now > research > success stories & testimonials > The Right Thing

The Right Thing Success Story

With incoming applications, tax forms and background checks, Human Resources can be one of the most difficult departments to manage. Many large corporations find this task to be particularly daunting as they struggle to hire hundreds or thousands of people each year. The Right Thing, Inc. is an outsourcing company who assists Fortune 2000 companies by managing the human resources department for them. "We help our clients throughout the hiring process," Janet Bowers, IT specialist for The Right Thing, says. From the point when resumes are placed and found on monster.com until the successful candidates are chosen, The Right Thing facilitates each step.

The Right Thing, Inc. (RTI) opened their doors approximately three years ago, but many of its people worked with a prior corporation and have been in the business since 1990. Over the past decade and a half, they have processed some 12 million candidates in North America.

On average, each candidate has to fill out at least three forms, generating tens of millions of paper documents. They found themselves weighted down with a major paper problem, making their success slightly bittersweet. "We had 10 people who were responsible for making copies, sending them out and getting them back into the right files," Janet says. "We knew we wanted to change things and begin going paperless," Janet says.

According to Janet, their search for a document management system was quite rigorous. "We researched a lot of vendors and PaperWise was the front-runner by far." For The Right Thing, PaperWise offered exactly what they were looking for.

"We knew the functionality that we wanted and were attracted by the flexibility to integrate with our other vendors," Janet says. "No other system came close."

After going live with their system in January of this year, The Right Thing now uses PaperWise to solve the paper problems associated with one of their major clients, Merck Pharmaceuticals. Merck, a Fortune 100 pharmaceutical company, is continually adding to their employee network. RTI handles the ongoing hiring of all Merck employees in the US Human Help division.

Streamlined Processes

PaperWise is especially helpful to RTI when they attend hiring events. Before PaperWise, each job jacket (a folder holding the appropriate paperwork for one candidate) had to be searched through by hand to perform an audit. They can now run audit reports to ensure each candidate has turned in all of the required documents. When RTI was finished with hiring for a client, they had to send boxes and boxes full of job jackets to them. Now, thanks to PaperWise, they can deliver all the documents on one DVD.

PaperWise allows them to access documents immediately, rather than having to search through old boxes, pull, fax, and re-file each time they are requested. Even if a customer calls in for a specific document, PaperWise helps them to find it immediately, and e-mail it to them with a single click.

Because The Right Thing handles so many documents that pertain to thousands of different job candidates, they chose to use bar coding as a major part of their solution. Each time they go to a hiring event, the candidates bring an application printed off their Web site that includes the bar code created for that individual. Each of the documents are then collected from the candidates and scanned into PaperWise.

The Right Thing scanned more than 32,000 documents for Merck in the first three months of using the system. Previously, they would have had to copy each of those documents an average of three times. "The wear and tear on our copiers was huge," Janet says. But now, they rarely have to duplicate documents because their electronic versions are readily available.

The Right Thing now extracts files from their tracking system, My Staffing Pro, and routes them to the PaperWise system with the touch of a hotkey.

When paperwork is received from a candidate, it is scanned in with a bar coded cover sheet. The bar code automatically enters the correct index information and the job they are applying for, eliminating dual entry as well as user error. They also bar code each of their internal forms so they are automatically organized within the PaperWise system.

"We put documents on the scanner, scan them and we're done," Janet says. "We've been very happy with it. The bar code is really the key for us because it just creates so many efficiencies," she says.

Supreme Integration

Using their third party system, My Staffing Pro, The Right Thing is able to track all of their clients. By creating a link in their application, they can immediately access PaperWise with the information pertaining to the client automatically in the window.

At the end of each day, the two separately hosted systems that hold information need to be synchronized, so a My Staffing Pro file is sent over to PaperWise. "That has worked great," Janet says.

"Making the two systems speak to each other to update has really saved us time," she says. According to Public Relations guru, Sara Thigpen, one of the greatest advantages PaperWise offers to RTI clients is compliance with government standards and organization for all of their customers.

A Competitive Edge

The Right Thing sought out PaperWise as a way to set themselves apart from the competition. "We wanted to get our feet wet and get some data that we can sell and promote to all of our clients. It's definitely a differentiator," Sara says.

The Right Thing also chose to go on board with PaperWise because they like being on the cutting edge of technology. "For us, it's not only efficiency gains but it's giving our clients a great impression of us," Janet says.

Seeing the success they have achieved with the Merck Pharmaceuticals account, The Right Thing is planning to implement PaperWise with more clients, at least 15 of which qualify for the transfer.

In the future, The Right Thing plans on tackling the huge file room and warehouse full of documents that sits on an adjacent property. The documents being kept in accordance with required retention policies can be scanned and storage costs eliminated.

"We're looking to reallocate those resources to more valuable functions," Sara says. They also plan to implement PaperWise into their internal Human Resources department as well as Accounting. "We have a whole list of things we'd like to use it for and we're just not there yet," Janet says.

"But so far, we've been really thrilled with it," Janet says. "There are so many things that we haven't even tapped into that we can't wait to do."