Turn on the Power with Agile ECM

Snow! And piles and piles of it! This is the ‘stuff’ that kept millions of Eastern Seaboarders away from the malls this past weekend, just at the peak of the Christmas shopping season. But we Americans, being ever resourceful, were still able to secure that proverbial Old Spice gift set for dad, it’s just that we did it online.

In fact, online retail sales rose 22.4 percent for the weekend compared with last year, Web research company Coremetrics said. On Saturday, sales were up 24.8 percent alone. The firm also showed the average shopper spending and ordering more on Saturday, when the weather’s effects were deepest, than Friday. Even online sales Monday morning were strong as shoppers raced to make purchases so they could be delivered by Christmas. “This teaches consumers that maybe those of us that procrastinate, we still have time to go online very close to Christmas,” said John Squire, Coremetrics’ chief strategy officer.

Today we are all busy. And we are being asked to do more with less all of the time. Most Americans are now quite comfortable shopping online, as we have been doing this now for 10 years. The IRS even recognizes this as they allow, and even prefer, that most people file their tax returns online. Wouldn’t 2010 be a great year for local governments to adopt the same thought process? Why not automate all incoming forms so constituents, who don’t like filing forms like business renewals or garage sale permit requests, can do so with the “click” of the mouse? And make it easy for the employees to process the required documents, and save the taxpayers time and money… For more information on electronic forms or other Business Process Management solutions, contact Unity Business Systems.