Digital Landfill

I'll probably do a couple of posts based on a presentation by former AIIM board member (John Reinhart) at the recent Kodak Executive Summit.

First point about the Summit...kudos to Kodak for moving away from the traditional "breakaway" model-from what I heard it's a welcome move.

John's presentation reminded me how cavalierly we use the term "vertical" in this industry, when in reality any "vertical" no matter how well defined is usually a gross over-simplification.

John's assessment of the emerging sub-markets within the healthcare "vertical"...

1. Urgent care at the retail level.
2. Rural hospitals.
3. Elder care - and its sub specialties - assisted care, home care, nursing home care, and durable medical equipment.
4. Personal health record keeping.

I had an interesting conversation with Harvey Spencer at this week’s Kodak Executive Summit.  Harvey was particularly keen on the potential for digital phones as mobile capture devices.  His opinion was that there was huge potential now that 3 MP camera phones were starting to come into the market (the minimum he thought it was possible to do reasonable full page capture with a camera).

He showed me a couple of examples that were quite interesting.

The first was full page capture of a page of text using the camera phone.  The camera image was downloaded to the PC and then converted to pdf.  The conversion using Nuance was perfect, including conversion of e-mail and web links.  He also ran conversion of the same image into editable Microsoft Word.  This was also run through ABBYY OCR with very excellent results.  Very cool.

The second example was capture of business card contact information on the phone. OCRing of the information was done within the phone using ABBYY to the phone contact database, with synching back to Exchange.  There was only one minor error on the phone OCR. 

I think Harvey is onto something here.  The advent of 3 MP camera phones is making this type of mobile scanning a possibility.  It also creates a real business justification/differentiation for upgraded phones, since most phones can now do calling, mailing, and texting reasonably well. 

If you missed some of our recent webinars, you may be surprised to find that they are also available for listening after the fact!  Here's a list of some of the recent webinars -- listen in.  Maybe listen in while having lunch.  No charge for blog readers.  [Note:  Graphic is picture I had of a hot dog while on a business trip.  Don't tell my wife.]

Document Imaging for Microsoft-Driven Organizations
Speaker: Craig LeClair, Forrester Research, Inc.
4/10/2008
Microsoft technologies - SharePoint, Exchange, Access, SQL, etc. -- are core to the fabric of organizations' business operations. Too often, however, these operations get bogged down by paper, leading to parallel work processes - one electronic and one paper-based. Document imaging software brings these processes together, increasing business efficiencies created by Microsoft applications. Join us to learn how to tightly integrate document imaging into your existing IT infrastructure, enabling employees to share content, eliminate paper (thus making that content searchable), include paper documents into electronic workflows, and contribute to sound records management.

Enterprise 2.0 � What�s the Real Story?
Speaker: Carl Frappaolo, VP AIIM Market Intelligence
3/28/2008
The market is abuzz with commentary on Enterprise 2.0. Emerging from the momentum of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities.

Proactive eDiscovery: it Starts with Email
Speaker: Brian Foster, Access Sciences Corporation
3/26/2008
Controlling email with an eye on compliance and risk is crucial for every organization. Rather than jumping when the lawyers call and playing damage control should content go astray, organizations should take a proactive approach to managing their content so as to stay out of legal hot water. This event will focus on getting a handle on email as a starting point to a proactive eDiscovery strategy and will provide guidance for a new way of thinking about managing it. While email is the most critical starting point for eDiscovery for most organizations, attendees will be reminded that eDiscovery requires handling email and beyond, and cannot be effectively managed with point solutions. It must be part of an overall enterprise content management strategy.

Records Retention: 10 Essential Elements
Speaker: Mark Diamond, Contoural
3/19/2008
Now more than ever, organizations of every size and in every industry must be concerned with the proper maintenance and deletion of their business records. There have never been more legal, compliance, and operational drivers for creating a sound plan for records retention. A well formed and executed program will prepare your organization for an audit or a litigation hold and will often have the side benefit of improving productivity and lowering costs at the same time. Not sure how to launch your plan or not sure if your plan is the right one for your organizations? Join us as we take you step by step through the 10 essential elements of a records retention program. Find out how paper and electronic records can be better managed by leveraging technology and business practices.

Bringing Documents to Life: Transform How Information is Shared, Consumed and Utilized with Dynamic Documents
Speaker: Bill Trippe, The Gilbane Group
3/12/2008
Documents do not have to be snapshots of a point in time. By pulling together technologies such as XML-based authoring and publishing tools and connecting to live data, documents can become dynamic and interactive � alive in a sense. Rather than creating and then updating the same document with different versions, a document can really begin to work for you by pulling live data so that it�s always up-to-date.

ECM Profiles: Enterprise Content Management- Moving from a Point Solution to an Enterprise Rollout Presented by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota
Speaker: Tom Chaffee, Systems Architect at Blue Cross Blue Shield of MN
2/28/2008
Learn from BCBS of Minnesota how it developed, planned and is currently executing its content management rollout across its enterprise.

And the Survey Said….

USA Today has come out with a new survey - apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population.  (David Letterman)

As many of you know, AIIM conducts a variety of industry trend and benchmarking surveys (see http://www.aiim.org/industry-watch.asp for free downloads of many of these surveys for blog readers).  The topics of the surveys range from capture to business process management to content security to document management and just about everything in between.  The basic goal of these surveys is to quantify the user experience with document, records, and content management technologies. 

We often ask similar questions in multiple surveys in order to get comparative data.  In preparing for a recent presentation, I ran across a similar question in three different surveys.  I think the disparate answers to this question provide clues as to some of the challenges facing the industry and those who sell its solutions.

Here’s the question:  “Please evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of your organization’s spending on X [more on the ‘X’ in a minute] compared with other significant IT investments.”

Now here’s where some slight variations on the question enter the equation:

• Survey 1:  X = “distributed scanning and capture”
• Survey 2:  X = “scanning and capture”
• Survey 3:  X = “document, records, and content management”

As Richard Dawson used to say on the Family Feud television show – “And the survey SAID…”

The 28% with a negative assessment of their content, document, and records implementations is just plain troubling.  And I think worth a pause to reflect on the causes of this disconnect between satisfaction on core scanning and capture and more comprehensive implementations.

We know from other surveys that the obstacles end users encounter rarely involve the actual technology and often fall into a few major buckets:

1. Lack of vendor neutral education and training in the early stages of a project (i.e., “what can we learn from those who have gone before us?”)
2. Poor initial identification of business requirements (i.e., “what are we trying to accomplish?”)
3. Lack of attention to the governance structure (i.e., “who is calling the shots?”)
4. Overly complex solutions (i.e., “why is this so hard?”)
5. Lack of top management commitment (i.e., “who is going to make sure things happen?”

Let's hear some of your thoughts....

Some longtime readers of this blog may know how much I enjoy Garr Reynolds' blog (http://www.presentationzen.com) and his book on effective presentations.

A thank you to Garr for his recent post on "Team Hoyt" -- recently featured on the Today Show.   While the focus of this blog is usually on the nuts and bolts of records, content and document management, it's useful sometimes to be reminded that there is more to life.

Check out the from the Today Show for a bit of inspiration -- and thank you to Garr for the post.

I'm often asked about how to "get started" with an ECM project. 

Download 10steps.pdf (428.2K)

AIIM member (president of ChannelMarketPartners) has put together a good checklist.  Here is a summary of the steps that Steve highlights...

1. Proposing an ECM system
2. Project charter
3. System scope
4. System requirements
5. ROI analysis
6. Statement of work
7. Project plan
8. RFP
9. RFP evaluation
10. Execution and control

Download 10steps.pdf (428.2K)

In a web 2.0 world, organizations appreciate the value of collaborative content development and sharing. Now, through the use of emerging enterprise tools like SharePoint, wikis,and blogs today's knowledge workers are able to access organizational information assets easier than ever before. Yet compliance, legal, and ethical concerns mandate closer scrutiny and controls over open access. How do organizations sync up content sharing with content security and governance?

Judging from the record breaking attendance (176!) at the first of our seminar series (in Houston), it is clear that many organizations are actively wrestling with the question of "control vs. collaboration," and particularly the issues associated with deployment of MOSS.  A recent AIIM survey revealed that 1/3 of organizations with an active ECM or document management program have already deployed MOSS, with another 20% looking at a deployment within the next 12-18 months (CLICK HERE for a full copy of the survey results).

This free, one-day educational seminar discusses Information Rights Management and the holistic approach to leveraging collaboration while maintaining control. Get insight and answers to questions about (1) the types of content each user/community should create, share, and manage (2) alternatives or approaches to providing control over that content, (3) the risks and costs associated with each approach.

Register Here   4/09   Denver, CO (Marriott Denver City Center)
Register Here   4/16   Los Angeles, CA (Sheraton Anaheim)
Register Here   4/23   San Francisco, CA (Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport)
Register Here   4/30   Bellevue, WA (Meydenbauer Center)
Register Here   5/07   Dallas, TX (InterContinental Dallas)

He took a deep breath.  “Now you ready?  Spark retarded, gas advanced.  Spark up, gas down.  Now switch to battery — left, remember — left.” A buzzing like that of a gigantic bee sounded.  “Hear that?  That’s the contact in one of the coil boxes.  If you don’t get that, you got to adjust the points or maybe file them.”  He noticed a look of consternation on Adam’s face.  “You can study up on that in the book,” he said kindly.

He moved to the front of the car.  “Now this-here is the crank and – see this little wire sticking out of the radiator? – that’s the choke.  Now watch careful while I show you.  You grab the crank like this and push till she catches.  See how my thumb is turned down?  If I grabbed her the other way with my thumb around her, and she was to kick, why, she’d knock my thumb off.  Got it?”

He didn’t look up but he knew they were nodding.

“Now,” he said, “look careful.  I push in and bring her up until I get compression, and then, why, I pull out this wire and I bring her around careful to suck gas in.  Hear that sucking sound? That’s choke.  But don’t push her too much or you’ll flood her.  Now, I let go the wire and I give her a hell of a spin, and as soon as she catches I run around and advance the spark and retard the gas and I reach over and throw the switch quick over to magneto — see where it says Mag? – and there you are.”

The above is from of my favorite books in the world – East of Eden by John Steinbeck (for the record, the 1955 James Dean movie stinks).  I was re-reading the book recently on the way home from an Advisory Trade meeting. I came upon this passage about starting an early 1900s Ford and thought – yes, you guessed it – "This ties into document and records management!"

There are so many aspects of starting and driving a car that we now take for granted.  We don’t give them a second thought.  But that hasn’t always been the case.

After listening to some of our “power” end users talk about their problems with our industry’s solutions, this quote struck home.  SIMPLICITY is not a word usually associated with our industry.  But it needs to be if we expect small and mid-sized organizations to adopt these solutions.

The tide is shifting in the direction of simplicity. Google-driven expectations are creating demands for more intuitive interfaces.  The spread of SharePoint is reinforcing the need for document solutions to work within the “frame” in which the average worker works.  The growing attractive of multi-function general office devices is forcing capture companies to adjust itself to the expectations of the casual rather than the professional scanner.  Open Source and SaaS solutions are entering the marketplace.  After years of spending huge sums of money on custom applications, things are changing.

A common refrain rang through all of our user speakers – and represents a significant challenge to the supplier community:  “We are no longer willing to suffer through customizable solutions masquerading as solutions that only need to be configured.  We are no longer willing to assume the risk for customization.  We will only deal with suppliers who will carry some of this risk.”  And this was for some pretty significant customers.

So the winds are changing.  Simplicity is in the air.  Maybe someday it will be possible to implement an ECM solution without the risk of losing a thumb. 

Timshel.

We were fortunate (thanks to the efforts of ) to have Karen Evans as one of the speakers at our 12th meeting of the North American Advisory Trade Group.  For a copy of the presentation, CLICK HERE.

Karen serves as the Administrator of the Office of E-Gov and IT within OMB (Office of Management and Budget).  In her role, she influences how roughly $79 Billion (that's right, with a B) in federal IT spending is made each year, including a fairly large amount of document, content and records spending.

Karen discussed the framework that has been put in place to improve the accountability of this spending, and how procurement decisions are made relative to 25 key initiatives and 9 lines of business.

For a copy of the presentation, CLICK HERE.

For information on how your company can become a member of the Advisory Trade group, contact .

SharePoint and ECM

Meat and Potatoes at Top of ECM Wish List

New Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant Available (a post from 2006!  go figure...)

First Major Market Study of Enterprise 2.0

A couple of late entries to the world of viral goating...

Getting Started with ECM -- The Complete List (again, a 2006 post...proof of what I tell my kids -- once it's on the internet it's forever...)