Digital Landfill

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8 reasons you need a strategy for managing information -- before it's too late.

Before getting started with an implementation -- before even moving into the 8 secrets -- it is useful to begin by recalling why you are even considering this in the first place and by confirming there is a commitment to proceed.

This kind of  "strategic mobilization" should kick off any ECM or ERM project.  To do this effectively, organizations should gather sponsors and stakeholders, identify the team that will lead the project, understand what the vision of the sponsor of the project is, and understand where significant gaps are likely to arise.

At its core, this is about defining 1) who needs to be involved, and 2) the scope of the project.  Framing the initiative and confirming commitment needs a variety of key stakeholders: business, legal, executive, records, and IT.  And don't forget some representation from the people who will actually have to use all this technology!  In terms of scope, this will need to be done across a number of dimensions, including some or all of the following factors:  1) geography, 2) organizational, 3) legacy content, 4) information types, 5) information classes and 6) timing.

All of this should lead to a charter for the initiative.  I will confess my bias in this area, which will carry over into some of the documentation described in the 8 secrets -- this document is better off being short and strategic and actually read than long and detailed and gathering dust on a shelf (or whatever the equivalent is in digital form).  My friend Martin White from InranetFocus.com has some good advice -- think Magna Carta, not a 100 page document.

Everyone still on board?  Have a charter and sponsorship and commitment?  OK, then, let's get going.  

Here are the 8 secrets.

1 -- Build a Business Strategy and Blueprint.

A successful blueprint begins with identifying the critical success factors for the initiative, how they will be measured, and what the drivers will be (i.e., how will life be different after all this work).  

A good business blueprint includes the following:

An Executive Summary that summarizes the key information contained in the business blueprint, and highlights the recommendations and decision required.  

A High-Level Program Plan that provides a very high level plan showing a sequence of projects and approximate delivery schedule. This will likely include a series of tactical and strategic projects.

A series of Business Case justifications covering the multiple dimensions of any ECM or ERM project:

• The strategic case shows why the ECM-related project is required, and what business needs the project satisfies.   
• The economic case contains the summary of costs and benefits.  The economic case focuses on comparing alternative ways of implementing the ECM-related project.
• The funding case confirms that the available sources of funding are sufficient to implement the ECM environment and operate the ECM service.
• The commercial case describes plans for the procurement of any ECM services or technology from suppliers.  
• The project management case describes the governance arrangement for the project and details of the project team.  

A Future-State Conceptual Architecture illustrates the gap between the initial Current-State Conceptual Architecture, and what is proposed as the conceptual components of the solution to solve the concerns of the business.

2 -- Conduct a Technology Assessment and Create a Blueprint.

As its name implies, the technology assessment concentrates on the technical aspects of your strategy. The goal of the assessment is to develop a technology blueprint similar in scope to the business blueprint defined in Secret #1, but focused on technology. 

There are 5 main stages in producing an effective set of technical requirements for an ECM or ERM related initiative:

The first stage is to plan the work effort that is required to develop the technical requirements and blueprint.  Sufficient time should be allowed to obtain consensus and agreement; this can often be considerable and often takes longer than those closest to the project anticipate.

The second stage is to gather requirements.  This will involve obtaining needs from the key stakeholders and users.  

The third step, after having gathered an initial set of requirements, is to analyze and understand the requirements.  

The fourth stage is the documentation of the requirements.  Documentation of the requirements is a powerful tool to achieving consensus on the end-state solution.

The fifth and final stage is to obtain agreement to the documented set of requirements.  This will involve obtaining some kind of sign-off authority from each of the key stakeholders.  [Again, recall the earlier advice -- volume doesn't score extra points!]

3 -- Think Through a Governance Structure and Approach.

Information governance is a set of formal and documented policies, procedures and rules that control how enterprise content will be managed potentially across its entire lifecycle, from the point of creation to ultimate destruction. Defining expectations, building a system that supports and enforces these expectations, and defining the role that end users have relative to those expectations is critical to an effective governance structure. 

A sound Information Governance Framework will include the following:

• Laying down policies that will govern behaviors.
• Defining processes for all stages of the Information Lifecycle.
• Setting standards that must be followed when carrying out a defined process.
• Appointing specific people to be responsible for the information assets.
• Providing tools and technology to enable staff to carry out the defined processes to the required standards.
• Auditing the elements of the Framework regularly to ensure that the guidelines are being followed.

Again, it is important that all of this be incorporated into a governance document that is understood, endorsed, and supported by the key stakeholders in the organization.  AIIM research indicates that many of the core problems encountered during an implementation have poor or ill-defined governance at their core.

4 -- Create a Roadmap and Project Plan.

A project plan typically how the following activities will be addressed: 1) Project management, 2) Testing and deployment, and 3 Issue resolution.

We define project management as a structure, process and procedure based on the organization's preferred Project Management methodology.  The role and responsibility of the Project Manager is to make decisions and balance resources across the entire program, and to make sure that all projects are working to a set of shared requirements. The project manager monitors plans and progress across all projects in the ECM project, to ensure coherence and integration across the whole program.  

5 -- Build a Sound Foundation.

Organizations need to make sure that the appropriate software development environment exists for the project.  Some of the questions to ask:  1) Is the configuration management environment set up, so that code and other artifacts can be checked in when they are completed? 2) Do the developers have a workable development environment? 3) Are the developers trained in the tools that will be used to build the system?

Another core foundational requirement is defining the enterprise information architecture. Some of the necessary tasks at this stage are: 1) Defining the enterprise master data model; 2) Defining the master data management architecture; 3) Defining when synchronization of content, data and information are required by different systems to meet their business-based information needs; and 4) Defining the master data definitions and business rules.

Taxonomy design and metadata development are also core elements in building a sound foundation.  [One sentence for these two -- obviously easier said than done!]

6 -- Design the Plan.

The design phase of a project typically includes the following activities:

Design of user support and operational procedures. The user support and operational procedures are intended to create the documentation and training program for all users and technical support staff as the relate to the project. 

Security.  Security design builds in the appropriate content security model, supporting security at each level of the system – whether at the repository, folder/collection, document, element or physical levels.

Design of infrastructure management processes.  Infrastructure management process design provides a set of requirements for the physical implementation of the information platform and its associated management functions.  The target audience for the design documents produced by this activity is operations staff such as Systems Administrators and Systems Operators.

User collaboration.  User content generated through increasingly powerful collaborative tools is a growing challenge in many ECM and ERM environments.  A key element in designing the plan is define how these tools will work in relation to the rest of the ECM environment.

User interfaces.  User interface is specifically focused on the layout, information access and information presentation of the ECM environment.

7 -- Deploy the Plan and Cycle Through Phases of Assessment and Improvement.

Once you get to the point of deploying your solution, there are 4 main phases to consider:  development, testing, actual deployment, and improvement.  These phases typically recur as different versions and levels of functionality are introduced and improved.

Development -- transforms the design into working modules that can be tested. Includes development of operational documentation and training materials.

Testing -- focuses testing of the environment at many levels, from technical functioning (at all) through to testing of end-to-end processes.

Deployment -- delivers the new system into production. Includes setting up production environment, installing the new system applications, interfaces and repositories, publishing the system documentation, training users and initiating production operations.

Operation and continuous improvement -- focused on delivering incremental improvements to existing functionality.

8 -- And Don't Forget Change Management!

AIIM research suggests that the main pitfalls for an ECM project stem not from technology but from a failure to anticipate change management issues.  

Regardless of the kind of change -- whether technological, cultural, procedural, role-based, or any other -- organization must determine whether they are ready to face the change and adjust to it.  Determining readiness is a big factor in the potential success of your ECM project. 

Organizational change is always going to appear threatening to people as it is often linked to job security. Some enterprises freely disseminate information regarding strategy changes.  Other firms are very secretive and feel that this is for senior management only. Practitioners should be as open and honest with staff about change as they possibly can.  Typically, people will more readily embrace the change process if clear information is available.

The readiness of both management and affected workers to accept and adapt to change are the most crucial factors in the success, or failure, of your project.  Management may be far more ready to change than the potentially effected workers, particularly if the idea for the proposed change is coming from management – as it typically is. However, just because you have meetings with middle or senior management who are very enthusiastic about this new project, doesn’t mean that the organization as a whole is ready to change.

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Well, that about does it.  

It can feel daunting, I know, and at this point you may be thinking, do I really want to do this?

Obviously, we feel the answer is yes.  It wasn't easy for organizations to set up strategies and structures to manage money, people, and resources.  But we all did it because these areas were deemed strategically important to organizational success.  

Developing -- and implementing -- an information management strategy is hard work.  But it's not impossible work.

AIIM research, training, publications, and events can help your organization understand and streamline the journey.   

[Note:  The AIIM methodology is built upon the MIKE2 open source implementation framework.  Details on the MIKE2 implementation framework can be found at http://mike2.openmethodology.org.  The AIIM Training program applies this framework to specific technologies.

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Some other posts that might be of interest...

• 8 things you need to know about preservation of e-documents for litigation and regulatory investigations 
• 8 Steps to Avoid Process and Organizational Problems when Implementing an ECM System 
• 8 things to remember when managing ECM applications 
• 8 things you need to remember about e-discovery 

• 
  

and work on projects for Enterprise Content Management within the Information Management Competence Group of BearingPoint. They have more than 10 years experience in ECM software. BearingPoint is an independent management and technology consultancy. Owned and operated by its Partners throughout Europe, BearingPoint is offering its clients the best possible value in terms of tangible, measurable results by leveraging business and technology expertise. The company currently employs 3,250 people in 14 European countries and is serving commercial, financial and public services clients. 

AIIM has a comprehensive e-mail management training program for those who wish to get serious about managing e-mail.

8 things you need to remember about message/e-mail archiving

1 -- Have a well defined and detailed calculated business case.

Organizations are facing various challenges to take back control and unlock business value of content, especially in e-mails. The business case for e-mail management is driven by four challenges:

1. Archive e-mail and content for storage space management in order to reduce operational costs introduced by the increasing volume and size of e-mails and multiple formats of content types 
2. Manage e-mail and content for legal obligations to comply with different rules and regulations which create duties of evidence and documentation, facilitate eDiscovery or indicate supervision and monitoring for non-compliance 
3. Combine e-mail and content to other loosely managed content to minimize risks caused by increased organizational scale and complexity, changed speed and style of communication, lost knowledge.
4. Manage e-mail and content to gain efficiency.  Associate e-mail and content to processes and business applications to accelerate business processes

In your business case you should state the cost savings for annual storage increase, maintenance, saving in licenses and data center cost. May be you save licenses cost due to decommission. For the case of compliance you should state the costs of eDiscovery minimum for the last two years and the savings. Input factors for calculation are for example the number of discoverable custodian mailboxes, the number of eDiscovery events per year, the cost of IT including administrator work, the cost of tape restoration and the cost of attorney services.

Beside these quantifiable there are also qualitative benefits, e.g. improved search facilities. These benefits should not be underestimated.

2 -- Have the right stakeholders onboard.

A project for message archiving affects the entire organization. The solution needs consensus and corporation of at least three departments: IT, Legal/Compliance and Business. Unfortunately they often fail to communicate effectively with each other and within the department. Historical communications barriers must be broken down. A new understanding of roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders must be set up to gain senior management support. At most they discuss topics of budget, retention and disposition or policies/procedures. 

3 -- Stakeholders should be aware of their requirements.

Stakeholders should structure their requirements in functional, legal and technical requirements. The requirements must be weighed between “must-have” and “nice-to-have”. Typical primary categories for functional requirements are capture, attachment handling, indexing, search/retrieval and offline support. Support of legal hold and supervision are examples for requirements of the Legal/Compliance department. Questions of architecture, integration, security and confidentiality are raised by the IT department during the evaluation process of a vendor solution.

4 -- Have a policy in place.

In 2008 BearingPoint conducted a survey on e-mail management among 500 companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. One key finding was that e-mail management is more than saving storage costs! The most important aspects are

• Search & Find
• Existence of written rules to handle e-mails (policies)
• Avoidance of risks, such as in cases of violation of laws or deadlines to be missed
• Alignment with business processes

Only 22% of the participating companies responded, that they had companywide policies. Existing policies covered the use of private e-mails (67%), mailbox size (62%) and offensive content (53%). Monitoring is centrally organized (50%). The Chief Information Officer (CIO) is responsible for preparing and monitoring the compliance of rules (37%).

The policy for e-mail archiving should be developed by all stakeholders. It should contain goals, aspects of usage and allowance, legal issues, ownership and security, retention and disposition.

5 -- Think about retention and disposition.

Companies that start e-mail archiving projects can be divided into five categories. On the one extreme there are companies that allow their employees to keep all e-mails forever. On the other extreme there are companies that force the deletion of every message. Between these two extremes, there are companies which try to manage their e-mails. The most common method for this is “restricted retention”. With this approach, companies limit the amount of messages a user can store. Another approach is “risk based retention”. Based on the risk, that an e-mail will have to be restored due to legal obligations, different categories are set up.  The last method  is “context based retention”, where e-mails are classified based on their context. E-mails within that category are archived with the document of same type attached, e.g. an e-mail containing contract information is stored together with this contract.

The leading industry practice approach is something between the risk and context based approach.

6 -- Perform a Proof of Concept and Reference Calls.

For evaluation of the proposed solution it is helpful to perform a Proof of Concept (PoC) with at least two vendors. The objective of a PoC is to ensure that the technology will work in the client´s environment and to test certain features and functions, which have been proposed. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to describe scenarios based on the functional, legal and technical requirements. For example, how is the archive process done manually and what do the user search process and interfaces look like. The legal department will be interested in legal hold and export functionality, for example. The IT department might discuss security and architecture issues in a workshop. The IT department will suggest a bulk archiving test with tons of messages in order to get an indication for sizing, performance and scalability. 

The PoC could be accompanied by references visits or at least reference calls with customers having the same challenges. It is helpful to develop a clear and structured questionnaire with your heaviest concerns. The results are part of the evaluation.

The PoC should be limited to a fixed duration of days with a presentation in front of all stakeholders and/or the senior management team.

7 -- Consider hosted SaaS model as an option.

Remotely hosted or outsourced Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for e-mail archiving can help lower an e-mail archive’s financial need and complexity. However you may face some lacks of functionality and companies still have concerns about a compliance driven deployment for on-premise e-mail archiving and eDisovery solution. 

8 -- Include other content types for archiving.

Under the amendments of the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure not only e-mail is relevant to litigation and eDiscovery. Other content types like files on shares, structured data in databases or business applications will become important for eDiscovery. So your former e-mail archiving strategy must be broader and your solution must cover these aspects.

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Some other posts that may be of interest...

8 steps you can take to better manage your inbox

8 key e-mail trends 

8 things you need to remember about e-discovery 

Michael Elkins () is an independent consultant with over 17 years of experience helping global clients with the design and deployment of enterprise wide content management systems. His clients benefit from his ECM experience including strategic guidance, information architecture and ECM/data governance programs. His company, Kestral Group LLC, is based in Denver, Colorado.  

With any ECM deployment, it is important to have a solid implementation plan to be successful.  When combining multiple content solutions, it is critical.  Unfortunately, many SharePoint implementations are more organic than well thought out.  SharePoint sites are often created with little thought with respect to long term use.  As a result, when it comes to linking into another ECM solution, users are hit with unexpected changes and restrictions to sites they have become accustomed to.  Understanding the functionality people use, or expect to use, from each system is vital to the successful blending of the capabilities.  This list of things to consider is not an exhaustive list, but is intended to help get the planning process started.

8 Things to Consider when Implementing SharePoint with Another ECM engine

1 -- Determine SharePoint’s role in the organization.

For some companies, SharePoint is the chosen collaboration and social networking engine and all collaborative content resides in SharePoint.  For others, SharePoint is more of an end-user experience and Intranet platform.  If implementing SharePoint with another ECM solution, it is important to truly identify what role SharePoint will have in the organization to ensure proper planning for the implementation.  There are a number of features within SharePoint that need to be taken into consideration before you implement. 

For example:

• What aspects of the Microsoft Office integration are or will be deployed?
• What areas of overlap exist between SharePoint and the ECM solution?
• Will SharePoint be the primary access point for all content or one of multiple access points?
• What vendor integration capabilities are provided?
• How does SharePoint fit into the corporate records management program?

The more that can be identified before the deployment, the lower the implementation costs will be.  The project charter should clearly identify the reasoning behind the decision to combine the technologies.

2 -- Identify the repositories.

Most SharePoint installations begin with the assumption that people will collaborate and store content within a SharePoint document library, at least for a period of time.  When collaboration efforts such as projects are finished or when the documents become records, companies often require users to move the content to an existing ECM repository.  It is important to identify what content will migrate from SharePoint document libraries to an ECM repository.  If content will migrate, there’s much to consider including:

• What metadata will migrate with the content?
• Is the metadata defined consistently across systems?
• Does the content need to be available from both SharePoint and the ECM system?
• Should all information in the ECM repository to be available from SharePoint or just the content that has been migrated to the ECM from SharePoint?  (Note:  This may impact your backfile conversion strategy)
• Do SharePoint Lists need to be saved as content/records in the ECM engine?

It should be noted that there are some users who choose not to implement SharePoint document libraries at all.  Instead, these companies have decided that the ECM vendor’s Web parts provide all of the document and records management capabilities.  This approach can reduce the complexity for the end users, while still maintaining many of the the social networking capabilities of SharePoint.

3 -- Know where your records reside.

For many companies, the reason for implementing SharePoint with another ECM solution is related to records management initiatives.  This is often due to previous investments in records management with existing ECM solutions.  Unfortunately, the records program is often an afterthought to the deployment of SharePoint sites.

For some companies, there is a clear distinction between records and non-records.  For others, all content is considered a record and must be managed.  Regardless of the school of thought, the implications on the implementation are great.  It is important to identify if records will be stored in SharePoint or not.  If records will reside in SharePoint, consider the following:

• The records management policies must be applied to content within SharePoint and managed directly by SharePoint 

OR

• The ECM vendor’s records management solution must be able to manage-in-place all content within the SharePoint repository

If records will not reside in SharePoint, great care must be taken to ensure that the process of declaring a document as a record and moving it to the ECM system is not so cumbersome that it discourages users from doing so, opening the company to increased risk.

4 -- Have a comprehensive information architecture.

In most cases, content will reside in both SharePoint and a separate ECM engine.  As a result, all efforts should be made to ensure that metadata and vocabularies are consistent across platforms in order to facilitate functions such as content migration, tagging and search.  Many SharePoint systems are implemented with little or no metadata beyond the default system fields.  Most ECM systems are implemented with more robust metadata definitions.  Without proper planning, content in SharePoint that is moved to the ECM solution could require additional tagging which could discourage users from migrating content, defeating the purpose of blending the systems.  A comprehensive information architecture will drive data quality, improve the end-user experience and save money in ongoing implementation and support costs.

5 -- Study the vendor’s SharePoint interface capabilities.

Nearly every vendor has some level of SharePoint integration built into their solution, but not all solutions are equal.  It is very important to identify exactly what capabilities are available from the vendor before beginning the implementation.  In most cases, vendors have developed Web parts that allow for search, browse and the ability to move content from SharePoint to the ECM engine.  The following is a list of elements to consider when evaluating vendor solutions:

• How much of the needed ECM functionality is available through the Web part?
• How many Web parts are needed to meet requirements?
• Most solutions handle documents.  Does the solution also handle SharePoint lists?
• With all of the merger and acquisitions in the ECM industry, it’s also important to determine if the supplied Web parts are available across the product portfolio.

6 -- Plan for effective search.

When a user performs a Web search and obtains a result, they don’t care where the resulting content resides as long as they find what they need.  Companies need to consider search as a key element in the implementation plan, and the user’s requirements play the key role.  Search plays a key role in end-user satisfaction.  Consider the following:

• What enterprise search standards, if any, exist?
• What search capabilities are provided by the ECM vendor versus SharePoint?
• Is full-text search available and consistent in each platform?  
• Do the users desire to have a separate search result from SharePoint and the ECM repository or a blended result?
• What advanced search capabilities are required from each repository?

7 -- Align security requirements.

There are features within SharePoint and features within the ECM system that are unique to the system, and as such, will have security implications.  A user that may have site administration capabilities in SharePoint may have “read only” rights in the ECM system.  Most vendors have single sign-on (SSO) capabilities, but care must be taken to ensure that the capabilities a user has on each system are well thought out and understood.  

8 -- Incorporate both SharePoint and the ECM into a unified IT governance plan.

There is a lot of focus on IT governance related to SharePoint, and with good reason.  Without proper oversight, SharePoint can get out of hand very quickly.  When SharePoint is blended with an ECM system, uncontrolled change can have a very negative impact.  Because most ECM vendors do not provide templates for the oversight of their systems, take a look at the free examples at www.sharepointgovernance.org and adapt them to meet the needs of both systems.  Lastly, make sure to incorporate the business community into the governance process.  Oversight without buy-in from the business creates stress.

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Some other resources that may be of interest...

• AIIM's SharePoint Microsite 
• AIIM SharePoint training -- Evaluating SharePoint  
• AIIM's SharePoint training -- Evaluating SharePoint for Enterprise Deployment 
• 8 things you need to know about SharePoint governance 
• 8 things SharePoint 2010 needs to be a true ECM system  
  
• 8 more things you need to know about SharePoint 
  

A little bit of a mash-up with this post on some topics that have been running through my head.

Gartner has published its top 10 list of technologies to watch in 2009.  The blog post contains some interesting commentary on each and is worth reading.  Those particularly interested in GreenIT might find our Green ECM microsite of use.  Ditto item 6 on social technologies in the enterprise.  Here's the list:

1. Virtualization
2. Business Intelligence
3. Cloud Computing
4. Green IT
5. Unified Communications
6. Social Software and Social Networking
7. Web Oriented Architecture
8. Enterprise Mashups
9. Specialized Systems
10. Servers – Beyond Blade

I commented in a recent blog post on a presentation related to search and governance by of Intranetfocus.com at the HartmanEvent in Utrecht.  The post centered around Martin's comments that perhaps a better way to think about information governance was in terms of charters (think Magna Carta) rather than 100 page "strategy" documents that just gather dust (or whatever the digital equivalent of dust is). Here's Martin's original post; a bit more comprehensive than my notes.  Check it out.

In most organizations, electronic records are still taken less seriously than paper records. Responsibility for applying good records management practice to electronic records would seem to reside in the IT Department rather than in the Records Department, and even where good policies exist, they are often not monitored or enforced. In this report we have compared volumes, policies and effectiveness between the management of electronic records and that of traditional paper. Legal-discovery and litigation-hold have created a demand for specific e-discovery tools, so we looked at their take up. We have also looked at the integration issues across multiple records repositories and measured long-term archive strategies.  Check out the details in our new ERM survey report (it's free!).  And take our ERM Competency Assessment. 

In case you missed it, two good posts the past few weeks worth bookmarking...

• 51 Fast Facts about ECM, ERM and E20 (good presentation stuff)
• 70 blogs to watch

A lot going on relative to our 8 things series.  We are approaching 5,000 downloads of the first e-book (a reminder, it's free and there is no registration required).  It's called 8 reasons you need a strategy for managing information -- before it's too late.   We also published an audio book version (for free) on . iPhone types can download the e-book by going to the Stanza app, checking out the Smashwords books, and searching on author Mancini.  There is also a presentation version on that is approaching 3,000 downloads.  Just as a reminder, you are welcome to post the links to either the e-book or the audiobook or the presentation anywhere you want.

The next e-book will be launched before Thanksgiving and will called 8 Secrets of an Effective Content or Records Management Implementation.  The 8 authors have been identified and we'll soon be ready to go. This will be followed with one on e-mail and one on SharePoint.  If you are interested in becoming an author, check out this LINK for the current status.

Obviously a ton of stuff going on this week at the SharePoint conference -- and next week, IBM's Information on Demand conference.  Here are some pieces/posts I found particularly interesting on the SharePoint conference gathered from the Twitter postings -- will post similarly re the IOD event.  Also, check out the Twitter stream at hashtag #spc09.  [Listed in no particular order of either importance or level of JM agreement!]

• Tony Byrne and CMS Watch -- Closing Thoughts on the SharePoint Conference -- ["sharegasm" is a clever term!]
• Mark Bower -- Official SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Blogs 
• Techworld -- Microsoft Opening Up SharePoint to Developers 
• Mark Henderson -- TradeMark -- a variety of posts covering individual conference sessions 
• Mike Gannotti -- Announcing SharePoint 2010 
• Mike Gotta -- Burton Group -- Notes from Morning Keynotes 
• Sadalit Van Buren -- A Matter of Degree -- Memorable Quotes 
• Alex Williams -- Sharepoint Social Features May Be Sufficient for the Enterprise User 
• Windword Wrocks -- Conference Day 1 

And just for a Friday laugh, here are some of the jokes that are flying around about my Washington Redskins.  Unfortunately, you can't fire an owner.

Headline:  DC Police are cracking down on speeders.  For the first offense, they give you two Redskins tickets.  If you get stopped a second time, they give you two Nationals tickets.

Q.  What do you call 47 millionaires sitting around a TV watching the Super Bowl?
A.  The Washington Redskins

Q.  How do you keep the Redskins out of your yard?
A.  Put up a goal post.

Q.  What do you call a Redskin with a Super Bowl ring?
A.  Senior citizen.

Did you hear about the Redskins fan who had season tickets to this past weekend's game? When he got to the gate, he discovered that he had left the tickets on the dashboard of his unlocked car! When he ran back to get them ... there was another pair of season tickets lying next to them.

What do Alex Ovechkin and the Redskins have in common? Both Alex Ovechkin and the Redskins put up 6 points this weekend.  [That's a hockey joke.]

Have a good weekend.

  

Ken Stewart’s website, ChangeForge, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology in an information-centric world. Ken serves on the board of the new Managed Print Services Association, an international industry organization seeking worldwide best practices for the managed print services industry. He is also the founder of Seeking the Son. 

Hailed as the way in which we can breath life into our static, paper documents, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has made strides in the recent decades – becoming a staple module in just about every software package managing documents - From Nuance’s PaperPort to EMC’s Documentum.

OCR, itself, can mean various things. Wikipedia offers this definition:  … the mechanical or electronic translation of images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text (usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text (2008).

While many estimate the accuracy levels for OCR engines can reach 98 or 99 percent, it has been my experience this is very difficult to achieve in most commercially-available software suites for the small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). Many variables can affect the accuracy levels of output, ranging from document condition to readability.

With so many variables in scanning paper based documents it is often not possible to gain high accuracy ratings on a small budget. Thus OCR can often be a challenge to implement in many SMB’s.

When the rubber meets the road:  Typical applications of OCR revolve around digitizing documents and transforming them into an image along with usable metadata of the information contained on the physical page itself. In essence, the computer reads the document and creates a library of searchable information.

This type of application allows an EDM solution the opportunity to build a database of text, contextually tied back to the original images as a layer of the document, or image, itself. Searching for usable information within and across documents is much easier. In other words, it gets you in the right neighborhood.

Extremely high accuracy rates are often not at issue in these applications, because the indexes can be combined with this database of textual information dramatically increasing the findability of information.

Where are the brakes on this thing?  Where problems can begin to occur is when OCR is not applied to the text contained within the scanned document, but used to lift index values themselves (e.g. customer name, number, etc.). Why is this so dangerous?

Combined with other technology and processes, OCR itself is a wonderful aid in seeking efficiency within the business. However, with no quality assurance or stop-loss measures in place, it is highly likely a document will be misplaced due to a character being off here or there… In essence, you now have a needle in a haystack.

[By the way, we've just published the first e-book -- complimentary -- based on our 8 things postings -- 8 Reasons You Need a Strategy to Manage Information -- Before It's Too Late.  Just download it and tell your colleagues.  Also, we just launched the audiobook version on iTunes -- check out .

8 Things I Learned About OCR from Small and Mid-Sized Organizations

1 -- Know your goals, your threshold of pain, and what you can accept. 

Do you need 100% accuracy, or is a margin of error acceptable? Ask yourself what will happen if a document is misfiled. The answer will tell you how to better design your workflow.

2 -- Document preparation is key to ensuring efficient use of personnel time as well as achieving high levels of accuracy. 

While most people turn to OCR to save on document preparation time, consider the entire process against what you are trying to achieve. Isn’t saving 30 minutes in your workflow worth sacrificing an extra 5 minutes in document preparation?

3 -- Quality assurance on key information is requisite if high levels of accuracy are required – especially in audit or regulatory scenarios. 

OCR technology isn’t perfect, and the quality of the documents being processed greatly affects the level of accuracy. Including discussions about how best to ensure the levels of accuracy and automation you are expecting up front will save you a great deal of pain after the launch of your new solution.

4 -- The key to findability of information contained within documents is to enforce process. 

While OCR can greatly increase the automation of your processes, ensure everyone from the executives to the administrative personnel agree on how to find your documents. Many businesses find themselves wishing they had never wasted the money or time on a document management offering, when all they missed was understanding and enforcing their processes.

5 -- Where will you apply OCR in your workflows? 

Don’t just say, “everywhere” and expect “Google-like” results. Be smart about where OCR will benefit your organization and where you might instead rely on process or other EDM technologies to augment your index structure instead.

6 -- Allot for plenty of computing horsepower to drive your OCR needs. 

Technology is certainly cheaper than it use to be. However, intensive OCR applications can stretch out longer than most people expect simply because they either haven’t provisioned enough computing horsepower or don’t have realistic expectations about what their budget will allow.

7 -- You know your business, but you may not be comfortable with what technologies can be applied in your business to automate workflows and increase findability. 

Be sure that your consultants have a vested interested in understanding your business processes and overlay the technology to fit your needs rather than twisting your culture around a half-baked solution.

8 -- Create an accountability structure based around solving issues rather than blaming others. 

In high demand environments, appointing a “scanning czar” is critical. Information assurance is one of the most overlooked functions in an SMB solution, and having someone who can identify workflow bottlenecks, potential training issues, interdepartmental miscommunication, and business process misalignments is worth its weight in gold.

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[By the way, we've just published the first e-book -- complimentary -- based on our 8 things postings -- 8 Reasons You Need a Strategy to Manage Information -- Before It's Too Late.  Just download it and tell your colleagues.  Also, we just launched the audiobook version on iTunes -- check out .]

Some other scanning-related posts that may be of interest...

• 8 ways to reduce your storage and bandwidth costs for document imaging solutions  
• 8 things to consider in selecting the right scanner  
• 8 things you need to know when using ECM technologies to go green  
• 8 document management practices that are cost-effective and eco-friendly