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    « August 2010 | Main | October 2010 »

    September 29, 2010

    8 Factors to Consider When Evaluating a Next Generation ECM Platform

    8 Factors to Consider When Evaluating a Next Generation ECM Platform

    1 -- Look at New Approaches to Software Acquisition.

    Back at the turn of the century (yes we mean the late 1990s...) there was but one way to acquire a content management product to meet enterprise document or records management needs. We bought per-seat or per-server licenses that shipped on CD from the software vendor, crossed our fingers that we budgeted for enough seats or connections for key employees, all while hoping that the vendor roadmap delivered the fixes and features we quickly realized were missing.

    In 2010 things are different. The options to acquire ECM software have changed dramatically, offering a far richer range of choices to serve customer needs—not just those of the vendor. Open source and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are two new approaches that put power back into the hands of the enterprise. Simple, clear online downloads or subscription sign-ups via the web cut through the red tape of license keys, the endless sales cycle theatrical negotiations, and lets your team get started on an ECM project Today.

    2 -- Interoperability is Hot. Closed Systems are Not.

    2010 will be the year that content silos get harvested—not busted. When evaluating your next generation ECM platform, watch for vendor commitment to new standards such as CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services). Many businesses today are challenged by content sitting in multiple document repositories, requiring costly and complex custom integrations to make it useful. The next wave of ECM will take this burden off of customers and build interoperability into core products. Watch for the vendors that are quickly building applications and integrations to help fuel quick solution delivery. CMIS integration today helps to bring managed content into BPM, WCM, portal or mobile-based applications quickly and with minimal re-coding needed to support new third party products.

    [For those interested in more information on this topic, AIIM will be doing a series of local seminars on 8 Factors to Consider in Creating an Effective Information Management Strategy -- How Your Organization Can Improve Efficiency, Increase Productivity and Reduce Risk. The seminar is free, and registration information can be found at this link -- http://www.aiim.org/ecmseminar]

    3 -- No Longer does the Vendor have to be in Control of your Company’s ECM Roadmap.

    Would you be surprised to know that your company has more software developers on the payroll than even the leading ECM vendors? Government, financial services, and other large enterprises understand the value of having enterprise architects, information architects and application development expertise in-house. Companies that are innovators in their own markets, and that understand the value of technology to stay competitive, responsive and efficient, are becoming impatient with vendor roadmaps and release cycles that don’t line up with their priorities. Next generation ECM platforms that have active community engagement, and use open source development practices give a tremendous advantage to organizations who want to deploy quickly, fix critical issues or create their own feature extensions—because the customer knows their business better than anyone else.

    4 -- Compare your ECM Growth Plans with Vendor License Models.

    If your ECM vendor inhibits your organization’s information management strategy adoption, product roll-out or application extension because of per-user license restrictions and limitations, it’s time to look at alternatives. Next generation ECM platforms are not hobbled by the leftover client-server licensing model of the last century. In the world of the web, the burden of every new user added to the application is negligible—so why are we charged this way? Organizations that are on a growth path, that have merger/acquisition plans, or that simply want to be more holistic in their content management goals need to align with a vendor engagement model that supports their business goals—not with vendors that present costly barriers to natural growth.

    5 -- ECM Market is Differentiating: Platforms vs. Suites vs. Condominiums.

    An ECM Platform is a cohesive, end-to-end offering architected and built by a core team with a common vision (vendor or community). It is a foundation for the content or case-centric applications that business users need. Platforms are intended to be used as infrastructure: the plumbing to make business run in the knowledge economy. This ecosystem of services, plug-ins, APIs allows organizations to be the makers - building the applications that are meaningful to their information workers and business objectives.

    Several of the ECM suite vendors have been acknowledged as the “leaders” of this last decade. Feature rich product portfolios are assembled via acquisition - less organic internal R&D strong point solutions, integrated at wildly different levels of depth. The suite approach helped make sense of the diverse content management applications that emerged in the 1990s and needed to be consolidated. Increasingly this is the mark of the ‘old guard’ legacy ECM vendor.

    We are now in the world of the web, and mobile, and social. Information workers aren’t afraid of technology and new devices any more. One size fits all apps that are tough to customize and tailor to specific business processes are frustrating to end-users and systems administrators alike. When the capabilities that sold the ECM suite are actually from entirely different products - different installers, system requirements, administrative modules, support for standards—tasks are burdensome for administrators.

    And the Condominiums? Some of the Suite vendors are more cohesive in their vision and architecture than others. If every feature used to be a company... if it looks like a nice building from the outside, but through the front door you realize every unit has a separate owner... and is decorated differently... every room has its own rent schedule...and the resident’s association won’t let you change anything... some floors are well maintained and others left unrepaired... well then it might not be a Suite... but a Condominium.

    6 -- Generic DM and RM Don’t Cut it Anymore.

    Measurable resources—time and money—are what business managers worry about. General purpose deployments of ECM products generally don’t cut it anymore. Businesses are under pressure to constantly improve results, meet internal quality or external compliance mandates, discover efficiencies and automate routine tasks. ECM products that are time-consuming or costly to customize for specific business scenarios, or integrate into other key line of business applications risk low levels of user adoption and thus poor ROI. Your next generation of ECM platform needs to be built for rapid application deployment. Find the tool that lets your internal business analysts or content architects whip up document types, lifecycles, shortcuts, new metadata or vocabularies to meet fast-paced business shifts in hours or days—NOT weeks or months.

    7 -- Is it Time to Future Proof Your Roadmap?

    The ECM product landscape is littered with neglected and unloved solutions that got caught on the wrong side of a vendor acquisition. Has your license investment and ongoing maintenance fees only bought you the headache of migration to the vendor’s preferred product? Often yes. Next generation

    ECM platforms that have a strong independent community through open source development practices build in an extra layer of ‘future-proofing’ insurance: no one corporate interest can completely set the roadmap. Active and engaged customer and partner communities have the opportunity of continuing development and evolution of products that are developed in the open. In this case, the customer is always right, and has the power to control its own ECM destiny.

    8 -- Find Better Protection for Customization Investments.

    Upgrades and patches are a natural part of the software world—no one should expect to stay on the same version indefinitely. Yet so many ECM deployments do languish on out-dated releases, risking loss of user engagement, forgoing integration with new office applications, or missing out on cool new features that could solve many help desk complaints. Why? Because the customizations done for legacy ECM products are so rarely portable to newer versions, either completely incompatible or require a rewrite that is too costly to pursue. Businesses that are serious about incorporating content applications into their core processes can’t be shackled to old, outdated systems. Agile is a state of mind for successful enterprises today—constant tailoring, tweaking, improving helps tune how the business runs, and ECM platforms should be able to easily keep up with ongoing innovative iterations demanded by business analysts and content architects. Your next generation ECM platform should have the tools, design environments and extensible nature that’s designed to be shaped for your business. No longer should your content management choice be a burden that holds back your corporate evolution.

    ---

    With more than 16 years experience in Enterprise Content Management, has developed a keen interest in the challenges facing information workers in the increasingly electronic and online work environment. Her specialty is researching, writing and educating both business and technical audiences on the trends in information management, social media for business and the rise of open source in enterprise. Holding progressively senior positions with key vendors such as Nuxeo, and formerly Open Text, Hummingbird and PC DOCS, she brings years of market and requirements research in addition to experience in consulting and training.

    An active member of industry associations such as AIIM and ARMA, Cheryl frequently contributes articles and opinions to online and print publications, and speaks regularly at industry conferences. She holds a BA (Hons.) from the University of Winnipeg, a Master of Arts from Carleton University, and has completed the required coursework towards a PH.D in History at the University of Ottawa (though regrettably she remains “ABD...”).

    Posted at 11:05 AM in 8 things, ecm, Industry statistics and research | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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    September 28, 2010

    8 Ways to Choose the Proper Scanner for your Needs

    While creating an Information Management Strategy, you need to determine the most important piece to getting your documents digitized and that is the scanner. There are many choices on the market ranging from low end, 25 pages per minute and up desktop scanners to production scanners that will perform at 100 pages per minute and up. Almost all have duplex scanning to scan both sides of a document,

    To determine the best scanner for your needs, consider these items…

    8 Ways to Choose the Proper Scanner for your Needs

    1 -- Scan Speed and Duty Cycle.

    When determining the scanner for your organizations strategy, you want to make sure that you have one that will complete the project in the specified time frame. You will want to determine the amount of documents you are looking to capture and the timeframe you are looking to complete the project in. In a lot of cases, organizations will purchase a less expensive scanner that is not designed to handle the throughput required by the project. Exceeding a scanners duty cycle places additional stress on the scanner and often results in equipment failure that may void any warranties or maintenance agreements.

    2 -- Flatbed or Auto Feeder?

    When selecting your scanner, determine the type of documents you will be scanning. If they are books or extremely delicate or odd shape documents, you may want to consider a flatbed scanner for these needs. This is a very slow option as you have to stop and restart the scanner for each scan along with having to change the documents. Auto feeders are a better option and will allow you to stack your documents and scan them without intervention.
    Most scanners do not require you to stop between batches. This continuous feed feature is something that you will want to make sure the scanner has for maximum productivity.

    [For those interested in more information on this topic, AIIM will be doing a series of local seminars on 8 Factors to Consider in Creating an Effective Information Management Strategy -- How Your Organization Can Improve Efficiency, Increase Productivity and Reduce Risk. The seminar is free, and registration information can be found at this link -- http://www.aiim.org/ecmseminar]

    For production projects, you want to make sure your auto feeder can handle large batches. Typical production scanners have 300 - 500 page plus feeders. Most high production scanners feed from the left side which allows for the use of paper joggers to get the documents in a large batch aligned for proper feeding. Without proper alignment the number of double feeds and jams is likely to increase due to smaller documents not being fed properly.

    3 -- Resolution.

    Resolution is one of the keys to getting the best image quality. Most scanners have the option to capture images at 100DPI - 600DPI in bi-tonal (black and white/ grayscale). For color, 150 DPI is typically used as it’s the best compromise between image quality and file size. Also remember, the higher the resolution, the larger your file size and also the slower the speed of the scanner. The manufactures typically give the scanner speed rated at 200 DPI landscape so be sure to ask what the rated speed is at higher DPI’s.

    4 -- Ability to Sort Documents.

    When dealing with large batches with separator sheets, batch or patch code sheets and exception documents due to odd size (such as checks, receipts, etc), you may want to have the scanner automatically sort these for you. For this feature to work, the scanner must have at least two output trays. This will save time and money when it comes to physically separating these types of documents from your batch after scanning. Some software companies will automatically remove the electronic image but the issue is still removing the paper documents from the batch. A scanner with multiple output trays typically will provide you with more control over your conversion process and reduce your cost of labor.

    5 -- Image Enhancement Features.

    For a clean electronic image, there must be image enhancement built into the scanner or offered via software. When scanning documents, especially Bill of Ladings and other difficult to read documents, the image can be blurry, speckled or just impossible to read. Most scanners, especially those that were designed with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in mind, have built in image enhancement features that will clean the image and make it more legible. There are also add-on software components that will do the same.

    Another feature to consider is color dropout. This allows for you to select a color for the scanner to drop out of the electronic image. This is often used in cases of highlighters. If scanned without this feature, the highlighted area will appear as a dark box. This box will cover up the text and making it non legible. Most scanners only do red, blue or green dropout but more sophisticated scanners have the ability to drop out any color you like by using color palette selections similar to those used in photo enhancement software solutions.

    6 -- Imprinter and Imprint Checking.

    Organizations often want to have the ability to verify whether a document was scanned. To do so, an option would be for the scanner to have an imprinter. The imprinter allows you to print characters on the scanned document which provide verification. The characters can be text or numbers such as a project name and date.

    In some cases, a file that has already been scanned and imprinted may accidentally be placed in the next batch to be scanned. If this happens, some scanners have imprint checking. This feature allows the scanner to detect there are imprinted characters on the document and reject them (preferably to an exceptions hopper). This then allows the scanner operator to determine whether it is ok for this image to remain in the file or deleted.

    7 -- Consumables and Maintenance.

    Consumables and maintenance can become the most expensive part of a solution if you do not do the proper research on the scanner and the manufacture. Find out what the average life of scanner consumables, what is considered a consumable and how to replace them. Most scanners only list rollers and bulbs as consumables. There are manufactures which include bulbs as part of the warranty and/or maintenance agreement. In some cases, belts and other items that wear out are considered a consumable and these may be costly.

    Maintenance and warranties are another area to consider. A typical scanner warranty should be 90 to 120 days and includes on-site repairs that cover all parts and labor. Find out how much annual scanner maintenance is and be sure to get quotations on preventative maintenance calls also. These will help to keep the scanner at rated speed and also be able to spot something that may be going bad. Consider it like a tune up for a car.

    8 -- Multi-Stream Color, Bi-tonal and…?

    Most scanners come with the ability to scan in color, gray scale, black and white and color. If you need to have color, you will need to verify that the scanner does so. A great feature to look for is the capability to do dual or tri-stream output. The dual stream feature allows you to capture and export a high resolution color and a bi-tonal image in one pass from the scanner. The tri-stream feature allows the user to configure three different outputs. For instance, with a single scan you can capture an image with color dropout to send to your forms processer, a bi-tonal image to full-page OCR and a full color image that can be stored for archival purposes, in both simplex and duplex modes.

    Conclusion

    There are many different options for scanners that need to be considered based on your application and size of project. It is recommended you work with a reputable Value Added Reseller that can provide you with assistance in this area as well as the full solution. Stay away from internet resellers and order takers as you will get a good price up front but end up paying in the long run.

    Get case studies, white papers, news and information, research and more at AIIM's Capture and Imaging Community.

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    John Kaiser has over 18 years experience in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Document Capture industry and is currently the Channel Sales Manager for Imaging 411. Prior to joining Imaging 411 Inc, Mr. Kaiser was the Northeast Regional Manager for ABBYY USA Software House, Inc, a leading provider of document conversion, data capture and linguistic software. For nearly 13 years, Mr. Kaiser held various challenging Sales and Management positions at Cranel Imaging, a major distributor for document imaging products and scanner maintenance services within the ECM industry. John also has worked in a reseller capacity, providing highly productive solutions to major accounts throughout the U.S. John is a CDIA+ as well as an AIIM Practitioner.

    Posted at 06:50 AM in 8 things, Compliance and records management, ecm, Industry statistics and research | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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    September 27, 2010

    8 Ways To Learn from the Wisdom of the Crowd

    [sorry everyone -- first posting of this had some strange hidden hard returns that weren't immediately visible.]

    To the frustration of information architects and managers, end users have a habit of spoiling their hard work the moment they start using the system. The symptoms are many and varied: carefully designed folder structures devolve into chaos over time; despite training on document version control, copies of the same file keep appearing with version numbers, dates, and initials in the file name (e.g., "Proposal v.2 MP Comments.doc"); templates are used inconsistently or even ignored; automated workflows spawn undocumented manual workarounds... Aren't these precisely the kinds of things that our expensive, carefully planned ECM system was supposed to eliminate?

    Yet in all of the apparent chaos, your users are giving you clues on better ways to organize information. For instance, when users ignore your folder hierarchy, they're telling you something important about it: maybe it doesn't make sense to them? Maybe they don't understand the semantic cues because the system's vocabulary doesn't jibe with theirs, or perhaps there is ambiguity that forces them to make decisions they didn't bargain for (e.g., Does an Employee Non-Disclosure Agreement go under Contracts or under HR?).

    Instead of treating users' behavior as a collection of bad habits to be trained away, another approach is to learn from them: let your users' self-organizing behaviors teach you about what is meaningful to them, what their semantic cues are, how they really think about their content. When users find ways to work around structures you've provided for them, they are saying it doesn't work for them. How you respond will depend on your organization, the rigidity of your rules and regulations, and your willingness to let the crowd help to steer the ship.

    Folksonomy, commonly represented by user-supplied tagging, is a popular example of capitalizing on the "wisdom of crowds". Letting your users develop their own informal classification structures via tagging is a useful step, but it really speaks to something more fundamental: users of content can be and often are the best judge of how to organize it.

    Here are 8 tips for learning from your users:

    8 Ways To Learn from the Wisdom of the Crowd

    1 -- Learn to Tolerate Some Chaos, Within Reason.

    Trying to control and lock everything down will stifle your ability to learn from your users, and will likely fail in the end anyway. Letting users self-organize will ultimately provide better insight than focus groups or surveys, if you're willing to put up with some messiness at times.

    2 -- Mine your Data.

    What kinds of tags are people using? What structures do they come up with organically? What vocabulary and semantics do they use? ECM systems tend to promote the semantics of file cabinets, folders, etc. What kinds of things can your users come up with? Some ECM packages come out of the box with useful reporting tools, but you may find it more useful to integrate into your Business Intelligence environment (if you have one), to foster ongoing evaluation and analysis of your users' habits.

    3 -- Periodically Take Stock of the Best Organic, Ad Hoc Ways of Organizing and "Graduate" Them into Formal Methods.

    For example, pick the best categorization schemas from successful collaboration projects and turn them into templates, making them easy for others to use.

    4 -- Listen Carefully to Feedback and Complaints, but Don't React in Haste.

    Give your users time to self-organize without excessive tinkering. Problems (as long as they're not killing productivity) can be catalysts to so-called "workaround behaviors", which can give you a roadmap for better solutions. Workaround behaviors can also alert you to changes in processes that your original planning hadn't anticipated. I once worked on a workflow where three signatures were required in order for a document to be accepted, but a change in policy eliminated two of the signature steps. To compensate, users began assigning all three signature steps to themselves, and because the inconvenience was minor, they never raised it as a systems issue.

    5 -- Talk to Users About What They're Doing Outside of the System.

    What manual workarounds are taking place? You can sometimes learn a lot from the features and functions of a system that aren't used. Not every problem has a technical solution, and at times the implementation of a new system will paradoxically lead to more offline, untracked behavior as users circumvent processes they perceive to be clumsy or inadequate. But if you know what's happening outside the system, you at least have the opportunity to address the challenges that are leading to workarounds.

    6 -- Give Users Tools that Let Collective Wisdom Cumulate.

    A great example of this is a predictive search field, as used by Google and YouTube. Merely by typing in a few characters, users get a list of the top search terms that match. Not only can this greatly enhance the speed and efficiency of searches, but the lists are self-maintaining: the more they are used, the better the predictive value of the lists. Note, however, that there may be privacy concerns with revealing search terms this way, so make sure you don't violate any internal policies or regulations.

    7 -- Provide Venues for Users to Share Their Techniques.

    This could take the form of a user group, where users are encouraged to talk about their methods for organizing and finding information. Alternatively, foster a rewards system, and even friendly competition. Perhaps you can keep a public list of the "Top Taggers", with visualizations showing how the current user stacks up. Remember that the users are providing you with valuable information, and encourage ways for them to provide information to each other.

    8 -- Learn from What Doesn’t Work, and Don’t be Afraid to Cull Dead-Ends.

    Many organizations implement internal message boards or forums, only to see them gather dust after a few weeks or months of use. On the one hand you want to provide tools to foster collective wisdom, but on the other it’s important to recognize when something isn’t working, and to try to find out why. Why did people stop contributing to the company message board? The answer to that question may tell you a lot about the users and provide clues to what will work better in the future.

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    MichaelPeckham Michael Peckham is the chief ECM architect for Abstractive Technology Consulting, an Alfresco partner in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. A former sociologist, Michael is particularly interested in the impact of technology on group behavior in the workplace.

    AIIM offers training for end users in information organization and taxonomy.

    Have you been to the AIIM Enterprise 2.0 Community?

    Posted at 08:46 AM in 8 things, Industry statistics and research | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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    September 23, 2010

    8 Things to Think About if You're Thinking About Moving to SharePoint

    Most conversations about enterprise information or records management these days seem to involve SharePoint in one way or another.  Many organizations are finding that information management is not meeting their expectations and some are wondering if SharePoint 2010 is the answer to all of their problems.  Whether this push is coming from IT hoping to reduce costs, your portal team hoping for a new intranet or your user community hoping that that SharePoint will be easier to  use (or all of the above), there can be no doubt that many organizations are considering a move to SharePoint.

    Microsoft has done a great job of driving this conversation through the functional improvements in SharePoint 2010 and also through some aggressive and effective marketing, but is SharePoint the answer for all of your content management needs?

    Here are eight things to think about if you are thinking about migrating your records and information management platform to SharePoint.

    8 Things to Think About if You're Thinking About Moving to SharePoint

    1 -- Customizations, System Integrations and Modules.

    Most implementations involve at least some customization, and most include a variety of vendor or third party modules.  Because of this, considering a move to SharePoint is not a simply a matter of copying over your content.  You will need to think about whether SharePoint has equivalent or "good enough" functionality to replace these customizations, integrations or modules without breaking your business processes.  If not, you will need to think about the costs to rebuild an integration, re-buy a particular module (if it is even available for SharePoint) or change your business process. None of these things should be taken lightly and there can be a significant effort associated with each. 

    2 -- How Important is Records Management and Compliance?

    Yes, SharePoint 2010 has records management capabilities but this is relatively new within the application and there is a great deal of debate about whether SharePoint RM will truly meet your needs (James Lappin feels there are significant shortcomings in SharePoint records management, Mike Alsup disagrees).  This is a decision you will need to make in consultation with your content owners, legal team and regulatory compliance group.

    3 -- Business Drivers.

    It is important to consider why you want to move to SharePoint. Cost savings? Usability? Spite? Okay, scratch that last one. As with any decision you need to think through your business case ahead of time. What is the value proposition for moving so SharePoint vs.  the cost of continuing to use your other system?  Is it feasible to integrate the two systems?  It is important to consider all of the potential benefits and pitfalls, efficiencies and costs for swapping out your system.  Try to be as realistic as possible and quantify both the costs and benefits; I find a good place to start is a simple SWOT analysis.  Once you have an understanding of what you hope to achieve, build measurable objectives and create key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your progress.  This is a standard process for the analysis and execution of any business decision but it never ceases to amaze me how often emotion comes into the picture when considering SharePoint.  

    4 -- Does your Platform Speak the Same Language as SharePoint? 

    SharePoint works in a certain way; sites are contained within site collections and everything can be tied together with custom metadata columns and content types. There is a large and growing list of add-on modules available.  SharePoint is considered by many to be a development platform and SharePoint also has some intriguing social, portal and business intelligence capabilities. You need to consider the use cases and information architecture of your current system and determine how closely you want to replicate that system. More importantly, you need to decide whether SharePoint will let you or whether you will be under-utilizing the functionality of the tool if you try to copy your existing system too closely.  

    5 -- Content Migration is No Fun. 

    Once you've figured out how you will map your existing system to SharePoint you will need to plan the migration itself.  You will need to make decisions about which groups go first (it is unlikely that you will be able to do a "big-bang" migration) and about whether you bring across all document versions or just the latest ones (this will likely vary by group). How will you handle content from departed users?  What about URLs linked between documents and to other places? How about your security model? Who will update your information governance policies and practices? (You do have information governance policies and practices in place, right?  If not, see here for a primer on the importance and challenges of implementing information governance).

    6 -- Pick the Right Project Team. 

    This is not, I repeat not an IT project.  Managing user impact and business process change will be the biggest job for your project team.  Finding a team with strong information management skills is critical as they will understand the specifics of how information needs to be mapped between the two systems. At the same time, you will nee strong business sponsorship to provide guidance, set priorities and give you an escalation point when the going gets tough.  

    7 -- Are you Ready to Get Social?

    If information wants to be free (and it does), information really wants to be free in SharePoint.  SharePoint started life as a collaboration tool and although it now has a powerful security model, the system works best when most information is available to most people. You need to consider what capabilities the average end user will have; what will people be able to do with their My Sites? Can everyone blog? Who can create a new list, library or team site?  These are fundamental questions of SharePoint governance but be careful not to lock the system down too much. And these considerations are much more than just technical; there are cultural questions that need to be considered as well. This is true of any information management system but is especially important when working with SharePoint. 

    8 -- Infrastructure.

    Are you a Microsoft shop? How up to date is your SQL Server environment? Do you have some 64 bit servers kicking around? What about Active Directory? Which version of MS Office are you running? The specific requirements for SharePoint 2010 can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485.aspx.  Although these are fairly high-end specs it really isn't out of the ordinary by today's standards. At the same time most organizations will likely need to upgrade at least some components. You will also need to consider how you will do the content migrations themselves. You will need a test environment to bring across the data and may need a tool to extract, transform and load the documents and metadata from your legacy system as well.

    The bottom line is that the benefits of moving to SharePoint are not automatic and may not be there at all.  Many of my clients are taking a hybrid approach; adding SharePoint on top of their existing information management platform.  Management of this hybrid solution begs many more questions, but may be a part-way solution if your organization is considering a move away from your current platform to SharePoint.  If you do decide to migrate, it is important to recognize that it will very likely be a long and complicated process.  Before you commit, it is critical to understand why, when and how you will complete the migration.

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    Greg Clark Greg Clark is a Principal for C3 Associates. He is a past contributor to our "8 things" series.

    For more information...

    Have you download our free (no reg required) SharePoint e-book? Do it now -- it's licensed Creative Commons, so feel free to use in any fashion you wish.

    Interested in vendor neutral SharePoint training?  Brand new from AIIM.

    Posted at 02:17 PM in 8 things, sharepoint | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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    A short history of ECM and implications for the future

    A presentation that I made recently on ECM and trends for the future.

    A bit visual, so some of the content may be cryptic without the narration. But in the spirit of sharing...

     

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    Posted at 11:41 AM in Compliance and records management, ecm, Industry statistics and research | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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    September 19, 2010

    Social computing and records management: strange bedfellows

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    Posted at 01:03 PM in Compliance and records management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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    September 15, 2010

    #ECM -- Past, present and future

    Have you registered for our ECM seminar?  What are you waiting for?

    Posted at 10:20 PM in ecm, Industry statistics and research | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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    8 Tools To Protect The Data Flowing Through Your MFP

    Recent news coverage has spurred a renewed interest in copier security, how multifunction printers (MFPs) process, store and shield sensitive data and what professionals can do to protect their companies. Investigative reports have questioned how information stored in an MFP’s hard drive may be accessible to would-be identity thieves and others. As with any high-tech tool, understanding the available security options that pertain to the machine will help to keep your information safe.

    Features and tools that help protect data on MFPs and should be considered as part of your security measures include:

    8 Tools To Protect The Data Flowing Through Your MFP

    1 -- Image Overwrite.

    The image overwrite feature electronically “shreds” information stored on the hard disk(s) of devices as part of routine job processing. The electronic erasing can be performed automatically when each print job is completed, or started manually as needed.

    2 -- Network Authentication and Authorization.

    Access to scan, e-mail and fax features can be restricted by verifying network user names and passwords in network directories prior to use of these functions. Access permissions can be controlled on a per-user and per-service basis, while being managed centrally at the network domain controller. Additionally, all activity is closely monitored and recorded in a security audit log.
     
    3 -- Internal Firewall and Fax/Network Separation.

    MFPs should include a firewall to prevent unauthorized access to your system through the network connection. Unprotected fax connections in MFPs can be an open back door into the network, so it’s important that your machine provides complete separation of the telephone line and network fax connection.

    4 -- Secure Print.

    Jobs are safely stored at the MFP until the owner responsible for the document enters a personal number to release them. This controls unauthorized viewing of documents sent to the printer.

    5 -- Encryption.

    State-of-the-art encryption ensures all data that is traveling in and out of the MFP is unreadable.  In addition, all data stored within the machine’s hard drive is encrypted.  This makes files indecipherable to prying eyes.

    6 -- Scan and Fax Forward.

    Paper is the least secure way to manage information.  Users should look to scan and digitally store documents in a trackable, secure format to reduce paper use. Fax forward to email helps limit the amount of paper left sitting in a machine.

    7 -- Secure Access ID Systems.                              

    With the use of personalized smart cards, users can program their MFPs to accommodate their specific preferences.  For example, with one secure swipe of an ID card, your MFP can quickly adjust the touch-screen interface to accommodate your personal preferences, increasing ease of use, while keeping confidential information secure.  Print jobs can also be sent to a virtual print queue, and using a swipe card, the print job can be retrieved from the most convenient MFP.  This ensures prints are kept confidential and no documents are left waiting in the machine. Jobs that are never retrieved can be automatically deleted after a pre-determined amount of time.

    8 -- Hard Drive Removal.

    Some manufacturers offer options for removal of the hard drive before the MFP is disposed of or turned in after a lease. While the owner of the MFP is ultimately responsible for their data, it’s important to choose a vendor that will help you understand the risks associated with returning used machines with data stored on the hard drive.  Many vendors will provide recommendations on the most effective way to rid the hard drive of information.  Before disposing of old equipment, check the manufacturer’s product documentation to understand how to wipe the machine.

    Businesses should work with their vendors to identify their specific security needs – determine where information resides, how it is transferred and detect the greatest areas of risk.  Your print vendor can help personalize the specific security features that are most important to your individual business needs, to protect your information and keep confidential documents safe and secure.

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    By Larry Kovnat, product security manager, Xerox Corporation

    Posted at 10:12 PM in 8 things | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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    8 Factors to Online Presentment

    Today customers, partners and internal stakeholders demand web access to accurate, timely, and pertinent business information. Driven by competitive pressure to continually improve the customer experience, organizations are enhancing their online, self-service model of customer interaction. The ability to promote seamless online information availability and react promptly to in-person or telephone customer service requests not only provides a marked competitive advantage, but can dramatically reduce operational costs.

    Many organizations that use IDARS/ECM systems to archive their internal operational and customer-facing documents are faced with the following challenges:

    -    Meeting corporate SLAs for online document delivery performance
    -    Rapidly and cost-effectively implementing an online customer channel
    -    Ensuring document fidelity and providing delivery format flexibility
    -    Extracting and delivering content extracts for re-purposing
    -    Reducing document archive storage costs

    8 Factors to Online Presentment

    1 -- Strategy.

    The first thing you need is a strategy, which can eventually boil down into a plan. Pull together the cross-functional team representing all the key aspects to your online presentment. Ask some key questions: What are we hoping to achieve in our presentment strategy? Are there key KPIs for service levels, cross or up sells? What are our limitations? Are there competitive aspects to the strategy? Try not to get bogged down in the technical details of what can or cannot be done, or what has or has not worked in the past. Build out your requirement list at a high level, prioritize based on feedback from the team and start to move forward. Your presentment strategy is a long-term commitment, and the best advice one can give is to plan ahead, plan for the best, and prepare for the worst.

    2 -- Accessibility.

    This generally makes us think of physical access to buildings, ramps to doors and automatic openers, but there is quite a bit driving web and document accessibility, particularly the visually impaired. Current and emerging legislative drivers are pushing presentment groups to address the needs of this important and growing customer segment. Providing websites and statements which can be used by assistive technologies such as screen readers is increasingly becoming a requirement for presentment providers. Often ignored, this segment of your customer base has, and is actively, spending money. They are also quick to praise organizations committed to accessibility, and even quicker to call out those who are not.

    3 -- Multiple Archives.

    In today’s world of financial services, having a single vendor’s archive system is next to impossible. With the constant stream of mergers and acquisitions, as well as varied silos of business internally, it’s almost guaranteed we will have many different archives. Whatever system we implement, it needs to be holistic and something which can easily and effectively connect with a wide variety of archive databases. Investigating performance at this level is key Find out which databases work best and set KPIs which are reasonable, based on industry norms and organizational metrics.

    4 -- Document Storage.

    Still saving a separate copy of each individual statement as a PDF for online presentment? Why! The single largest operational cost reduction can be found using single instance storage, with some clients realizing reductions up to 80% or more. What is single instance storage? It’s the process by which one separates the “promotional” components of a statement or invoice from the “transactional” ones, then reassembles them on-demand as and when needed for post or online presentment. Also known as “de-duplication”, this technique creates a single copy of the common resources such as logos, graphics, fonts, and terms and conditions. It is a process which can be applied to many file systems, email server software, data backup and storage solutions. It reduces the need to constantly store and present this common information, thereby significantly improving storage and bandwidth costs.

    5 -- Transpromo.

    You know the word, transpromotional. We all receive statements from one financial institution or another, whether it’s our latest mortgage, credit card or investment summary. All those advertisements you see are transpromo. What better way to make use of all that empty whitespace. Did you know only 10% of organizations use transpromo as a delivery vehicle for marketing messages? Recent surveys have shown that typically statements sent via the post have a readership rate of around 95%. Do you open and read your monthly statements? Most consumers read their statements more than once, and on average read them for one to three minutes at a time.

    6 -- Unification.

    Are you providing multiple statements to your clients today? Perhaps you are a financial institution with many flavors, or a utility provider such as cable/internet/phone. As a client, why should I have to go through multiple statements or web interfaces just to access all the information for a single provider? Presenting a unified statement to your clients (if you are not already) is quickly becoming the standard for statements. Pulling statements together into a unified interface can reduce your costs and improve customer experience, as well as provide more opportunities for up and cross-selling within a given interface or statement.

    7 -- Caching.

    One of the easiest mechanisms to improve performance, caching stores a set of commonly used files on the web server used for presentment. This means an end-user requesting such files does not have to wait for data to load from an archive or existing database, since it is readily available at the presentment layer. This is the same process web browsers use to increase performance for commonly visited sites and services.

    8 -- Dynamic Content Consolidation.

    With dynamic content consolidation, multiple related pieces of information are merged or linked together to provide an expanded and/or supportive view of a single transaction. An example would be a personal bank statement, where all relevant check images are appended to the end of the statement or hyper-linked within it and then made available online. This translates into significant time savings for end-users who would otherwise have to search for supporting materials. In addition, providing the customer with a consolidated view of all their transactions across multiple lines of business, or over expanded periods of time, enhances the personalization and service experience.

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    Csmith-8-05-2010 Craig Smith has been a proven leader in providing core leadership in the areas of business, technology, sales and marketing functions during an era of explosive growth in business and Internet marketing technology.


    Craig has a deep and diverse range of knowledge and experience from initiating innovative business/technology strategies through to large scale development and acquisitions.

    Posted at 10:07 PM in 8 things | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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