AIIM Knowledge Center Blog

Quick! Scan those documents!

In the latest AIIM Industry Watch Report titled “Document Scanning and Capture: local, central, outsource – what’s working best?”, AIIM Market Intelligence Director Doug Miles points out that while the term “capture” typically covers document scanning, image correction, recognition and output to various appropriate formats, today it also includes faxes, electronic documents, email and messaging. This recent report has a tight focus on the document scanning segment.

 

When asked about current drivers for document scanning, Knowledge Management is found to be the highest driver citing searchability of business documents as the key element followed closely by compliance and business process improvement. When addressing where document scanning will occur, indications are that centralized in-house scanning and mail room scanning will be in a growth position as opposed to outsourced scan and capture. In fact, 48% of the respondents show they have in-house centralized scanning citing better index capabilities and tighter integration with business processes as the main benefits.

 

Several other key findings in this report include:

· Growth in the use of MFP’s for distributed scanning compared to desktop scanning

· Legal admissibility of scanned documents still seen as an issue by more than 25% of businesses

· The biggest drawback to distributed scanning is staff training for indexing and index quality

· Only 38% of paper originated records are scanned and archived electronically

· 37% of organizations scan over half of their incoming documents while 12% scan more than 80%

· 46% indicate an ROI of 12 months with two-thirds citing ROI within 18 months

 

In my view, businesses need to take note of the changing business landscape with regard to information and leveraging that information in an intelligent and meaningful way. Gone are the days when customers accept a lapse in time to produce information they have requested. In today’s business environment the expectation is one of immediate response and access to information regardless of where it resides. Businesses that can provide this level of service stand out in the minds of consumers, giving them the competitive edge.

 

The use of document capture devices, whether scanner or MFP, brings great value to an organization in their ability to not only deliver higher levels of customer service by providing information more readily but by increasing their business intelligence capabilities in bringing this once segregated information source to the knowledge worker in a timely and more useable form that potentially leverages text mining and analytics as one of the key benefits.

 

In many cases that I have witnessed, change is still a barrier to overcome. Reluctance on the part of the user community to give up their dependence upon physical paper and place some trust in the digital world and technology that has evolved to a higher state of capability and stability. Many of us have overcome this barrier in our personal lives in the way we transact business with the retail marketplace and our creditors yet for some reason we are still reluctant to take the next step in our business organizations. This current report sheds some interesting light on the document scanning segment of our digital world. I encourage you to download it for yourself and review the details. Compare what this shows to where you are and ponder the idea of taking the next steps you might need to move your organization forward in this respect.

 

What say you? How are you addressing document scanning and capture? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you and learn what you and your organization are doing.

 

Join us for the BPM Certificate course in:

London 01/26/10 - 01/29/10

New York 02/02/10 - 02/05/10

San Francisco 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

 

Join us for the ECM Certificate course in:

Silver Spring 01/19/10 - 01/22/10

Chicago 01/26/10 - 01/29/10

Phoenix 02/09/10 - 02/12/10

Utrecht 02/09/10 - 02/12/10

London 02/23/10 - 02/26/10

Tampa 02/23/10 - 02/26/10

Toronto 03/23/10 - 03/26/10

Kirkland 04/13/10 - 04/16/10

Dallas 04/27/10 - 04/30/10

San Diego 05/04/10 - 05/07/10

Denver 05/18/10 - 05/21/10

Calgary 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

London 06/01/10 - 06/04/10

Silver Spring 06/08/10 - 06/11/10

Houston 06/15/10 - 06/18/10

 

We look forward to seeing you there.

Bob Larrivee – AIIM blarrivee@aiim.org

 

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

 

What's happening in the land of BPM?

This week, AIIM released its latest Industry Watch Report titled “Business Process Management – are we making the most of content-driven processes?” In this report written by Doug Miles, Head of the AIIM Market Intelligence Division, we find that BPM is recognized as a business management practice leveraging many software tools rather than a single software or suite of software solutions. Still, while many still view BPM as workflow that drives scanned images and electronic forms through an organization’s business processes, it also takes on the broader capability of integrating enterprise applications and serving as a single point of access for the user community.

 

While BPM may be looked upon as an intrusive technology that creates a new set of change management challenges in the way organizations function both inter and intra-departmentally, 63% of the organizations polled feel that the importance of BPM is significant or imperative.  Yet, sixty-two percent of those polled consider they have only addressed 1/5 of their potentially profitable BPM projects. Many of our respondents cite productivity, efficiency, and quality as the strongest drivers for BPM. Other key findings include:

· Hard-dollar savings from “Improving process throughput” and “Reducing process steps” are the two biggest drivers for BPM, followed by “Improving accuracy and repeatability”

· _ 49% of organizations achieved payback of their investment in BPM tools within 18 months and a further 23% within two years. Additional projects are taking around 8 months on average to complete

· Accounts payable and accounts receivable processes showed the strongest success factors, followed by customer support cases, proposals and contracts, and claims processing

· The strongest indicator for successful BPM processes is the presence of an existing process owner

· 36% look to buy their BPM tools from their existing ECM supplier, with 25% buying best-of-breed tools, and 23% preferring dedicated BPM suites

 

In my view, while it appears that BPM is still a misunderstood element, it is one that is increasingly becoming a topic of interest and one that needs to become part of an overarching strategy in establishing a solid ECM environment that focuses not only on content but the processes by which content flows through an organization. Process without content is somewhat irrelevant and content without process becomes an area of contention and inefficiency within a business organization. Just like content creation should have a purpose, so too should process automation have a focused purpose in support of the strategic and tactical goals of an organization. To position BPM properly for success, you have to know the desired outcome and how it inter-relates with content and the users.

 

Doug Miles is head of the AIIM Market Intelligence Division and author of this latest AIIM Industry Watch report on BPM. To contact Doug, please email him at doug.miles@aiim.org.uk

 

What say you? What are your plans for BPM? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you and learn what you and your organization are doing.

 

Looking to increase your level of knowledge? Join us for the BPM Certificate course in:

• London 01/26/10 - 01/29/10
• New York 02/02/10 - 02/05/10
• San Francisco 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

 

We look forward to seeing you there.

Bob Larrivee – AIIM

blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

Watch out! Here comes the future!

 

So what? Why should that be an issue? It isn’t really and in fact I embrace the future for the past has come and gone and hopefully I have learned from it. One lesson in particular that I have learned is that the future is inevitable and time will not stand still. (Just look at my picture of then and now…) So since I cannot prevent the future from arriving it only stands to reason I should prepare for it, but how?

 

One way is to watch. Watch the technology landscape and look for signs that will have an impact. For ECM, that might be changes in how information is captured and delivered. Perhaps through the Microsoft Surface technologies, through collaborative environments that leverage video conferencing as demonstrated by Cisco  or perhaps it will be through portable personal sixth sense devices like that shown by Pattie Maes of the Media Labs at the TED Conference in February of 2009 - a device that has caught attention due to its simplicity and incorporation of gesture recognition. No matter what you envision the future to be, whether information technology or Skycar, it is something we need to be in tune with today.  Of course it is easy to say that, but how do you know what to prepare for? Who would have predicted FileNet being acquired by IBM and 3COM by HP?

 

My point is simply that we need to keep in touch with what is happening around us in the vendor community, research segments and the business landscape. In my opinion the best way to do so is to first look inside your own organization to understand your needs for now and the future. Once you have sight of this, leverage the resources available to you. Look to your industry associations and publications for research materials and reports generated by industry analysts and watchdogs. Look for product guides that present product differences and compare similarities. Listen closely to the vendors and how they present their vision of the future. Find those things that seem obscure and on the edge for it is they that that will someday be embedded in what we do and how we do it. As I sit here in the airport, I can only imagine what it must have been like for the Wright Brothers when they attempted flying and the ridicule they must have faced for even considering such a thing.

 

The future is now and what you don’t see today will be here tomorrow. Are you ready for it?

 

What say you? What have you learned today? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you and learn what you and your organization are doing.

 

Looking to increase your level of knowledge? Join us for the ECM Certificate course in:

Houston 11/17/09 - 11/20/09

San Diego 12/01/09 - 12/04/09

Philadelphia 12/08/09 – 12/11/09

San Diego 12/01/09 - 12/04/09

King of Prussia 12/08/09 - 12/11/09

Utrecht 12/08/09 - 12/11/09

Silver Spring 01/19/10 - 01/22/10

Chicago 01/26/10 - 01/29/10

Phoenix 02/09/10 - 02/12/10

Utrecht 02/09/10 - 02/12/10

London 02/23/10 - 02/26/10

Tampa 02/23/10 - 02/26/10

Toronto 03/23/10 - 03/26/10

Kirkland 04/13/10 - 04/16/10

Dallas 04/27/10 - 04/30/10

San Diego 05/04/10 - 05/07/10

Denver 05/18/10 - 05/21/10

Calgary 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

London 06/01/10 - 06/04/10

Silver Spring 06/08/10 - 06/11/10

Houston 06/15/10 - 06/18/10

 

We look forward to seeing you there.

Bob Larrivee – AIIM

blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

A Consultant's View: A conversation with Steve Weissman

I had the opportunity recently to talk with Steve Weissman, Founder and President of the Holly Group, regarding his insight into organizational issues in information management and how they can prepare for the road ahead. The following is an excerpt of our conversation.

Bob: Please describe your company and role.

Steve: Holly Group helps organizations with business process improvement, technology needs analysis, RFP preparation, vendor selection, and user adoption related to compliance, content, and delivery management solutions. I’m the principal force behind this independent operation, and in the 20 years I’ve been in the business, I’ve maintained an unwavering focus on my clients’ business issues. This has enabled me to recommend strategies that transcend the vendor-biased, vertical market, and technology sector boundaries that too often constrain consultants' creative thinking, and has allowed me to help my clients turn their potential into performance.

Bob: What do you think are some of the important issues facing business organizations today?

Steve: Coping with the struggling economy is the obvious single answer to this question, but it’s too easy to just let it go at that because the goal isn’t just to cope, but to cope successfully!

Achieving this goal requires wrestling with several issues that are as connected as they are critical. Broadly speaking, these include things like optimizing your business processes, streamlining your technology stacks, and ensuring your people are properly adapted to and trained on the systems they need to use.

Unsexy as they may be, these tasks are necessary nonetheless, and smart managers know that times like these are actually the best times to tackle them. Why? Because once accomplished, they will enable the organization to roar into an improved economy with a serious competitive advantage.

Bob: Based on your experience and findings, how do you feel business organizations can prepare?

Steve: Your first step is to get your organization to commit to the course of action. This may be your single most difficult task because a weak or negative cash flow means there will be great resistance to any suggestion that may involve spending time and/or money on anything other than business as usual. You may therefore find it easier to start on a departmental or divisional basis, where people will know you better, will have seen you in action before, and thus will be more open to your ideas.

Second, be sure you get as much education as you can for yourself and your involved colleagues. Forewarned is forearmed, and the more you know ahead of time about the technology, policy, and adoption issues you’ll be facing, the better off you will be.

Third, do something. Do anything! Just be sure you start getting the practical experience, vendor exposure, and initial results you’ll need to roll your initiative out to the rest of the organization.

Q: Do you have any other insights for our readers?

Steve: Louis Pasteur once told an audience that “in the fields of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind.” Well, the same is true in content management and all its attendant disciplines (capture, workflow, records management, printing and publishing, etc.), for if you prepare properly, you will significantly improve the “luck” you experience.

Aligning yourself with organizations like AIIM for training and consulting firms like the Holly Group for independent guidance is key, for they and we can help you benefit from the experiences of hundreds of others to have come before.

Steve Weissman can be reached by email at sweissman@hollygroup.com and found on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/steveweissman. To follow him on Twitter @steveweissman

What say you? What have you learned today? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you and learn what you and your organization are doing.

Looking to increase your level of knowledge? Join us for the ECM Certificate course in:

• Houston 11/17/09 - 11/20/09
• San Diego 12/01/09 - 12/04/09
• Philadelphia 12/08/09 – 12/11/09

Join us for the ERM Certificate course in:

• Silver Spring 12/01/09 - 12/04/09
• Tampa  12/15/09 – 12/18/09

We look forward to seeing you there.

Bob Larrivee – AIIM

blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

 

AIIM to present new research findings at TAWPI 2009 Capture Conference

AIIM Vice President, Atle Skjekkeland, ECMs, will present findings from the new AIIM State of the Capture Industry Watch research study in a plenum presentation at the TAWPI Capture Conference to be held at the Hyatt Regency Pier 66 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL on December 9, 2009. The AIIM Capture Industry Watch research amongst AIIM’s 65,000 strong community identifies the real benefits of scanning and process automation, where to implement them, and how to ensure a quick ROI.

Titled “Capture: the real benefits of scanning and process automation?” This session looks at how in a tough economy it is necessary to cut costs for most organizations, but some companies have realized a quick ROI of implementing scanning and process automation and how removing paper from information intensive processes improves efficiency and control, which often leads to significant hard dollar savings.

Pre-conference: AIIM ECM Practitioner Course

In addition to the plenum session, AIIM and TAWPI have also organized a 1 day intensive ECM Practitioner Course set for Monday December 7, 2009. AIIM’s ECM Practitioner Course is being offered as a pre-Conference workshop covering ECM technologies, their business benefits, and how to plan ECM using information architecture, metadata and taxonomies.

Separately, the capture conference fee is $629 and the ECM Practitioner workshop is $599 but as an AIIM Member, if you act now and would like to bundle them together, we have a special offer for you. When you bundle the conference together with the workshop, you will receive a $500 package discount! All you have to do is click here to register and enter the discount code “ECM1-AIIM” when you check out.

What say you? Are you planning to attend the TAWPI 2009 Capture Conference? What do you hope to learn from your attendance? I want to hear from you and learn what you and your organization are doing.

Bob Larrivee – AIIM

blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

 

Do you manage electronic records as well as you do paper?

In a recent AIIM Industry Watch Report based on Electronic Records Management (ERM) titled Electronic Records Management - still playing catch-up with paper, we found that electronic records are still taken less seriously than physical records. We also found that it appears organizations are placing the responsibility for applying good records management practices to electronic records is being placed on IT rather than the records manager. Several other key findings from this report include:

· Electronic records are more than twice as likely to be described as “Unmanaged” than paper records

· 71% of organizations have a procedure for legal hold of paper records in the event of litigation, but only 57% have one for electronic records

· For 25% of organizations, legal discovery of paper records would take at least a month, whereas for electronic records this is 17%

· There is a reliance on IT staff to carry out legal discovery on electronic records in the majority of companies, whereas records management staff or line-of-business staff deals with paper records.

The report continues to cite that:

· Of those organizations with no ECM/ERM system, 60% would not be confident, if challenged, that their electronic records have not been changed, deleted or inappropriately accessed

· 38% of those polled admit that there is little or no enforcement of their records management policies and 55% set no guidance on dealing with important emails as records

· 31% of organizations have 20 or more content repositories that could usefully be linked, with email as the highest priority content

· Over 70% of organizations have made no plans or provision for long-term archiving of electronic records, with no policies for migrating to new media, translating formats, or virtualization of applications

 

In my view, this is somewhat disturbing as the only thing different between a physical record and an electronic record is the format in which it is contained. The idea that IT should be responsible for applying good records management practices to electronic records is placing the organization at risk that the right information is not being kept and there would be a lack of compliance with records retention policies. The good news is an encouraging number of organizations are homogenising their electronic and physical policies and practices, and many are moving to an all-electronic model, linking their repositories together in order to improve the legal discovery process and enhance operational efficiency.

 

Organization need to recognize that records management practices should embrace and include electronic records as part of the overall records management program. Just like the physical, records retention, security and disposition policies apply and there is no reason or excuse in today’s business world that this should be different. In my view of an ideal world, Records management is responsible to set policy and manage the activities for all records with IT in place establish and maintain the technology infrastructure that supports those policies and activities. While I do not feel the exclusion of electronic records as part of an overall records management program is intentional, I do feel that the underlying problem is one of being overwhelmed and not knowing how to begin. The first step in all of this it the make the first step be a realization that records are records regardless of format and they need to be addressed as part of the “total” records management program.

 

What say you? How are you managing your electronic records? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you and learn what you and your organization are doing.

 

Looking to increase your level of knowledge? Join us for the ECM Certificate course in:

• Toronto 10/27/09 - 10/30/09
• San Francisco 11/10/09 - 11/13/09
• Houston 11/17/09 - 11/20/09
• San Diego 12/01/09 - 12/04/09
• Philadelphia 12/08/09 – 12/11/09

 

Join us for the ERM Certificate course in:

 

• San Diego 11/10/09 - 11/13/09
• Silver Spring 12/01/09 - 12/04/09
• Tampa  12/15/09 – 12/18/09

We look forward to seeing you there.

 

Are you going to DocuBusiness ‘09 in Milan Italy? If so, be sure to attend a great session by Doug Miles, Research Director for AIIM. Doug is also conducting a new survey on BPM and you can participate by simply going to www.aiimhost.com/survey and answer the series of questions presented.

 

Bob Larrivee – AIIM

blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

Nearly 75% of organizations will invest in document management in 2008?

Forrester just asked 1,017 software decision-makers from North American and European enterprise companies about their ECM plans, and the results are overwhelming;

• Nearly 75% of orgs will invest in document management in 2008
• Nearly 65% of orgs will invest in team collaboration software in 2008
• Microsoft leads all vendors by a large margin with nearly 25% of organizations planning to invest in its technology for ECM
• Rather than disrupting the existing ECM vendor landscape, which remains healthy, Microsoft is establishing foundation content services as a new class of ECM functionality

Press here to access a presentation summarizing their findings. Do you trust these numbers? Let me know...

By Atle Skjekkeland.

New Forrester Wave for Message Archiving Software, Q1 2008

Forrester released a few days ago their latest Forrester Wave for message archiving software, and they report that organizations are implementing these solutions to reduce their storage costs, improved mailbox management with easy access to messages, and lower cost of eDiscovery. You have a lot of choices for choosing your message archiving software; pure plays like ZANTAZ, Mimosa Systems and ZipLip; ECM suite providers like EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet and OpenText; storage management and search vendors such as CA, EMC, HP and IBM. Vendors like Symantec also provide message archiving solutions in combination with other products, and vendors like Autonomy ZANTAZ offer message archiving solutions integrated with their enterprise search and text analytics offering. The report is available for free courtesy of ZANTAZ.

And remember to check out AIIM’s new Email Management training program before implementing any of these solutions. The training program is designed from global best practices among AIIM's 50,000 members, and it covers best practices and technologies for:

• Email capture and retention
• Technologies for email management
• Email storage, archiving and backup
• Email classification
• Developing, implementing, and managing the email policy
• Governance

By Atle Skjekkeland.

New Gartner Magic Quadrant for BPMS

I just found out from the Column 2 blog by Sandy Kemsley that Gartner published earlier this month their latest Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites (BPMS). A BPMS must according to Gartner support all the following process management capabilities:

• Modeling and analysis of business process to identify the best possible design
• "Round trip" behavior between the model and its physical implementation
• Coordination of multiple interaction patterns among users participating in the process
• Providing participants with access to various forms of business content for manipulation and management within the process
• User manipulation and management of business rules
• User and group collaboration in the process context
• Monitoring, reporting, analysis and notification of work activities and business events
• Process simulation and optimization using real-time, historical and estimated data values
• Management of all process components through their life cycles

You can access the report for free courtesy of Pegasystems. And I strongly recommend any project team tasked with improving business processes to first sign-up for AIIM's BPM Certificate Program that covers the above issues.

By Atle Skjekkeland.

New Forrester Wave for ECM Q4, 2007

Forrester released last month their latest evaluation of ECM suites, and they claim that industry professionals that drive ECM evaluations want five key items from their ECM suites:

• A single vendor that provides ECM tool breadth.
• An ECM platform they can build an IT skill set around.
• A low-cost way to make content management available to everyone.
• One place to go to mitigate content-related risks.
• A way to put content into context for people.

And how are the ECM vendors supporting this? Below is an extract from the report:

Forrester evaluated 11 vendors across approximately 60 criteria and found that IBM, EMC, and Oracle lead thanks to suite breadth and a focus on enterprise information management needs. Open Text leads all pure plays with a strong core suite of ECM tools. Interwoven, Hyland, and Vignette, all Strong Performers, focus more attention on supporting content-centric applications than providing an ECM platform. Microsoft, another Strong Performer, misses some important features, but it has a bright future in ECM. Finally, Contenders SAP, Xerox, and Alfresco Software lack breadth and depth but show promise in ECM as alternatives to ECM’s four horsemen: EMC, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle.

You can access the report for free courtesy of Oracle.

By Atle Skjekkeland.