Escape the Cold with ECM and Online Collaboration

At Xythos we sometimes joke that the popularity of online document and content management applications is directly related to an organization’s geographic location. Those closest to northern latitudes have a natural incentive to seek alternatives to personal travel, at least during half the year we laugh. After all, doesn’t that help explain the longtime popularity of ECM vendors like Hummingbird and OpenText?

As I warm my fingers above my MacBook’s CPU this February morning I can’t help but think there may be some truth to this joke. Though if we believe Punxsutawney Phil, the joke’s on us all because “six more weeks of winter it will be”. For those of us who use ECM systems, I wonder if we’re ready to change? Do we feel confident we can accomplish most, or maybe all our assigned tasks without traveling? Are we more comfortable conducting business remotely or from a home office than we’ve been in the past?

I’m not suggesting that ECM systems and web collaboration tools can eliminate the need for human interaction or attending business meetings altogether. Those of us engaged in customer-facing roles know the process of establishing relationships is key to business success. I imagine that still remains true both inside and outside organizations today. Yet, it is still cold out there …

Once we get to know our co-workers and customers and have established a degree of trust and cooperation, I think the potential for productive and potentially long distance collaboration is significant. In fact, simply doing our jobs in environments that don’t introduce myriad interruptions (possibly like the office?) has proven to significantly increase individual performance, according to analysts. Of course, that’s assuming you have access to such an oasis.

So, how can ECM help fight off the winter doldrums and maybe keep us warmer too? Why not test your system and discover how much it can help you get done without visiting the office every day of the week? If you live in a colder climate, that might be one less day of stepping outside and being miserable. If you live in a warmer place use your ECM system to enjoy it a little bit more. Get out on the patio and do some creative project planning. Just don’t brag about how nice it is, or you might get the next consulting project in Duluth.

The combination of ECM, Web 2.0 collaboration tools, and pervasive web connectivity not only helps reduce travel costs, it can limit our impact on the environment as well. The cost of transportation and exchange of documents can migrate from the physical to the electronic universe with consequent benefits. According to the US Energy Information Administration, transportation accounts for 33 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s far greater than the 2 percent that Gartner estimates suggest information and communication technology contributes.

If your ECM system isn’t Internet compatible, it might be time for an upgrade. Web-enabling your system can truly expand the benefits your organization experience’s by multiples. Not only can it support remote access and more enjoyable winters, but it can also become a first step towards better integrating your customers and partners together with your business. That’s probably a smart move in any economic environment.

If you don't have access to an ECM system, but want to get a quick understanding for how this could work, try out Xythos on Demand. This software as a service (SaaS) ECM solution will get you started in minutes and it’s free for the first 30 days. That might be an easy way to avoid the cold.

Google Follows Xythos and Zimbra Offline

I know, it sounds sort of odd doesn’t it? However, headlines about Google going offline were all over the tech news sites this week. I think it’s interesting that the world’s largest provider of web services recognizes that a key barrier to increased service adoption is customer concern about online service availability. After all, isn’t the web supposed to be there for us 24x7x365?

Obviously, there’s more to it than that. Having anytime access to your data is certainly important, but knowing that you have control of it is even more critical. I suspect that is one of the reasons more businesses have not adopted Google Docs of Gmail. The fact that these services are still labeled “Beta” probably doesn’t help either.

There will probably always be times that we cannot be connected to the web. Whether that’s in an airplane or simply some WiFi dead zone at a hotel, “no service available” is a message that’s still all too common. Google Gears is a good first step towards addressing these issues, but I’m not sure it means now is the time to discard our desktop applications altogether.

Perhaps there will soon be a time when web apps replicate on my desktop regardless of their connection status and that will be good enough. Today however, I find myself continuing to return to my desktop for programs that can respond acceptably and generally offer me a greater degree of control over how I manage my data. To be fair, I think this is also a function of the maturity of my desktop apps vs. newer web-based alternatives.

However, as my job leads me deeper into the world of rich media the demand for improved application performance multiplies rapidly. I’m already enjoying many of the new features in iLife ’09, but I recognize that even though they leverage web data more, there’s little chance they could perform satisfactorily as web services alone. So, while I applaud Google for addressing the offline challenge, I consider it to be a fast moving target they may not catch up with.

Larger and more complex data files demand faster microprocessors and more sophisticated software. As a result, I benefit from using the latest desktop software from Adobe and Apple while considering my sixteen-month-old Macbook to be somewhat obsolete. This became abundantly clear as I struggled to publish twenty minutes of HD video for our web sites this week.

I need a seamless online and offline connection from my desktop to web servers in order to publish and preserve my output. This is where Internet “bridge” technologies, like Xythos Drive make sense. Xythos Drive synchs my data locally for offline work and lets me perform those tasks with the applications of my choice, whether from Adobe, Microsoft or whoever. That’s the best of both worlds for me when we’re talking about rich media.

When we’re talking about more lightweight collaboration (Email, messaging, etc.) Google is definitely getting better at addressing my needs. However, I like Zimbra Collaboration Suite a lot too and they’ve offered an offline solution for quite a while already. Zimbra has also partnered with Xythos to integrate enterprise content management (ECM) into their popular Outlook alternative. I think that make plenty of sense, particularly if you’re collaborating around rich media!

Gmail continues to improve and I certainly feel like a beneficiary of that. Google could also benefit from considering how users would like to better integrate their desktop lives online and what better solutions their web services can offer in that regard. As a fan of Blogger, I have high hopes.

How are you bridging the divide between what you do on your desktop vs. the web? Please let me know.

Simplifying Compliance with ECM and Metadata

Let’s face it, not everyone remembers to put all their tools away when they finish a project. Even with good intentions, I’ll leave a paint brush in the garage sink or forget a trowel in the garden. Nothing tragic really. Others aren’t usually impacted and I’m generally not putting my family at risk. OK – you could argue about the rusty trowel, but the risks associated with disorganization or protocol failure in business are a whole different story.

I suspect that the many thousands of hours spent by businesses on compliance training last year didn’t always achieve the desired results. The fact is, taking the extra steps to record how and what we’ve just done each time we perform a business task generally seems like its getting in the way of doing the job itself. If compliance procedures can’t be automated, or at least neatly integrated into business processes, even the most well-meaning employee can easily forget.

Now I know, that some readers are probably thinking, “Rules are rules. If employees can’t follow-them, then they should be punished…” OK, but is that really how you want to manage your business? Do you think that’s going to improve productivity or motivate your team to succeed? That’s why I was excited to learn about a new way to automate how emails are scanned, categorized and stored, so that employees don’t have to waste time scrutinizing messages attempting to stay compliant at work.

The solution consists of two key components, a couple customizations and a new Microsoft Office plug-in. The first component is a basic ECM system (Xythos EDMS) configured with a staging folder to capture email messages and attachments. The Office plug-in allows users to direct email to be saved in a staging folder or simply have all messages (and attachments) automatically stored there. Each message and file attachment is captured as a record inside the staging directory.

The second component captured my attention because it’s the part that can help organizations relieve employees from the duty of classifying their email and remembering to declare required items as official records. This task can now be performed by a product called Mindserver Categorization Engine, from Recommind. When records are added to the Xythos staging folder, Xythos sends a file link to Recommind causing it to parse the file contents and generate an XML data file, which it returns to Xythos. Xythos then reads the XML results and moves the record into its appropriate record category based on the content parsing results performed by Recommind.

Those of you familiar with natural language parsing algorithms understand that no system is perfect, although over time they generally improve. It’s possible that trained records managers may still need to review the contents of the Xythos records categories to ensure the system performs as expected. However, the real value delivered with this solution is its ability to substantially reduce the burden upon employees. Once they learn they can batch or automate the process of records declaration they’ll be more likely to perform the task consistently. That’s a hallmark of a successful compliance solution.

Regular readers of this blog may also recognize the importance that metadata plays in this solution as well. Just as Google geographic positioning data helps me better organize my photos, Recommind ‘s XML metadata is helping automate the process of records classification. Data inside messages and file attachments, as well as metadata like message sender and subject each influence the recommended outcome. While these categorization methods may not be perfect, I suspect that the more metadata is included in the decision-making process the more likely desired results will be attained.

So, how is your organization leveraging metadata to manage your content? Have you found ways to use this data to reduce business operating costs or risk? Please let me know.

Will ECM Really Matter in 2009?

Spending the holidays away from the office doesn’t necessarily guarantee the rest and relaxation I hope for, but it almost always provides me with a better perspective when I return. Today, I’m reflecting upon that experience as I fly across the country for our annual business kick-off meeting. I can’t help but remember how many times my family and I found ourselves searching for content we needed - often struggling to get it from one device to another these last few weeks.

The ease with which we can capture digital memories is staggering. I must have recorded several hundred JPEG and RAW images by New Years day in addition to hours of generally awful video with my new Canon Vixia. My MacBook threatened to shut down if I saved one more file and wouldn’t even open a web page until I moved 50 Gigs of older photos off it.

I first tried copying data to a terabyte drive connected to my airport extreme, but even with N band WiFi I received a 37 hours to complete message and then saw the transfer interrupted. I finally gave up and just used a portable Western Digital drive and sneaker net. That was just the beginning. Not all the data we needed this holiday was on the same Mac or server and yours truly finally paid the price for not properly naming photos last year. I almost missed my ShutterFly card delivery deadline as a result.

Once again, the value of meta data has been hammered into my head. I need better ways (or habits) to keep track of all the stuff that makes up my digital life, both at home and at the office. My challenges with rich media certainly aren’t limited to chronicling my family either. We’re developing more audio, video and graphic resources than ever before to help our growing software and SaaS businesses. While we do a better job of categorizing content we make at work, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

I was excited to learn about some of the new features in iLife that Apple announced last week because I think they can help me address some of these content organization challenges. For example, being able to categorize photos by location using Google Maps could help me find them more easily because that metadata relates well to the way I remember things. In photo face recognition could be similarly helpful.

From a business perspective, I’d like to see how I can use this kind of metadata once its stored in our company’s ECM system. This might improve how we discover and share rich media within workgroups as well. Most ECM systems are capable of storing plenty of metadata, but I don’t think many get used much for this purpose. That’s because it’s a hassle for users to add it when all they really want to do is retrieve or save a file and move ahead with their job.

Applications like iLife or those which scan email messages can help automate the process of generating valuable metadata and make ECM much more beneficial for end users. In turn, this could make ECM systems more valuable to businesses, as they promote increased activity and a better chance for content to be shared and re-used. As the content we use to conduct business inevitably becomes richer it would seem that ECM should continue to have an important role to play – even if it’s just helping me find that image I need for the overdue brochure.

Obviously, ECM can do much more than this, but by leveraging enhanced meta data ECM performs an invaluable task. It helps build a better relationship between users and their data by creating improved context. This helps us better recognize and conceptualize data – turning it into actionable information we can more easily put to work.

Next week, I hope to look more carefully at some other data capture technologies that can help automate meta data creation and categorization. This might be a good way to address compliance requirements as well. In the meantime, why not try some of this yourself? Test drive Xythos on Demand with your own data capture tools for physical or electronic documents.

Economic Content Management Part 2 – Eliminating Redundancies

This post is a continuation of the discussion we began before the Thanksgiving holiday where we started to explore simple, cost-saving ECM projects that could be planned for 2009 without a wholesale examination of how documents and files are managed within your organization.

Several customers suggested that implementing enterprise search technology was a good method to improve discovery and content re-use and I agree. However, the right content or metadata needs to be available in order for search requests to be most effective.

The benefits of improved content discovery can quickly add up to measurable cost savings for organizations of all sizes. For larger, distributed enterprises those benefits can often be quite significant. Just consider the following:

• Employees can spend up to 50% of their time searching for information they need to complete assigned tasks.
  
• The amount of unstructured data (documents and files) created and stored by US businesses is growing by over 100% per year.
  
• The estimated labor cost to re-create a typical business document is $220.
  

Obviously, data like this provides a compelling argument for organizations to improve how they manage and store content in order to reduce costs and improve operating efficiencies. In tough economic times like these, improved content management might even mitigate the need for staff reductions.

A simple way to get started doing this is to begin adding extra metadata, or tags to business documents so that they can be more easily discovered and re-used. Coupled with a common content repository this can provide employees with a safe and easy way to access and share documents, helping reduce work duplication and its associated costs.

Instead of a complex document classification project, document tagging is a more free-form exercise that will probably be familiar to anyone who has uploaded photos to web services like Picassa or videos to YouTube. However, I wouldn’t recommend letting the project become a complete free for all. Consider appointing a tagging expert among your staff. Ideally, this should be someone who is already a well-organized administrator who can perform the task consistently.

Work together with your new project administrator to define a meaningful set of tags that will help other employees easily discover documents regardless of how they might normally be named or where they might be stored. Next, your administrator will need to be empowered to apply these new tags to everyone’s documents prior to them being saved. This will require a new business process, but not a very complicated one (hopefully).



The easiest way to direct documents to your administrator is probably the path that requires the least change for everyone else in the organization. If the team is already experienced with using network drives to store and backup data this can be relatively simple.

First, create a new storage area in your content management system (this will only be a temporary work folder). Then map a drive letter reference to the new folder on each employee’s PC. Even relatively simple content management applications like Microsoft SharePoint and Xythos EDMS support this type of process.

The only change you’ll have to ask employees to make is to save their files to the new network drive letter. Once the files have been tagged by the administrator employees can retrieve them and store them as they normally would, or the administrator can simply return them.

Alternatively, if a network folder hierarchy is already well understood at your organization, the administrator can restore files to their proper locations by themself. This will help reduce data redundancy and file inconsistency. Either way, your organization will have begun to develop a more meaningful content repository that can help reduce work duplication and the costs associated with it.

If you’re interested in demonstrating more immediate value via document tagging, consider asking your administrator to apply the process retroactively to high value documents already stored in your file system prior to announcing the project. That way, employees can quickly begin experiencing the advantages of searching tagged categories for the information they need. This may encourage them to become more active supporters of the project from the very beginning.

Economic Content Management – ECM for Tough Times

I don’t know anyone who is feeling more prosperous today than they were a year ago. That’s the bad news. The good news is that 2008 will soon be over and many of us are busy planning for what will hopefully be a better 2009. It’s probably not going to be easy though and I suspect we'll have to make some tough decisions. When we can’t be confident about the economy or our future business prospects it makes sense to focus on those factors that we can positively influence.

The feedback I’ve received at this fall’s conferences and web seminars suggests that IT leaders are still optimistic about being able to deliver improved business value through the prudent application of web technologies. Even if budgets get squeezed, some have told me that they are confident they can achieve meaningful cost savings in 2009 from the infrastructure improvements they’ve already put in place. I’ve also heard talk about better leveraging Web 2.0 services (yes – even the free ones) to enhance business responsiveness.

When it comes to saving money there are practically countless ways that content management technology can be put to work. Obvious targets include reducing the number of documents organizations actually print, distribute and store. Managing electronic documents costs money too. Especially if they are scattered across dozens of individual file servers or worse, left as attachments in email systems. Automating document workflows and migrating paper-based processes to the web are proven cost-savers as well.

What’s less obvious, yet potentially more costly for many businesses is the amount of time employees waste searching for the information they need to perform their jobs. In fact, some analysts have estimated that time spent looking for documents and files can exceed 25% of an average knowledge worker’s day. What’s worse is that when documents can’t be found, sometimes they must be reproduced. That’s like having to pay double for cost of goods - hardly a recipe for success in tough economic times.

So, if managing content more effectively has the potential to help save some serious money then why aren’t more organizations doing it? Well, just like trying to go on a diet, getting started is often the most difficult part. Staying on the plan isn’t always easy either. In addition, the fact that unstructured data (all the different types of content) continues grow at an exponential rate practically demands that businesses begin with a well-conceived plan.

This post isn’t intended to review content taxonomies or best storage practices. Instead, the goal is to provoke action and help identify realistic cost-saving opportunities that can benefit from basic applications of content management technology and know how. So with the emphasis on making getting started easy, here’s a short list of “low hanging fruit” that might be worth adding to your 2009 project list. (I’ve collected these examples from a number of different types of businesses. If you know of an obvious one that’s missing, please feel free to contribute to this list).

Simple Cost-Saving ECM Projects for 2009

The theme around these suggested projects is “start small” so that you can develop early successes that will hopefully promote the use of ECM throughout other parts of your business in the future. It’s also important to identify project’s that provide an easy opportunity for cost-saving measurement, just so there won’t be any misunderstanding the project’s results. (I’ll post the first one today, and try and get the rest of these listed before the end of the week).

1. Scan documents intended for distribution
This is an easy project to begin with because it doesn’t require significant re-architecting of how your business manages or stores documents. It also creates visibly measurable benefits. Begin by looking at those processes which require documents be exchanged with either external parties or geographically separated offices within your own organization. Consider items like contracts that require multi-party review or service and support agreements.

First develop an estimate, of the average monthly costs related to the printing and delivery of these documents. You may even want to assess a storage cost fee if office space is particularly expensive in your location. Don’t forget to include all transport costs, including express and courier service fees if documents aren’t always faxed or sent via email.

Create a client or project based folder structure in your document store. If you don't already have an ECM system, you could even use a networked file server, but a web-enabled system such as a SaaS ECM solution, like Xythos on Demand will probably be much easier for external parties to use.

Next, determine if your current scanners or multi-functions devices can scan files directly to your document store. This is an ideal method, as it requires the least amount of employee interaction. Look to scanning software vendors like eCopy, or Kofax to help connect your input devices if they are not compatible. Newer MFP’s like those from Canon, Ricoh and Sharp can generally connect directly to the repository via http and WebDAV, or FTP. That will allow documents to be scanned directly into the folders you want them stored in.

Once your contracts, etc. are scanned into the system the real fun begins. Now employees can embed links to their documents within their email correspondence. This will allow them to monitor when customers read them and track changes as contracts are being negotiated and reviewed. Of course, a complete history of each document related activity can be maintained, helping you do a better job of supporting the business process.

That’s just the beginning of the benefits that can be gained from scanning documents that need to be distributed. However, the cost saving can add up quickly. Express delivery fees can usually be reduced significantly. Even documents requiring signatures can often be submitted with a digital version and thus avoid physical exchange. If your business is required to save its contracts as records in protected facilities, electronic records storage may also become a cost-saving alternative, once the documents have migrated to electronic form, of course.

More iPhone Excitement at Educause 2008

I guess Steve Jobs already knows this, given the displays I’ve spotted in Apple retail stores recently. Enormous versions of iPhones quickly stop people who are walking by. That was certainly the case at Educause this year. While we didn’t actually have gigantic versions of my favorite phone, large on-screen replicas seemed to work almost as well, thanks to the iPhone simulator in the iPhone Developer's Toolkit.

We chose the simulator to present the customizations to Xythos created by Abilene Christian University (ACU) as a part of their campus-wide iPhone initiative. The iPhone team at ACU, lead by Dr. James Langford has really done some groundbreaking work turning the device into a true enterprise solution for a wealth of academic and administrative purposes. They truly deserve the recognition this project has received and it was no different on the Educause 2008 show floor. Crowds of onlookers literally blocked the walkways around the Xythos booth to see what they had done.

MyACU’s MyMobile Portal

(Navigating from the portal into an iPhone customized version of Xythos and opening a Quicktime video)


The interest in the “One iPhone for Every Student” project continued in packed meeting rooms off the show floor where ACU twice presented the project’s implementation and faculty use cases. For those institutions considering similar projects, I would encourage you to take a look at the resource links at the end of this post to learn more.

The most common comment I heard after these sessions (following various expressions of jealousy) was “When will this be ready for Blackberry’s?” Hopefully, some of the institutions standardized on that platform will see that anything is indeed possible when they choose open standards-based software technologies like Liferay and Xythos.

While economic and political concerns may hinder projects like this at larger, state-funded institutions, those problems may begin to correct themselves as more students arrive on campus with their own iPhones, Blackberry Storms, or Google Android equipped devices. To get a picture of what this future might look like take a look at these ACU videos on YouTube:

"Connected" Part 1: Social Uses

"Connected" Part 2: Academic Uses

Recent ACU, iPhone and Xythos Articles:

Computerworld
iPhones go to front of the class at Texas university
CIO Magazine
iPhone University: At ACU, Students Navigate College Life via Apple iPhone
Macworld
At ACU, students navigate college life via iPhone