Digital Landfill

Top 8 #ECM Digital Landfill Blog Posts of 2010

Here are the top blog posts on Digital Landfill for the year.

Many thanks to all the great contributors to this blog -- I couldn't do it without you.

And the award goes to...

1. 8 Reasons SharePoint 2010 Looks Like a True ECM System and from last year -- 8 Things SHarePoint Needs to be a True ECM System
2. 37 Really Cool Statistics About Social Media
3. 8 Things You Can Do With an Enterprise Wiki
4. 8 Ways to Kill Your ECM Project
5. 8 Features in SharePoint that Rock
6. 8 Hot Trends in Document Scanning, Imaging and Capture
7. 8 Major Trends that will Change ECM
8. 8 Steps of the ISO/TR 15489 Records Management Methodology

You might also find of interest...

My 12 ECM Predictions for 2011

AIIM Annual Report

My e-books...(all free - all Creative Commons licensed - use them on your own web site!)

8 things you need to know about social networking & content management but were afraid to ask

8 things you need to know about getting rid of paper

8 things you wanted to know about SharePoint - but were afraid to ask

8 secrets of an effective content or records management implementation

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

A Recap of 2010 Highlights for AIIM and ECM -- and Thank You

We would like to take this opportunity to do three things. Firstly, report back to the readers of this blog and the broader content and records management community on the “State of the Association.” Secondly, but even more importantly, thank you for your support, involvement, and guidance during these challenging times. And lastly, take a moment on behalf of the Board and the staff to wish you and yours a very Happy Holiday and extend our best wishes for a happy and successful 2011.

Like many of you, we entered 2010 with great concerns given the recession and overall market conditions.  We are happy to report looking back on the year that it has been very successful – a great year, in fact. AIIM has weathered the economic storms well (everyone knock wood!) and we succeeded in investing in the middle of the recession in the future of the association and the industry.

When we sold the AIIM Show back in 2002, we embarked on a multi-year effort to build an Association focused around 4 key competencies:

1. Networking – to provide meaningful member, on-line, and in-person opportunities to connect, exchange information, and create and share meaningful nest practices and standards.
2. Professional Development – to create a consistent industry framework to train users, the channel and vendors on the core technologies and practices in our space.
3. Market Education – to provide quality information about the industry and its solutions to end users, delivering this information at low or no cost to the end user.
4. Market Research – to quantify the drivers for our technologies, the user experience in procuring and using these technologies, and the ROI of our industry’s solutions.

By and large, this was the year that a number of these initiatives came together. Our work is not yet done – our technologies are mature, our market is not! – but there are a number of highlights we’d like to report. The list is by no means conclusive, but in the spirit of the 12 days of Christmas, here are 12 major items…

1. In terms of basic numbers, we now have 72,200 basic members and 5,300 professional members, up significantly over 2009. This is the first year since we sold the AIIM Show back in 2002 (when professional membership was embedded in Conference attendance) that we have topped 5,000 professional members. There are 34 AIIM chapters, and they hosted a total of 160 local events in 2010.
2. We launched 4 new on-line communities – 1) Enterprise 2.0; 2) Capture and Imaging; 3) Electronic Records Management; and 4) SharePoint. Users have provided over 2,400 product ratings on these sites (along the lines of TripAdvisor). Each community is driven by a network of Expert Bloggers, providing unparalleled insight, commentary, and guidance. Since the launch of the first two communities in May, 86,172 unique visitors have participated in these communities. [Note: next year, these communities will be merged into the core aiim.org site.]
3. We launched World Paper Free Day on October 28, and collaborated with 11 chapters and volunteers around the world to produce over 20 events worldwide. We are in the planning stages for 2011, and hope to take this grassroots event to the next level.
4. In the standards arena, we published 2 ISO standards; 2 white papers on PDF Healthcare use with Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) document format and produced 1 AIIM Standards webinar and 1 PDF/A seminar – as well as sustaining the ongoing legacy ISO standards and best practices in our trust.
5. In the training arena, we passed the 17,000-student mark in 2010. Over 42% of our training business is now on-line, reflecting the migration of professional development to the web. 3,200 students took 4,511 courses in 2010 alone.  We also launched an Electronic Records Management Master virtual class and Master Prep virtual classes for Enterprise Content Management and Electronic Records Management. We launched translations of our core ECM curriculum in Portuguese, German, and Russian.
6. In 2010 we launched our 7^th core training competency, focused on the role of SharePoint in an ECM strategy. This course – developed by the Gimmal Group – has proven to be a top seller and is receiving top marks for content that is at exactly the right point technically to be relevant to IT people and simultaneously meaningful to business people.
7. Our Content Management Seminar Series (often called “the Roadshow”) continued to set the standard for effective local events in both the US (run by AIIM) and in the UK (run by a partner organization, Revolution). The 13 cities in the US and Canada, and 4 in the UK – focused on the “8 Things You Need to Know to Build an Effective Information Management Strategy” -- generated a total of 5,841 registrations and is a major source of “new blood” into the membership.
8. One of our most highly-rated user programs is our Webinar Series. We host events virtually every week (37 total in 2010), in both North America and in Europe. Registrations through the end of November totaled 18,912, a new record. In addition to the live events, the archives of the webinars are a top draw on the AIIM web site. Our webinars also attract a significant number of new members.
9. We have now published 5 e-books in our popular “8 things” series, on 1) social networking and content management; 2) getting rid of paper; 3) SharePoint; 4) ECM and ERM implementation; and 5) ECM and ERM strategy. The content was originally gathered on the Digital Landfill blog, and contributed by a host of users and industry experts and analysts. The content is published under Creative Commons – you can host a copy of any e-book on your own web site to assist in your own traffic generation. You can subscribe to email updates from the blog via a (free) Digital Landfill e-mail subscription (second column, second item).
10. Our Industry Research program published 11 titles in 2010, 5 in the popular Industry Watch series. This information, provided at no cost to end users, is paid for through sponsorships. There were 10,139 downloads of our Industry Watch reports in 2010, and the research was featured in a long list of industry press reports and presentations.
11. At the heart of our industry evangelism is a commitment to using social tools.  This commitment reaches deep into the organization, as is evident from the visibility that AIIM content receives on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. We experimented with Twitter as a community organizing tool, and our first “Tweetjam” on E20 reached 44,000 people in June; our second prior to World Paper Free Day on October 22 reached 57,000 people. The AIIM RSS Feeds provide a good way of staying updated through your newsreader.  Please “like” the Digital Landfill blog (upper right hand corner) and also “like” the AIIM Facebook page. We also launched a special AIIM Channel on Slideshare to aggregate the many presentations we make during the course of the year and make them available to the broader community.
12. Lastly, we successfully created a Task Force of leading companies, raised funds from these companies, and retained Geoffrey Moore (author of best-seller Crossing the Chasm) to assist the Task Force in building a future history of the content industry relative to social technologies. This work led to public release of a series of presentations, first to the first-ever joint meeting of the North American and European Advisory Trade Members and the AIIM Board, and then in October to the general public and a “Future of ECM” webinar in December. A white paper is scheduled for early January. These materials have been used in a number of staff presentations to better position AIIM relative to future industry directions, and have served as the basis for creating a new product initiative centered around Systems of Engagement, headed by Jesse Wilkins. We believe that the body of knowledge in ECM on governance, technology, taxonomy, compliance, and security that is the core of AIIM will be increasingly critical for organizations as they tackle management of new forms of social content.

Which brings us back to the 2^nd and 3^rd reasons for this note.

None of the above would have been possible without the active participation of the community that we are fortunate to serve. Thank you for the trust you put in us to provide the best information possible on how to find, control and optimize your information.

The past couple of years have been a challenge for all of us.  Please accept our best wishes for a great holiday season as we all reflect on these challenges, and our deep hopes that 2011 will be happy, healthy and successful for you.

With Deep Thanks and Appreciation,

Lynn Fraas, AIIM Chair

John Mancini, AIIM President

 

 

 

 

 

The 12 Days of Christmas -- My 12 Information Management Predictions for 2011

My Content and Records Management Predictions for 2011...

It is OK to hum along the 12 Days of Christmas as you go through this list...

1. Legal and records and IT types will seek to reassert old control paradigms on social and consumer technologies and will largely fail. Smart organizations will rethink what control and governance mean in this new era and only seek to control what must be controlled.
2. Politicians and regulators will pass new information management regulations and legislation that will be State of the Art, circa 2005. As Gartner might say, this is will be with 100% probability.
3. The “business” will demand cuts in legacy system spending to fund new initiatives centered on customer engagement and operating flexibility. Smart IT people will position themselves against the revenue side of the equation. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be hell to pay when there are security breaches.
4. Social “neighborhoods” will spring up in organizations.  Social ghettoes and abandoned properties and strip malls will too.
5. Some company will get in big e-discovery trouble for stuff that occurs on a public social network. Oh, and probably somebody on a private network too. Ubiquitous access to social and corporate information through portable devices will present new security challenges of a complexity once faced only by governments.
6. SharePoint will continue its rampage, especially as frustrated MOSS implementers realize how much better 2010 is. On the flip side, though, lots of mid-sized organizations will realize it's all just too complicated and opt for simpler, "virtual file cabinet" and SaaS solutions.
7. Many organizations will see SharePoint as the answer to content chaos. However, with IT in control, content chaos will often be replicated inside of SharePoint.
8. It will be the golden, post chasm age for VARs and SIs with rich domain expertise. On the other hand, some previously easy business with previously channel friendly vendors will become tough as these vendors go direct to boost revenues. Capture will continue to be hot as users realize that those scanners can be used for something in addition to just sticking electronic paper into an electronic file cabinet -- like for driving processes.
9. Despite dreams of quadrants and waves, many users in the mid-sized market will wake up from a deep winter sleep and realize that there is no "right" ECM solution. There are only solutions that are appropriate to THEIR business problems -- and there are LOTS of them "beyond the wave." 
10. Many forecasters will issue market-sizing reports on some aspect of the content and records space and charge a lot of money for them. These reports will contain estimates and growth rates 5 years out. These forecasts will always be done with at least one or two decimal point precision and yet no one will laugh.
11. Content analytics will be cool because it addresses this tension...The explosion of information drives these user design points: (1) Don't make me think and (2) Don't make me read. ERM drives these design points: (1) Please read everything carefully and (2) Please think and then classify. Content analytics fills in the gap.
12. Advanced case management will be a big break though application for content management, especially as it extends its reach into social content. However, everyone will still wish that they had thought of a better name for this market space than "case management."

Thanks to everyone who has been involved in AIIM activities this year. We appreciate it and value your involvement. 

Content and records management resources... 1) training; 2) research; 3) networking; 4) marketing opportunities; 5) information resources.

 

8 Things to Consider When Evaluating a Managed Print Services Program

Managed Print Services, or MPS, as the name implies, is managing the office print and copy process as a service. You either do it yourself or outsource to a trusted service provider. MPS helps centralize the print and copy responsibility for the entire office in order to make smarter decisions across the company. A well-run MPS program can save time, money and improve productivity if done right.

Here are 8 ways to evaluate your current MPS program:

1 -- Does your MPS program put the emphasis on “management” or on “print”?

A successful MPS program requires people, process, and technology (hardware and software). If the program’s focus is on the equipment to deploy, including a break-fix contract price, terms and supplies, but leaves out the organizational structure and process performance, then you do not have a true, comprehensive MPS program in place. A more effective MPS program will focus on who will be accountable for results, how to manage the process that will deliver the results, and what equipment to use for print/copy/fax/scan processes.

2 -- Is all the equipment managed equally?

If your MPS program does not manage all the equipment in your environment equally, no matter who owns the equipment or what OEM provides the maintenance, then you have a fragmented print service operation that is subject to a lowest “cost-per-copy” contract and you are probably unaware of many higher, hidden costs.

3 -- Is there one point of accountability and one invoice to pay?

One defining characteristic of a well-rounded MPS program is a single point of accountability for the entire office print/copy/fax/scan service. By centralizing the responsibilities for managing all of the equipment, people and processes, you can leverage procurement scale, standardization, budget consolidation, and have one consolidated invoice to pay.

4 -- Are the MPS tools installed and used?

One building block of an MPS program is the ability to monitor fleet activity (i.e. collecting output, service and cost data) as well as automate processes (proactive machine faults/alerts, meter collection and reporting overall performance.) Technology tools are necessary in order to meet these goals. These tools include, at the very least, an electronic monitoring system, an MPS call center application and a reporting system. Assessment, user behavior modification and MFP workflow solutions tools also can help.

5 -- Does the MPS program provide an initial in-depth assessment?

An in-depth assessment is recommended before starting an MPS program to establish a baseline of your fleet’s current state. The assessment should provide a roadmap for moving from the fleet’s current state to its future state. A list of the existing equipment to be kept, re-deployed, and retired should be one output. A map of current equipment, utilization and device-to-user ratios is another output. You can also create several future-state recommendations based on desired outcomes (such as total costs) along with best-of-breed equipment specifications.

6 -- Will the MPS program re-balance and optimize the fleet continuously?

Maintaining an excessive amount of equipment is expensive. Determining precisely how much equipment is needed, including the requirements of each location, involves delicate measurements and frequent reviews. Idle or overused equipment can be expensive in terms of dollars or user satisfaction. An MPS program should include periodic reviews (quarterly or annual at the minimum) by experts who can recommend optimization changes as necessary.

7 -- Will the MPS program relieve the IT help-desk from print-related issues?

According to IT help-desk studies, a significant number of calls to the IT help-desk (approximately 20%) involve relatively basic issues related to toner, machine service, etc. An MPS program should relieve the IT help-desk from these calls by providing an 800 number to the MPS call center, ideally backed by on-site and remote call center support, for resolving these issues.

8 -- Does the MPS program provide staff and subject matter experts to manage the MPS process?

Buyers often forget there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that must be done to manage office print/copy/fax/scan processes. Here is a partial list of MPS responsibilities that do not come with basic equipment maintenance:

• ordering supplies and re-stocking consumables on a daily basis
• providing preventive maintenance and first-level response
• managing multiple OEM service providers
• managing procurement, which includes consolidating and standardizing contracts and rates as they expire
• overseeing the budget
• verifying invoices and resolving bill disputes
• coordinating equipment moves/changes
• responding to user needs and conducting user satisfaction surveys
• coordinating with IT
• reporting performance and financials
• planning ahead for effective program management
• reviewing device utilization and overall performance
• making optimization decisions
• managing assets (maintaining equipment lists and data, planning and coordinating moves, adds, changes and disposals)

Customers are getting smarter about the total cost of ownership when they buy or replace office print equipment. But these companies don’t always recognize how important a comprehensive managed print services program is to realizing the full benefits of the newest technology. These 8 Things provide a checklist for making sure people, process, and technology are all considered when implementing an MPS program.

Today's guest blogger is Ted Ardelean from Océ Business Services Inc. Ted is Director of Segment Marketing and leads the segment marketing function. He analyzes business processes, workflow, and technology solutions and helps develop document process efficiency solutions. Ardelean has more than twenty years business experience including management consulting, accounting and finance, marketing, and business process outsourcing. He has worked in manufacturing, management consulting, office systems, manufacturing and distribution, IT consulting, and document process outsourcing industries.  Ardelean is a certified AIIM Electronic Records Management (ERM) master. He received an MBA from Adelphi University and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Baruch College, CUNY.

 

 

8 Scanning and Capture "Must Knows" in 1:46 - Short Video

Download the AIIM Capture and Business Process survey now (free) and all of the other AIIM surveys.

8 reasons why 2011 will be the year of CMIS

In December 2009 I published an article explaining 8 reasons why CMIS will transform the ECM industry (http://aiim.typepad.com/aiim_blog/2009/12/8-reasons-why-cmis-will-transform-the-ecm-industry.html ). In May 2010 the initial version of the CMIS standard was released by OASIS. In the last few months I have been asked by several people of what my opinion is now, looking back at my thought-provoking predictions that I made in this article one year previously. So it’s time for me to reflect on these statements and to state 8 reasons why 2011 will be the year of CMIS:

1 -- CMIS is the SQL for Content Management.

I’m still convinced that CMIS will have a similar effect on the ECM market in the same way SQL did on the database market 30 years ago. Some people criticize that up until today SQL hasn’t been a perfect standard and that it is still quite tricky to build portable SQL applications. That’s true, but the standardization of SQL was good enough to ensure a healthy business for thousands of ISVs dealing with structured data in the application space. So in light of this, I don’t expect CMIS to be 100% perfect as a standard, but even as an 80% standard it would suffice in creating a huge impact for all ISVs having to deal with large amounts of unstructured data.

2 -- CMIS is not just another standard.

One year ago there were some questions raised regarding the adoption of CMIS in the standard products of several of the larger vendors. Some critics noted that the software giants would not be readily committed to a standard that would allow their products to become more interchangeable. I agree that the large vendors have no appeal for a CMIS-backend standard that will give their customers greater freedom and independence away from their proprietary systems. However the big guys have to accept (and they do) that the point of no return has passed with the release of CMIS V1.0. After 6 months since the release of the initial version of this standard, we now see that most of the market leaders such as IBM, Microsoft, Open Text and Alfresco, have already released their CMIS-compliant products on the market. None of them are promoting their efforts particularly well and at least one software-giant made a bad job of its first attempt of implementing CMIS, but that’s another story…

3 -- CMIS is already well accepted by the customers.

One year ago a survey was conducted among a group of AIIM-members, in which only 15% of them acknowledged that CMIS would be an important step for them in the future. 12 months later in a recent survey made by Generis (www.generiscorp.com), 77% of the participants said that they were very much aware of CMIS and 42% of the participants acknowledged that this standard would be a key factor of their ECM projects in 2011. Although this poll is probably not a representative survey, these figures are very promising and I’m very optimistic that the adoption of CMIS will grow rapidly within the next year.

4 -- No more lock-in to one ECM-vendor thanks to CMIS.

During 2010 I had many discussions with customers who were very upset with their proprietary ECM-infrastructure vendors. Almost every customer aspires to the vision of CMIS helping to separate business applications from their ECM-infrastructure. Just one year ago this was merely a vision, but today we are already seeing early adoption of CMIS from our own customer base with all the signs of continuing in this direction. A few weeks ago, we signed a significant contract with an insurance customer. They were looking to replace their mission-critical ECM-infrastructure from a proprietary system developed by a leading vendor and decided on an open source alternative based on the CMIS standard. I expect that we’ll see many similar projects from 2011 onwards, especially when the first success-stories of larger CMIS-implementations start hitting the street, which will probably occur towards the second half of 2011.

5 -- With CMIS the ECM infrastructure will become a commodity.

It’s now well accepted in the marketplace that the core functionality of an ECM-infrastructure is a commodity and that ECM vendors cannot differentiate themselves any further on the backend of the business. That’s probably the most important reason why the large vendors will lose even more market share, while competing against CMIS-based open source alternatives, such as Alfresco in 2011.

6 -- CMIS-based applications will become the differentiator.

2010 was the year when the large ECM-infrastructure vendors added CMIS compatibility to their ECM platforms. During 2011, we will see a significant number of customers who will update their ECM-platforms with a new release so that for the very first time there will be a customer base ready for CMIS-applications.

I expect that in 2011 we’ll see new offerings in the marketplace promoting CMIS-based business applications and ECM application frameworks ready to run on different ECM-platforms. Already today there are first offerings available by early adopters in this evolving market like Generis with their Cara product ( http://www.generiscorp.com/cara.html ) and WeWebU with the OpenWorkdesk suite of applications available as open source (http://www.openworkdesk.org ). I think this is just the beginning of a growing market, which will attract new ISVs during the next year. However don’t expect too much: I think we’ll see some nice successes from the pioneers in 2011, but it will take until 2012 before we would see any significant revenues generated out of a CMIS-based application business.

7 -- CMIS will help to create a 360° view of your customer.

During 2010, I changed my mind regarding the need for federating different repositories with CMIS. Many customers want to federate exactly two repositories and that works fine, but I don’t see a large demand for a CMIS-based standard software federating many different repositories at once. So I agree 100% with Craig Rhinehart from IBM that 2011 will be the year when “Intergalactic Content Federation Is Exposed As A Myth”. (http://craigrhinehart.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/top-10-ecm-pet-peeve-predictions-for-2011/). I think that even with CMIS it is quite simply impractical trying to use content federation for every conceivable use case. Customers don’t want to spend all their dollars on maintenance costs and so they will be looking more closely at consolidating their ECM infrastructure, instead of federating everything together.

8 -- CMIS 1.0 is just the beginning.

The critics of the current CMIS 1.0 were correct to say that this first version of the new standard is the lowest common denominator. Many proprietary API’s offer much more functionality than available with CMIS today and sometimes it’s a little bit tricky to work around the limitations of CMIS to support different repositories with one CMIS-based business application. But nevertheless ISVs are used to dealing with such limitations of open standards. CMIS V1.0 is a huge step into the right direction and already a lot of use cases can be accomplished.  The CMIS TC at OASIS has already decided to work in 2011 on the next versions of CMIS. In my opinion there will be enough pressure from customers, analysts and ISVs to push the larger vendors further towards CMIS V2.0, even if they decide not to promote this development to the open market. I expect that in 2011 we’ll see that even vendors with no presence in the CMIS TC, such as Hyland and Autonomy, will probably need to rethink their product strategy to incorporate support for CMIS in the future.

The point of no return has passed and I’m looking forward for a review of this article in December 2011.

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Stefan Waldhauser is the founder and CEO of WeWebU Software, a specialist in Enterprise Information Management. With the WeWebU products, enterprises can access their complete information infrastructure via a unified, process-oriented working environment. WeWebU operates internationally. It cooperates with leading ECM/BPM vendors and consulting firms and is an IBM Advanced Business Partner as well as Alfresco Solutions Partner. He can be reached on Twitter (@WeWebU) or via LinkedIn -- http://de.linkedin.com/in/stefanwaldhauser.

AIIM background information on CMIS.

Great moments in Document Management -- 2010

Here are just a few of my favorites from my list during the course of the year. Which ones are on yours?  

Post a comment and add to the list!

FAA Loses Track of 119,000 Aircraft

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101210/ap_on_bi_ge/us_misplaced_planes

"The records are in such disarray that the FAA says it is worried that criminals could buy planes without the government's knowledge, or use the registration numbers of other aircraft to evade new computer systems designed to track suspicious flights. It has ordered all aircraft owners to re-register their planes in an effort to clean up its files.

About 119,000 of the aircraft on the U.S. registry have "questionable registration" because of missing forms, invalid addresses, unreported sales or other paperwork problems, according to the FAA. In many cases, the FAA cannot say who owns a plane or even whether it is still flying or has been junked."

Toyota Memo Brags of Saving $100M with "Limited" Recall

http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/daily-news/100222-Toyota-Memo-Brags-of-Saving-100M-with-Limited-Recall/

"As Toyota officials head to Washington for a series of Congressional hearings this week, a potentially damaging internal document is grabbing headlines.  All three TV news networks and hundreds of newspapers nationwide led with the story this weekend, adding to a public relations nightmare for the Japanese automaker.

The Detroit Free Press explains, 'Toyota’s leading U.S. executive boasted to the automaker’s Washington staff last summer that they had saved the company more than $100 million by limited any regulatory action on sudden acceleration to a recall of equipment such as floor mats, according to documents turned over to a key U.S. House committee holding hearings on the issue Wednesday.' The News notes, 'Earlier this month before the hybrid recall, Toyota executives estimated that the unintended acceleration recalls would cost $2 billion in lost sales and cost of extra parts for repairs.'"

Afghanistan WikiLeaks Made Possible by Lady Gaga

http://gothamist.com/2010/07/26/afghanistan_wikileaks_made_possible.php

"It seems the private who allegedly downloaded the huge trove of secret data from military computers in Iraq exploited a loophole that permitted the use of compact disks on secure computers. External hard drive ports were disabled, but Pfc. Bradley E. Manning allegedly spent six months downloading documents onto a CD that he disguised in a Lady Gaga CD case. The Times reports, 'He was able to avoid detection not because he kept a poker face, they said, but apparently because he hummed and lip-synched to Lady Gaga songs to make it appear that he was using the classified computer’s CD player to listen to music.'"

Arlington cemetery's 'disgraceful' records

http://theweek.com/article/index/203992/arlington-cemeterys-disgraceful-records

"The Army says more than 200 graves at Arlington National Cemetery are marked with the wrong headstones, or not at all. What went wrong?

In a scandal that has outraged veterans and the families of fallen U.S. soldiers, a seven-month Army investigation has concluded that the remains of hundreds of soldiers may have been misplaced or misidentified at Arlington National Cemetery due to lax management."

Pentagon can't account for how it spent $2.6 billion in Iraqi funds, audit finds

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/26/AR2010072605535.html

"Because of poor record-keeping and lax oversight, the Department of Defense cannot account for how it spent $2.6 billion that belonged to the Iraqi government, according to the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction."

‘Robo-signer’ controversy spreads

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/robo-signer-controversy-spreads-2010-09-29

"J.P. Morgan’s Chase unit stops some foreclosures to review process

At the center of the controversy are employees of mortgage lenders or servicers who sign affidavits supporting foreclosures that have to be cleared by judges in many states.

With so many foreclosures to process, there’s concern that such affidavits are signed without verifying whether loan documents and other records have the correct information. The integrity of the process is a key component in how judges decide that people’s houses can be taken and given back to the bank."

National Archives at Risk, According to Audit

http://www.arma.org/policy/policy/washingtonpolicybrief/10-11-02/National_Archives_at_Risk_According_to_Audit.aspx

"A Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit completed in October shows that nearly 80% of government agencies are at risk of illegally destroying public records and that there are hefty volumes of records needing preservation and care before they are permanently lost or damaged.

Prompted by the loss of the Wright brothers’ original patent, as well as maps for atomic bomb missions in Japan, the GAO report finds some of the nation's prized historical documents are in danger of being lost forever, including Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln, Eli Whitney's cotton gin patent, and some NASA photographs on the moon. The report was obtained this month by the Associated Press and found many U.S. agencies do not follow proper procedures for disposing and storing public records."

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[And if you are finally convinced you need to get your Document Management house in order, check out our training program and our industry research.]

17 Things You Should Know About Scanning and Capture

The new AIIM Capture and Imaging Survey is out.

According to our in-house analyst Doug Miles -- "Offices are at last using less paper. Although still growing in 27% of organizations, in 39% paper usage is finally starting to fall. However, the strongest drivers for scanning and capture are not savings on paper storage space but improved searchability and knowledge sharing, followed by productivity improvements in document-centric business processes. Nearly 40% of the organizations surveyed reported investment payback within 12 months of implementing systems. We also compare strategies for outsource, centralized scanning and distributed scanning, and look at levels of capture integration with other enterprise systems."

For those unfamiliar with our Industry Watch surveys, a note on the terms, since they are very different from those of most analyst organizations. Downloading the surveys is FREE. (You do need to login or register, but that's it.) You are free to use the survey results in presentations with citation. You are free to share the link to download the survey results to anyone.

[And thanks to our sponsors for helping make all this data available at no charge -- ASG, EMC, IBM, and Kofax.]

Here's the download link...

http://www.aiim.org/pdfdocuments/IW_Capture-and-BPM_2010.pdf

A snapshot of some of the key findings...

Key Findings

1. The strongest driver for scanning and capture is improved searchability and knowledge sharing across the business, followed by productivity improvements, reduced office costs and better customer service.
2. 66% of responding organizations have a formal scan-to archive process, and 47% utilize some form of workflow, but only 16% scan and extract data to a process. When scanning to archive, only half use automatic recognition of metadata for indexing.
3. 39% of responding organizations reach positive payback on their investments in scanning, capture and BPM within 12 months, rising to 60% within 18 months. Automatic document classification shows a particularly high return for the 19% of respondents utilizing it.
4. Improved process productivity and process quality produce significant financial savings, but respondents were as likely to cite better knowledge sharing and access as providing significant financial return.
5. The consumption of paper and number of photocopies is still growing in 27% of responding organizations, but in 39%, it is finally starting to fall. Among those organizations with more extensive and mature scanning and capture operations, 53% are seeing a reduction in paper usage.
6. 61% of respondents are processing scanned images, 30% are processing electronic Office files and emails, and 26% are processing faxes for data capture prior to process.
7. Only 14% of organizations are using capture and BPM across multiple processes and departments.
8. Regarding forward strategies for scanning and capture, outsourcing is showing a very small net gain, whereas respondents are posting very positive preferences for both centralized and distributed capture in-house, and are making big moves towards automated data recognition and document auto-classification.
9. These strategies are reflected in a projected net rise in spend on capture and BPM software modules, compared to a more neutral projection for scanner hardware and for outsourcing.
10. 55% of larger organizations, 32% of mid-sized organizations and 22% of smaller organizations use outsourcing.
11. Only a third of these are doing any form of data capture for process (44% of larger orgs) and only 20% are outsourcing any part of the process itself.
12. The primary driver for outsourcing is to cut costs, with the next factor identified as the need to focus staff on core tasks. 88% are satisfied with the quality of service provided by their outsourcer.
13. The most popular enterprise systems to be capture-enabled are Finance, Line of Business and HR, followed by Service, Claims and Case Processing. Generally, only half of these systems are enabled and integrated at a process level.
14. 58% of SharePoint users are not storing scanned image files and only 9% are executing any workflow or BPM with scanned images. File sizes and the ability to handle scanned image throughput are the biggest concerns.
15. 60% of respondents have one or more capture and BPM systems. Of these, 39% have a single system in use for all applications. Of those with multiple systems, 80% are looking to converge to a single system.
16. Although respondents expressed a preference to source workflow and BPM as part of an ECM suite or as part of SharePoint, the decision maker for capture and BPM is likely to be a department or Line of Business head, compared to a Head of IT or Head of Compliance for the ECM system.
17. Resistance to change, and a lack of awareness of the possibilities of BPM were indicated as the most commonly encountered management issues arising in a capture and BPM project. Difficulties of integration with other systems, and time taken to map processes, were the biggest technical issues.

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A few other AIIM resources that might be of interest...

Our Capture microsite.

Our Capture community.

Our Capture Buyer's Guide.

Our Scanning and Capture User Survey

 

 

 

8 Things About an Information-Driven Business

Adapted from Information-Driven Business: How to Manage Data and Information for Maximum Advantage, by Robert Hillard. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

Everyone recognizes the need to get more value from their information assets.  The following are eight things for an Information-Driven Business to consider:

8 Things About an Information-Driven Business

1 -- Develop an Information Governance Charter.

Such a charter needs to be embraced by the board or its equivalent and have a set of principles that are aligned to the strategic goals of the organization and recognising the structural tensions that exist in every business.

2 -- Establish Fact-Based Decision Making.

An important information principle is that the information asset should be leveraged every day in every decision.  Both strategic and operational decisions should be based on facts that can be sourced back to data that is held by the enterprise.

3 -- All Data Should be Integrated with Consistent Definitions.

Accepting that an organization’s major asset is information, there is no value in each unit of the enterprise being part of the whole unless it is able to leverage that enterprise asset in an integrated and synergistic way (i.e., the whole is greater than the sum of parts).

4 -- Retain Appropriate Detailed Data.

Information should be retained whenever physically possible within the constraints of government legislation, corporate ethics and privacy commitments.

5 -- Measure the Quality of Data.

Data quality is relative to the purpose to which it is to be applied.  Decision makers not only need access to data, but more importantly they also need to understand the timing, reconciliation, completeness and accuracy of that data.  Data quality is neither abstract nor qualitative, rather it should be measured in absolute terms.

6 -- Provide Appropriate Enterprise Access.

Staff are a valued and trusted resource to the company.  By default, every member of staff can be trusted to handle information appropriately and sensitively.  The default position is that a staff member can access information unless there is a specific commercial, legal or ethical reason why the information should not be made available to this individual.

7 -- Every Data Item has one Person or Role as Ultimate Custodian.

Every item of data requires unique and ultimate ownership by a single role and person.  This does not imply that all customers, products or other items of data maintain common ownership, rather it means that a matrix of responsibilities should be managed which ensures that issues or conflicts always have an ultimate point of escalation.

8 -- Establish Measures of Information Governance Success.

The principles of information governance should become Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with project budgets being structured to include an element expressed in terms of information goals.

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Robert Hillard is the author of Information-Driven Business (www.infodrivenbusiness.com) and was one of the original founders of MIKE2.0 which provides a standard approach for Information and Data Management projects.  Robert has held international consulting leadership roles and provided advice to government and private sector clients around the world.  He is a Partner with Deloitte in Australia with more than twenty years experience in the discipline, focusing on standardised approaches to Information Management including being one of the first to use XBRL in government regulation and the promotion of information as a business asset rather than a technology problem.

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