Digital Landfill

Eliminating Paper from Processes Improves Customer Response Times by 300%

Today we released a new industry watch research paper, titled “The Paper Free Office - Dream or Reality.” The research finds that removing paper from business continues to be challenging, despite data that shows significant responsiveness and productivity gains in customer service when paper-based bottlenecks are eliminated from business processes.

Speed of response times are also realized by employees working remotely in the field or home offices when the ability to share and search is improved by using digitized content. According to Doug Miles, director of market intelligence at AIIM, “The earlier in the process that capture takes place, the better the transparency and availability the content will have. The data is available to the process faster, and paper forms handling is eliminated.”

Key findings of the research conducted between November 2011 and January 2012 show:

• Paper is beginning to disappear, with 35 percent of respondents confirmed less paper consumption and photocopying.
• 42 percent of scanning and capture projects achieved a payback period of 12 months or less, while 57 percent of projects achieved payback in 18 months or less.
• Mobile and cloud services for scanning and capture are finding early adopters in the enterprise.
• 38 percent of respondents are equipping employees with portable capture devices when not in the office, including portable scanners, smart phones and tablets.
• 20 percent of the largest organizations are committed to a cloud deployment strategy for capture.
• Scanning and capture can seriously improve customer response times - typically between 2 and 3 times faster, but in many cases 5 and 10 times faster.

Despite significant benefits realized by paper-free organizations, some poor habits persist:

• 77 percent of invoices that arrive as PDF attachments are printed, while 31percent of fax invoices are printed and then re-scanned.
• 45 percent of documents that are scanned were completely “born digital”.
• 32 percent of organizations reported an increase in the level of paper consumption and copying.

The full report, “The Paper Free Office - Dream or Reality” can be downloaded from the AIIM web site at http://www.aiim.org/Research/Industry-Watch/Paper-Free-Capture-2012.  If you need more detail, please contact Doug or me or our press contact, Laurinda Hoffman and McKenzie Worldwide (laurindah@mckenzieworldwide.com or 503-475-8815).

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This research has been underwritten by: ABBYY, EMC, IBM, Kofax, and Swiss Post. Here is a bit of background on AIIM and on the sponsors of the report...

About AIIM 
AIIM has been an advocate and supporter of information professionals for nearly 70 years. The association’s mission is to ensure that information professionals understand the current and future challenges of managing information assets in an era of social, mobile, cloud and big data. Founded in 1943, AIIM builds on a strong heritage of research and member service. Today, AIIM is a global, non-profit organization that provides independent research, education and certification programs to information professionals. AIIM represents the entire information management community, with programs and content for practitioners, technology suppliers, integrators and consultants.

About ABBYY 
ABBYY ® is a leading provider of document recognition, document capture, and linguistic technologies. The key areas of ABBYY's research and development include document recognition technologies and applied linguistics. Paper-intensive organizations from all over the world use ABBYY solutions to automate time- and labor-consuming tasks and to streamline business processes. www.abbyy.com. 

About EMC 
EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect, and analyze their most valuable asset—information—in a more agile, trusted, and cost-efficient way. www.EMC.com.

About IBM Enterprise Content Management 
IBM Enterprise Content Management solutions enable the world’s top companies to make better decisions, faster. As a market leader in content, process and compliance software, IBM ECM delivers a broad set of mission-critical solutions that help solve today’s most difficult business challenges: managing unstructured content, optimizing business processes and helping satisfy complex compliance requirements through an integrated information infrastructure. www.ibm.com/software/data/ecm.

About Kofax 
Kofax plc is the leading provider of capture driven process automation solutions. Kofax solutions provide a rapid return on investment by automating information intensive processes and by managing the capture of information in a more accurate, timely and cost-effective manner. Visit www.kofax.com.

About Swiss Post
Swiss Post Solutions (SPS), a division of Swiss Post, offers a comprehensive range of document and business process outsourcing services. With 7000 people working across Europe, North America and Asia and with access to an extensive partner network, SPS is able to provide its clients with on, near or off-shore document capture and processing options for automating business processes. Visit www.swisspostsolutions.com.

 

 

What do you need to know about Information Capture?

Here's a short primer on Information Capture from our Information Certification educational videos (they're free! -- and feel free to embed them on your own web site!)

• Information Capture Types of Capture -- http://youtu.be/FzKEOggpSPk
• Indexing Strategies -- http://youtu.be/K-li0U3diEg
• Capture Planning and Preparation -- http://youtu.be/cK_M1rf4798
• Interoperability and Integration Techniques 1 -- http://youtu.be/rDKr1tW4k4E
• Interoperability and Integration Techniques 2 -- http://youtu.be/sUtHH7XHbgk
• Compression Techniques and Formats -- http://youtu.be/6f8r_ZCeETM
• Capture Process Mapping and Shared Drive Cleanup -- http://youtu.be/agXTXpBLCDE

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Are you interested in becoming a Certified Information Professional?  Here's how...

Have you made your plans to attend the AIIM Conference?

 

What the heck is AIIM is up to re Information Certification?

The following is a good presentation by my colleague Atle re what we are up to with our information certification program.

I took the test before Thanksgiving secretly without telling my staff -- In case I failed.  (Note: Given that the development process has been ISO consistent, I have not been privy to the development process.)  

I won't say I got an "A" but I did pass!

So get in on the ground floor.  The educational videos are great and can walk you through the content. 

A few quotes to illustrate why this certification is so needed...

• The vast majority of organizations see the need to manage information as an enterprise resource rather than in separate "silos," departments or systems, but they don't know how to begin to address the challenge, as it is so large...Professional roles focused on information management will be different to that of established IT roles...An "information professional" will not be one type of role or skill set, but will in fact have a number of specializations.  (Deb Logan and Regina Casonata, Gartner)
• The IT worker needed by businesses … for the future needs to be multi-skilled – with a mixture of technical skills combined with strong business and communication skills. (World of Work, 2011)
• …most executives perceive it [RM] as an administrative cost center…the strategic relevancy of the records management function has taken a slight dip… (ARMA/Forrester, 2011)
• There are not enough people with the necessary skills to help companies capitalize on the opportunities that data provides (2011 EMC Study)
• IT is not providing a sustainable competitive advantage, just as having electricity does not provide a sustainable advantage when everyone has it. (Coldstreams.com 2011, reporting on IEEE seminar)
• 44% of records managers are not included in the IT strategic planning process, including requirements definitions and vendor selection – up from 35% in 2009 (ARMA/Forrester, 2011)
• The inability of our profession to come to grips with the explosion of electronic records will spell the doom of the profession. In many organizations, that omission has made us irrelevant. (Patrick Cunningham, CRM, 2010)
• The problem is that not enough people know how to use the new tools of the Internet, mobile, and cloud computing. The workforce as a whole does not have the right mix of skills. (Maurice Mugambe, 2011)

25 years ago, people would have viewed the idea of professional certification in project management as a lunatic idea.  Hundreds of thousands or certifications later, it is clear that there is a definable body of knowledge associated with project management.  The profession of project management is recognized as key to the success of organizations. We believe that the concept of an "information professional" is a concept whose time has come.  Yes, it is in its early stages.  But it is coming.  Join us.

New Information Certification

View more presentations from Atle Skjekkeland

What do you need to know about Master Data Management and Text Analytics?

Here's a short primer on MDM and Text Analytics from our Information Certification educational videos (they're free! -- and feel free to embed them on your own web site!)

• Tools and Tasks - http://youtu.be/nAswoGOq5x4
• Data and Information Types -- http://youtu.be/DhBflxO6GZY
• Data Quality and Information Governance -- http://youtu.be/C2pa7VM6uW0
• Text Analytics -- http://youtu.be/5r4-wrkfNLc

 

 

 

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Are you interested in becoming a Certified Information Professional?  Here's how...

 

 

Have you made your plans to attend the AIIM Conference?

Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Digital Landfill "Prognosticator of the Year?"

Announcing -- drum roll please -- the Digital Landfill Prognosticator of the Year competition.

Here's your chance for fame, fortune, happiness, or [you fill in the blank].

I'd like to use the "wisdom of the experts" validated by the "wisdom of the crowd" to determine the top ten content and information management trends that will matter to information professionals over the next 12-18 months.

Here are the rules...

Identify what you think is the most important trend in the marketplace of concern to information professionals. Do so with the mindset that your trend will be evaluated by the "wisdom of the AIIM crowd" against two criteria...

1 -- How IMPORTANT or SIGNIFICANT is the trend?

And perhaps even more important...

2 -- How UNIQUE or INSIGHTFUL is this trend? (i.e., it makes you think, "Gee, I hadn't thought of that.")

Your submission should be made directly via a comment on this blog and should be in this format -- The trend itself, crystalized into 10 words or less, followed by NO MORE than 50 words providing whatever explanation you choose.

The submissions are due NO LATER THAN December 29 January 6.  They will be circulated for validation and evaluation to the AIIM community the first second week in January, and the winners will be announced the 2nd 3rd week of January.

Here's what the winners get...

1 -- Publication of the trend in special issue of Digital Landfill, augmented by lots of tweeting.

2 -- A link back to your site.

3 -- A cool badge to use on your site.

4 -- The praise of millions.  Er - thousands.

Let the submissions begin!

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You might also be interested in...

Becoming a Certified Information Professional.

This cool e-book for the holidays.  Your kids will love it.

 

Check out these expert blog posts on #ECM, #ERM, #socbiz, and #SharePoint

Cloudy with a Chance of Success by Chris Walker, Senior Principal Consultant for Oracle Consulting

ERM ECM

This post was inspired by this article on CMSWire by @billycripe and by the Cloud themed tweet jam hosted by CMSWire on November 17, 2011. As usual this is just my opinion. I’m not an expert... read more

Best Practices for SharePoint Cultural Change Management - From the SharePoint Consulting Trenches by Errin O'Connor, Founder & CEO for EPC Group.net

Social Business ERM ECM SharePoint

Introduction I wanted to share with the AIIM Community the overview of a White Paper that myself and my team at EPC Group.net have been working on by studying approximately 35 enterpri... read more

Virtual Chaos by Bob Larrivee, Director/Industry Advisor for AIIM Professional Development Center

Social Business SharePoint ECM

As I attend more virtual events, I have come to the realization that not all organizations and not every individual is meant to do this, or, they need more and better training on how to do it pr... read more

Too Much Too Soon: Incremental Release Of SharePoint Functionality by Nick Inglis SharePoint Program Manager for AIIM

SharePoint

I’ve had a lot of offhand conversation about user adoption of SharePoint lately and what I’ve found is that when companies give all of the functionality of SharePoint at launch they struggle mor... read more

You Can’t Start with SharePoint by Daniel Antion, Vice President Information Services for American Nuclear Insurers

SharePoint ECM

I recently had the opportunity to speak to a group of people at the University of Connecticut about ECM and SharePoint. One of the things people tell me that they like about my presentations, an... read more

#CMSAnthems -- A Musical Interlude for Your Day by Bryant Duhon, Editor for AIIM International

ECM

ECM/CMS/WCM/WEM/DM/EDRM/insert favorite acronym here project got you down? Take a break and recharge. Here's the tweet the started it all. Rest are in reverse order. Enjoy pmonks2:09... read more

The Value of Social in the Enterprise by Christian Buckley, Director, Product Evangelism for Axceler

Social Business SharePoint

It's easy to get caught up in the movement toward social applications for the enterprise. End users are driving it. They expect it. So much about the way that we connect, the way we interact wit... read more

Factors that drive solid records management by Johannes Scholtes, Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer for ZyLAB

ERM Social Business SharePoint

Legal obligation Records retention always carries with it some type of legal obligation, regardless of the type or size of an organization. The de facto standard for how records-retention re... read more

Planning Syndication in SharePoint by Chris Riley, ECMp, IOAp, Product Manager / Product Evangalist for cloudshare

Capture SharePoint ECM

Of all the cool new features in SharePoint, as it relates to Enterprise Content Management, probably the best is the new Content Type Hub feature. In the past managing content types was pain... read more

 

Some #social, #local, #mobile presentations you may have missed...

OK, here they are.  Check 'em out.

For those whose email servers screen out embedded content, the presentations are first listed as links...(I'll be posting more from my colleagues next week)...As usual, feel free to borrow with attribution...

• Content Opportunities in Revolutionary Times
• What is an information professional?
• How Can Social Technologies Be Used to Drive Processes and Innovation?
• World Paper Free Day
• If SharePoint is Your Answer, Do You Khow What Your Question Is?

Content Opportunities in Revolutionary Times

View more presentations from John Mancini

What is an information professional?

View more presentations from John Mancini

How can social technologies be used to drive processes and innovation?

View more presentations from John Mancini

World Paper Free Day -- Oct 27

View more presentations from John Mancini

If SharePoint is your answer, do you know what your question is?

View more presentations from John Mancini

5 myths about document capture

[As is the case with our 8 things series, the opinions expressed in the 5 myths guest columns are those of the guest contributor and not necessarily mine or AIIM's.  This guest post is by Bill Galusha from EMC. As usual, contra perspectives welcome.]

Myth #1: Desktop scanning works well enough for digitizing my paper documents

Reality: Digitizing your paper is really just a small piece to the solution and does provide some value, but the scope of your business problem will determine whether or not a simple desktop capture solution is going to do the job.  For small organizations or businesses that are looking to do a simple back-file document conversion project, a basic capture system might satisfy their requirements.  But for mid- and large-sized organizations, the requirements are often more complex and require advanced document automation, distributed capture, and connectivity with a host of business systems.

In this case, organizations need to consider an intelligent enterprise capture solution that delivers a full range of capabilities including the ability to capture documents from anywhere within the organization, automatically connect information to your business systems, and deliver both scalability and high availability for those mission critical processes.

It is time to think big and bold, and get beyond simple scan and archive. Doing so has the potential of bringing significant benefits in the form of operational cost savings, streamlined business processes, and improved productivity.

Myth #2: Intelligent document recognition sounds great, but it is too expensive to implement

Reality: Simply making a decision based purely on price is not always the best choice. In the case of intelligent document recognition, customers receive a significant return on investment, often driving value that is several multiples larger than the purchase price. As Brian Babineau stated in an Enterprise Strategy white paper, The Strategic Value of Information Capture, “The question is not whether an information capture solution will provide an ROI; it’s how big it will be.” 

Depending on the business requirements – volume of paper, variety of documents and amount of data being captured, operating budget constraints, how time sensitive documents are, and importance of information – you can quickly understand if advanced capture capabilities like intelligent document classification and data extraction is something you really need.

When you have established that there is a business case for intelligent document recognition, the ROI can be significant. Take for example, an investment and asset management company, who is intelligently classifying and capturing data from 5,000 mail items (40,000 pages daily) which includes deposit documents, applications, and other financial related documents. By taking advantage of the advanced capture capabilities available to them, they require 30% less staff in their document services group, and are saving 1.1 million annually from decreased maintenance, capital, and labor costs.

Myth #3: We invested in capture years ago; we’re doing as much as we should be doing with scanning.

Reality:  Remember, when you bought that old station wagon back in the 1970’s, you thought it was the best family investment you could have made at the time. If we fast forward to today, we now have the minivan and other cars geared towards families. These cars are more economical in terms of fuel efficiency, longer lasting, safer, better for the environment, more options, and so on.

Like cars, software technology does not stand still rather software is constantly advancing and getting better. A case in point are advanced document and data captures solutions that can automatically identify hundreds if not thousands of different document types and extracting data at a very high confidence resulting in lower costs and more efficient processes. Today, many businesses are choosing to reinvest in better and more advanced capture technology and replace systems that have outlived their benefits. Why replace what has worked for years? Simply put it makes your processes become more efficient, less costly, and directly impacts the services you are able to deliver.  

Take a look at Canada’s largest credit union and you will find that by replacing an aging capture system, the credit union has cut document preparation and data entry by 50%. Just imagine being able to reduce data entry by half - you would be able to do more with less, or reduce your operational budget. It is no wonder why analysts like Gartner, IDC, Forester, and others see document imaging as one the safest IT investments a company can make.

Myth #4: Paper is a problem of the past; our company is committed to electronic communication and forms

Reality: This is definitely one of the best myths that I’ve heard over the years. But the fact remains, paper is still used to support critical business operations. According to a recent AIIM Industry Watch Report, the consumption of paper and number of photocopies is still growing in 27% of organizations, and 39% of organizations are seeing a decrease somewhat.  If you posed the same question to employees in an industry like government, chances are the use of paper is much higher.

There are several reasons why paper is likely to continue to remain important in businesses including the fact that much of the paper businesses receive comes from outside of the business, which means that you have little control over it. Other reasons include industries like government must support paper as an accessible way of doing business, paper often supports an electronic process, and some document driven processes remain very complex making it difficult to flip a switch and go all electronic.

While the use of paper will most certainly continue to decline over the next decade, our best recommendation to businesses is don’t try and boil the ocean when it comes to changing up your business processes. Look for ways to convert paper into digital information, and connect the content with existing and new electronic processes. 

Myth #5: I’m just not scanning enough paper to be interested in enterprise capture.

Reality: This goes back the first myth in which some companies think scanning paper is “good enough” and that enterprise capture is more than they need.  Maybe this is true if you are a small business where you have only a few hundred documents a day, but for any mid to large size company, basic scanning is not good enough.

In fact, enterprise capture means more than just high volume document capture. It is about supporting distributed capture, intelligently identify documents and extracting data, and connecting information to many different systems. Whereas in the past, capture was primarily used for digitizing and archiving content; today, capture plays an important role in streamlining critical business processes likes claims, new account opening, deposits, taxes, criminal case records, and many others. In these cases, processing information fast and with the least amount of resources is what most companies set their sights on.

Go cheap and settle for a much smaller ROI, and you will likely be disappointed. 

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About the Author:  Bill Galusha joined EMC in January 2007, and is a Principal Product Marketing Manager for the Captiva intelligent enterprise capture solution. Mr. Galusha has 20 years of experience in marketing and managing various software products including document capture, eForms, and business process management. Prior to joining EMC, Mr. Galusha held a variety of senior product marketing and product management positions at Cardiff Software, Mitek Systems, and Alignent Software. 

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Have you signed up for the new AIIM Conference March 2012 in San Francisco? For solution providers, almost all the premium slots are sold - get moving! For attendees, mark your calendars!

 

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Other "5 myths" posts...

5 myths about content ROT

5 myths about collaboration

5 myths about the paperless office that hinder Document Management adoption

5 myths about working with information in the 21st century

5 myths about records management

5 myths about enterprise social media

5 myths about SharePoint records management

5 myths about electronic document management for small business

5 myths about collaboration in the enterprise

5 myths about document automation and electronic document creation

5 myths about ECM ROI

5 myths about document management

5 myths about the CMIS standard

5 myths about SharePoint

5 myths about taxonomy and SharePoint

 

 

Q3 results are in - Top AIIM expert blog posts and Digital Landfill posts

It's time for the glamour competition among the AIIM expert bloggers and Digital Landill bloggers.

The top 10 posts in the third quarter!

A comment before I trigger a slew of Twitter comments both pro and con about SharePoint.

1. We (AIIM) don't select the topics.
2. We (AIIM staff) don't click like maniacs on SharePoint topics while at home at night to try and drive up the traffic.
3. Yes, I know that the time boundaries do create a bit of a bias for those posts at the beginning of the quarter vs. the end of the quarter.

With those caveats, here are the results...

Here are the top 10 posts for the AIIM Expert bloggers:

1. 5 myths about SharePoint records management
2. Is SharePoint 2010 really ready for ECM?
3. Creating an ECM organizational structure - building your team
4. The truth about folders
5. It's the users - an old story repeated many times
6. Developing a hybrid SharePoint 2010/ERM/ECM platform (SPaaS)
7. User profile list in SharePoint 2010
8. A tweet is a record
9.  SharePoint - Where to begin - Play Legos
10. eDiscovery and records management - a perfect storm?

And on the Digital Landfill site...

1. What the hell is Google+? - Here's an answer
2. 8 reasons SharePoint 2010 looks like a true ECM system
3. 5 myths about taxonomy and SharePoint
4. 5 myths about records management
5. 5 myths about the paperless office that hinder document management software adoption
6. 5 myths about SharePoint
7. 37 really cool statistics about social media
8. 5 myths about the CMIS standard
9. 6 presentations you should look at if you don't believe that mobile changes everything
10. 8 steps of the ISO/TR 15489 records management methodology

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Have you signed up for the new AIIM Conference March 2012 in San Francisco? For solution providers, almost all the premium slots are sold - get moving! For attendees, mark your calendars!

Here's one reason why the economy is so screwed up...

A bit of a personal post today, but I can't help myself.

If anyone wants to see why it is taking this economy so long to recover from the financial meltdown, here's my suggestion -- refinance your home, and then think a bit about what this one process says about the efficiency of information management and the legal and regulatory obstacles we have created around things that should be simple.  And think about how utterly disconnected the people in the big white house and the pretty white dome about 25 miles from here (of both parties) are from the reality of what actually creates economic value.

Here are the details.

• We have been in our home -- our only home -- for 16 years.
• The value of the home is roughly 2X what we paid for it, even after the past few years. We've been fortunate, and I know that.
• We have about 10 months left on the mortgage -- yahoo! (the exclamation, not the company).
• The original note on the home was with Countrywide; the note was bought by another company that shall remain nameless about 10 years ago.
• We have near perfect credit and no debt. Knock wood.

I don't say this to brag -- we've been lucky as well as frugal -- but as context to what follows.

• We decided that we would like to take a small amount of money out of the house (about 8% of the property's value) to reinvest in some capital improvements (as I said, the house is 16 years old).
• We decided the best way to do this was to refinance the small amount remaining from the original note plus the additional capital funds, for a total new loan equal to about 12% of the value of the house.
• And we decided to do this, for simplicity's sake, with the same aforementioned company that we have been faithfully and on time making payments to for over a decade, and who likely ought to have some remote idea of the property details and information that set the context for the original transaction. 

First came the ceremonial parade of documents.  Our past two W-2s. The two most recent pay stubs. A copy of our homeowner association docs. A copy of our homeowners policy. A copy of the original survey for the property. A release form to get our past two tax returns from the IRS. Contact information for AIIM to verify my employment (Felicia, please verify when they call).  

Then, an actual in-person appraisal.  A lady came to our house and measured it (hmmm, now why not just look at those original documents?), and went room by room taking measurements and pictures. I imagine all of this useless and redundant information will wind up as electrons in some inaccessible content silo somewhere for when we ultimately sell the house.  I am hoping the pics will not wind up on Facebook because I didn't realize the lady would take pictures and I didn't have time to clean up.

Again, at the risk of repeating myself, this is to review the credit worthiness for someone who has been in the same job for 16 years and lived in the same house for the same period. Who has been a customer of the people issuing the new loan for a decade. Who has good credit. Who was looking for a refinance equal to only about 12% of the value of the property.

How did things get so messed up relative to information management in the financial services industry and the legal and regulatory framework surrounding simple financial processes that the loan officer at the bank couldn't approve this in 5 minutes?  My guess is that all of this complexity is a well intentioned effort to curb the "abuses" of the past.  But the net result of all this incredible inefficiency is a huge drag upon our collective productivity and future growth.  

The loan officer had my credit report. There must be something about all the details of my property buried in the bank's information silos. After all, they've been a partial owner with me of this very same property for 16 years.  Relative to the current value of the property, how about somebody just runs a Zillow and/or looks at the recent sales in the area?  How about based on all the accumulated information about me and my property that is pretty accessible a knowledge worker makes an informed judgment on the spot that a loan for 12% of a property's value to a long-term customer does not require a parade of documents to choke a horse? How about we do something productive with all this wasted effort?

Case management.  Case management.  Case management.

OK, I've vented.