Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

Live at OTTC 2012: 5 Ways OnBase Makes Your Life Easier

// September 20th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, Mobile, OTTC, Workflow // Tom Tennant

Before we say goodbye to another OnBase Training and Technology Conference (OTTC) and start planning for OTTC 2013, let’s take a moment to check-in with some friends, our OnBase users and administrators. They’ve spent the week learning from and networking with industry peers and OnBase experts from all walks of life. And they’ve had a chance to share their experience with our enterprise content management (ECM) software solution.

What we wanted to know, though, is how OnBase has made our customers’ lives easier. So we asked. And we got five great answers.

1. “It’s helped our company reduce and, in some cases, eliminate paper.” – John Anderson, senior software application developer, Noridian

We hear this one a lot. After all, paper, by way of applications, resumes, receipts, work orders, invoices, bills, and more, consumes time across an organization because of the way the company interacts with it. Human resources, accounts payable and receivable, facilities management – even the holy grail of all business, customer service – are all affected by the way paper is handled. Slow processing, difficulty retrieving files, incomplete information, duplicate work – all are productivity killers and customer service nightmares for a business just trying to stay competitive. A smart, easy-to-use document management solution can seamlessly collect, organize, and index the multitude of documents and content into a single 360-degree view for smart decision making a streamline process.

2. “We wouldn’t always know where information was. It could have been on anyone’s desk. We had to track down paperwork. Now we scan it, send it to OnBase, and can see right where information is – and where it is in the process.” – Teresa Rayburn, materials coordinator, Flexco

That’s the other thing about paper. It gets lost. Easily. And when it gets lost, so does the information it carries. And information is the lifeblood of a company. A strategic ECM solution should bring clarity to all of your data, electronic and otherwise, and allow for easy tracking of critical documents. That solution should allow for complete document life cycle management, from input through destruction. Documents that are centralized, searchable and, with the right solution, automatically linked to the appropriate account, customer, patient, employee and so on.

3. “I like OnBase so much it’s hard to come up with one example. It’s made our AP process much more efficient. Not only has it streamlined our process, it’s streamlined other processes across the company at the same time.” – Sharon Ricci, finance manager, FM Global

Ricci further explains that the speed and efficiency, with which her office can capture, approve and process invoices extends to her internal clients who would otherwise be waiting for a slower, paper-based process. OnBase automates that business process so that files are shuttled from office-to-office. It’s all accessible with the click of button, and it’s easy to see where information is in that process.

4. “Hyland Software is so passionate about training its user base and is so transparent about the technology.” – Eric Lohr, senior programmer, Sharp Healthcare

Last year we talked a lot about how training and education might be the single most important software investment you can make. That’s why a robust training program, one that encourages customer involvement and customer connection, is vital to the longevity of any technology solution. It also allows companies to become vendor independent – even promotes it – so that a company can attack a solution on its own with confidence and expertise.

5. “OnBase makes my job harder because there’s so much it can do it makes my to-do list long!” – Kim Dale, senior project manager, Northwestern University

A surprising answer, we have to admit! But trust us when we say that Dale’s answer was given with good humor. What she’s talking about is how OnBase offers a wide range of functionality in one core product. Functionality that isn’t cobbled together from separate, disconnected products and doesn’t require custom coding and services costs to grow the solution. It’s tailored for departments but comprehensive for the enterprise, designed to give you what you need today and grow with you over time.

Live at OTTC 2012: Codeless Forms Creation? Yep, That’s Right

// September 20th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, OTTC // Tom Tennant

One of the highlights of the 2012 OnBase Training and Technology Conference was Wednesday’s general session, during which Glenn Gibson, Hyland Software’s product marketing manager, and Colleen Alber, a Hyland Software product evangelist, squared off in a mock debate about the benefits of OnBase 12 to a packed house of Hyland customers, prospects, partners and employees. OTTC is Hyland Software’s annual user event, attracting OnBase users from around the globe to learn, talk and share experiences about all things OnBase.

The session generated scores of laughter – and not just at Gibson’s spectacular kilt. It also produced a fair amount of ohs and ahs, especially when Alber talked about Unity Forms.

Unity Forms in OnBase 12 simplifies the creation of electronic forms. Without any HTML or programming knowledge, you can create forms with advanced functionality in a matter of minutes that, previously, would have taken hours, days or weeks with custom programming. Features such as required fields, data validation, calculations with instant results (such as quantity multiplied by price), and the customization of the form’s look and feel can all be configured in an easy-to-use form designer.

“I’m not a developer and I can rapidly create full featured electronic forms that provide a positive user experience without programming,” Alber said. “It’s that simple.”

It’s not just about ease for the user, either. Those whose job it is to create forms – who have the skill set to code an e-form and do it regularly – benefit from the new functionality as well.

“For example, implementing a simple time-off request form, something with some field validation, field level security, dynamically added fields and calculations, would have easily taken a developer a full day or more to create in the original e-forms product,” explained Alber. “With the Unity Forms designer, he can do the same form in 15 to 20 minutes.” And with OnBase 12, as many as 80 percent of forms can be created in Unity Forms.

The information had folks clamoring to learn more. The Unity Forms session, held in one of the largest session rooms at the conference, was standing room only.

With good reason. Beyond ease-of-use and the time saved creating forms, the new functionality eases a customer’s upgrade path as well. Janet Jenkins, senior business analyst with Cobb County, Ga., noted that on Twitter. “Unity forms doesn’t involve programing. This will make upgrades easier! No need to test forms,” she wrote.

Live at OTTC 2012: CEO A.J. Hyland Shares His Thoughts on Maximizing Your IT Investment

// September 19th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, Mobile, OTTC // Tom Tennant

One conversation that continues to pop up on the show floor at the 2012 OnBase Training & Technology Conference (OTTC) is how companies can maximize their technology investment. And not just their investment in enterprise content management (ECM), but their entire technology investment.

Earlier today, we had the chance to chat with Hyland Software President and CEO A.J. Hyland on the topic. Hyland shared his thoughts, as well as the importance of choosing the right product – and the right partner – to help enhance your tech investment and solve business issues.

“A lot of people invest in a technology that they think is going to get them 100 percent of the way there and realize that it gets them only 70 percent of the way there,” Hyland says. “What they need to do is look across their business applications and determine where those gaps are and if there is something that can make those systems work better together.”

In terms of finding that product, Hyland says it’s important to search for a solution that fits within your IT infrastructure and meets the standards that you’ve set for your company.

“It’s also important to look for a vendor or product that has open standards,” he says. “The more closed they are the more difficult it’s going to be to extend your solutions.”

When searching for a partner to help realize those business goals, partnership is where it’s at, says Hyland.

“Are you at a comfort level with the organization that you feel you’re going to be there with you shoulder-to-shoulder?” he says. “As things change in your organization, is this someone who’s going to grow and innovate with you?”

Hyland also says to reach out to a potential vendor’s customers to learn as much as you can about the company.

“Make sure they feel the same sense of partnership you’re looking for,” says Hyland.

OTTC 2012 Live: Three Choices to Consider when Investing in ECM

// September 19th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, Mobile, OTTC // Kevin Flanagan

Choice is a crucial concept when considering an enterprise content management (ECM) solution. In order to make the most of your technology investment, you want an ECM solution that provides you with both a roadmap toward future growth – but a roadmap that delivers choices, or options, along the way. You need your solution to flexible and fluid, so that you can create solutions tailored to both your business challenges and opportunities.

Three choices you want to make – or three options you want to have – include deployment, user experience and solution growth.

• Deployment Choice: Depending on your business goals or technology budget or IT bandwidth, you want to have deployment choices so that you can make the most out of your ECM investment. You also want the flexibility to change the way you deploy your solution as your needs change over time. So ask any potential vendor if they will let you choose to deploy their ECM solution on-premises, in the cloud or through a hybrid of the two. Make sure you have the ability to easily migrate between deployment types based on what best aligns with your organization today and in the future. Make sure you have choices to fit your needs.
• User Experience Choice: Your employees fill many different roles, with varying responsibilities across a range of locations, devices and operating systems. And as smart devices – phones, tablets – become more prominent in people’s lives, your employees will look for the same choices they have in their personal life in their work life. So a smart ECM solution must allow your users to choose the way they work with their documents and information.  Whether it’s seamless integration with the business applications they use every day, allowing your employees to access the information they need while staying in those applications, or making that information instantly accessible and actionable on their tablet, you want to provide them with a robust, powerful user experience that best facilitates their role.
• Solution Growth Choice: Your business is dynamic, your needs will change and your processes will evolve. If you do not have options to grow your ECM solution, then it will never truly be a solution. So make sure your vendor offers a flexible and easy-to-use ECM solution, one that’s tailored for departments but comprehensive for the enterprise, designed to give you what you need today and grow with you over time. For Hyland Software, that means eliminating custom coding and providing users with configurable solutions by department and for the enterprise. By using simple checkboxes, menus and radio buttons, OnBase allows users to quickly create and expand solutions. In this way, your choices to build, maintain and grow your ECM solution are limitless.

These are just three simple – but critical – choices you must make as you discover your ECM options. But remember, even before you make these decisions, you want to make sure you have the choice to begin with.

Live at OTTC 2012: Choose the Right ECM Community and You’ll Soar

// September 18th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, OTTC // Tom Tennant

When the poet Alfred Tennyson wrote “I am a part of all that I have met” in his epic poem, Ulysses, he was talking about how the power of Ulysses’ greater community shaped both who he was as a person and the successes he had achieved thus far in life.

It might seem like a stretch to suggest Tennyson’s words can extend to an enterprise content management (ECM) solution. But it’s entirely true when you talk about the power of a community of technology professionals.

Having access to a network of people, especially from the same industry, who use the same ECM product to discuss best practices and share ideas on how to grow their solution so that it continues to be an invaluable resource.

And access to that community of users shouldn’t mean going to a forum on some website where you can post a question and hope to get a response. A good ECM vendor should enable customers with the opportunity to engage in multiple ways, both in person and online, through users groups, online forums and events.

Janet Jenkins, senior business analyst with Cobb County, Ga., knows a bit about that. Jenkins sat down with us today during a break at Hyland’s OnBase Training and Technology Conference (OTTC).

Jenkins was asked if she’d like to take on the role of OnBase administrator. Coming from a less technical role, it was a challenge Jenkins was excited to take on. And one she succeeded at because of her ability to connect with other OnBase users on Community, Hyland Software’s online customer destination.

Hyland’s Community provides expert content from dedicated Hyland contributors. It also provides detailed information about our OnBase solutions including reference guides that provide in-depth details about our solutions, changes from release to release as well as solution-specific forums where users can ask questions and share best practices.

Jenkins and her team were one of the first to join Community and, even today, continue to visit the site several times a day.

“There are 10 to 15 different ways you can solve a problem with OnBase,” she says. “Access to Community allows me to see what everyone else is doing, and let’s me share how I’m solving problems, too. You don’t feel as isolated, and you welcome the sharing of information.”

Engaged vendors will empower customers with several ways to connect to fellow users, reducing their reliance on the vendor to create solutions. At Hyland, we have resources at the ready to help troubleshoot and grow our customers’ solutions. But we understand that engaging with peers is also a valuable tool, and we work in collaboration with our customers every day to create a thriving OnBase community.

“There are a lot of really smart people in this world and not all of them are my direct co-workers,” says Kim Dale, senior project manager at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. We caught up with Dale via social media at OTTC. “Connecting with as many of those people can help me learn best practices, tips and potential pitfalls in my technology solutions and to share my own knowledge.”

Dale represents another way technology professionals can network to collectively solve problems and share ideas: social media. A smart vendor will use social media, like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, to connect users with other users.

“I follow Hyland Software on Twitter and am meeting other OnBase users on Twitter as a part of OTTC,” says Dale. “I look forward to being able to reach out to these contacts as I continue to expand my OnBase implementation. I also like Twitter as a way of getting to know people and as an efficient way to solicit answers to specific questions.”

Being a part of a vibrant technology community means you never have to be on your own to figure out how best to utilize your solution or search for support. You have access to information and people when you need them.

And we all need a helpful community to turn to.

Live at OTTC 2012: Choosing the Right ECM Partner Makes All the Difference

// September 18th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, OTTC // Kevin Flanagan

Hardly a day goes by where we are not faced with some sort of choice. There are the simple choices: choosing a dinner menu or whether to hit the snooze button for a third time. Then there are the complex ones. Choices that require critical thought and careful exploration before a decision is made. After all, our choices offer varying degrees of significance and consequence.

Selecting an enterprise content management (ECM) solution is one of those more complex choices. You have to feel confident that the product will provide solutions that address the unique needs of your business. A product that will not only solve today’s problems, but address the future needs of your business as well.

But there’s another choice to make. One that might even overshadow choosing an ECM system. And that is choosing and ECM partner.

You want a partner that goes above and beyond to make sure you not only have the best possible ECM solution, but the best possible experience. From the company’s approach to support to the development of its product to its training methodology, you want a partner that’s going to work hard to give you the solution you want when you want it, and the solution you need when you need it. That’s something we call “customer delight.”

After all, you want to know your ECM vendor considers itself to be your ultimate resource. You need clear and copious lines of communication. And you want that vendor to collaborate with you to enhance the solution you’ve dedicated to help run your business.

More than that, you want a partner who will help you connect with other users of that ECM solution so that you can network, share ideas and discover solutions that your peers have encountered and conquered.  For example, Community, our online destination for Hyland customers, not only provides detailed information about OnBase solutions, it’s also a place where users can discuss needs on solution-specific forums that are monitored by Hyland experts.

Then there’s the OnBase Training and Technical Conference (OTTC).

While OTTC provides you with every opportunity to enhance your OnBase knowledge – whether that’s  learning about a new module, becoming a certified administrator, or uncovering new solutions in your particular industry – it’s real power is the way it strengthens relationships. Thousands of OnBase professionals gather at these events to share experiences and learn together in classes and training sessions.

Without a strong technology partner, you’re ECM solution is in danger of becoming, at best, underused and, at worst, stagnant and expensive. A true partner will, day in and day out, demonstrate ways your solution can adapt to your ever-changing needs and provide you with a community of users ready to make their success your success.

So get ready. It’s your choice to make.

Let’s Talk About the ‘Enterprise’ in ECM

// April 9th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT // Thomas Jenkins

We say it every day: “Enterprise Content Management” or “ECM.” We hear folks throw out words like “enterprise” records management strategy, “enterprise” document management, and “enterprise” capture or delivery models.

But despite all the “enterprise” jargon out there, organizations often find themselves taking a less than enterprise approach. That is, they immediately start off on an initiative of strategy limited to one office, department or division. They make the argument, “We need to increase productivity and see these efficiencies yesterday.”

So we put a solution in place and let it be. But in the long run, the organization or a project management office fails to convey the results to the larger enterprise because they’ve got little invested interest from others outside of their office, department or division – or at the enterprise level.

What happens next? Someone in another office, department or division fails to get their face-time with the project, results aren’t communicated, value isn’t seen, and then they go out and seek an alternative solution or strategy to hopefully realize the same enhancements and see such efficiencies. IT is left supporting multiple applications and different platforms. We hire people to manage individual solutions. We custom code. We pay for maintenance, upgrades and support on several systems. We bring on a business analyst to find out why we’re doing all this. Systems fail, products are sunset. And we’ve now got complex and over-engineered processes and tools cluttering up our day-to-day transactions.       

Whoa!? What happened to our enterprise approach?

And in terms of ECM deployments, now you’ve got multiple ECM systems. And if you haven’t seen it before, now you’ve got multiple lines of business processing and capturing similar documentation in totally different methods. Some users are capturing and classifying directly via Microsoft Outlook. Others are dragging and dropping all over the place. Some are using SharePoint. Remote users still prefer to save documents to their local or shared network drives. And some users are even printing and scanning images back into the ECM system.

If we’re going to talk about streamlining operations and improving efficiencies; tying business and technology together end-to-end; and improving an organization’s ability to collaborate more effectively – those are bigger concepts than just one or two office, departments or divisions can solve. They require participation and a vested interest by all parties. You need to understand the overarching and individual goals across the “enterprise.” Not just wherever the hot button is right now, because with as quickly as markets and strategies can shift, so can enterprise priorities.

So start by taking a more pragmatic, “yes,” “enterprise” approach. Believe it or not, you can always make a new investment in the latest and greatest product or service. However, if you buy into a system or strategy without taking a comprehensive 360 view of how (or if) your users will adopt it, use it, and/or react to it – the benefits and your hard or soft investment in terms of cost and time – may never be realized.

Follow an approach that engages either the entire organization or a select population. Engage more than just local technical experts. Bring in business and subject matter experts, executive or senior leadership, and the frontline employees. Understand what each office, department or division is working on today and what they need to deliver tomorrow. What’s prohibiting them from doing so? What are their challenges? Their goals? And what does long-term program success look like?

So the next time you say “Enterprise Content Management,” or “ECM,” think to yourself are you really talking about Enterprise Content Management? And what can you do to ensure you and your organization are getting the most out of your investment? My answer: think about your approach. Define a strategy and a path for who, what and where to engage. And then you’ll realize the real benefits of what Enterprise Content Management and OnBase can be.

Manual Labor and Capture: The Thorn in the Side of ECM

// March 12th, 2012 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Admissions, Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Human Resources, Insurance, IT, Lending // Glenn Gibson

“Every rose has its thorn.” So croons Bret Michaels in the famous Poison song of the same name.

When it comes to relationships, he has a point. But is it also true of your enterprise content management (ECM) solution? If ECM is the beautiful rose, what is its thorn? 

Two simple – and expensive – words: manual labor.

Yes, after we settle in to enjoy the beautiful return on investment (ROI) of our ECM solution, we soon realize that the labor involved with manually typing document index values (names, addresses, account numbers and so forth) into our ECM system takes a lot of time and effort. It begins to feel, well, thorny. 

Even the study materials for the industry-recognized ECM certification CDIA+ tell us that manual labor associated with scanning and indexing can be the most expensive part of an ECM project.

Why?  Because manual data entry is slow, tedious and error-prone.

And those keyed-in errors can be very costly.

Costly errors in many locations

Much akin to someone misfiling a paper document, badly indexed electronic documents make your information difficult to find later on. This dramatically increases business process costs and can even lead to wrong decisions made due to incomplete information.

Now consider that your ECM system is only one of the places that this information is manually entered.  Duplicate data is often typed into several business systems, often by a variety of people across your organization.  Every time the same information is manually inputted, your risk of error increases.

And that just leads to added costs. Many organizations spend a ton of money on manual labor associated with indexing, but then turn around and spend more money on QA processes to make sure that the information is entered accurately.

So is there any way to extract this thorn from the side of ECM?  Yes, and it’s easy – stop doing manual data entry. It’s just painful.

Option 1:  Add ‘Advanced Capture’ technology to your ECM solution

People are not the only ones who can read and write, you know. Technological advancements allow computers to recognize relevant characters from a page, either typed or hand written, translate these into words, verify that they are correct, and fill in data fields for you.  What’s amazing is that this information can then be used to update ALL your other systems, simultaneously. 

Option 2: Outsource your scanning and indexing.

This option takes the manual labor associated with scanning and indexing off your hands altogether!  Instead of buying and maintaining scanners, and employing people to load them with paper and manually type in the index values, you can simply pay a fee for an organization with a Imaging Services department to do this for you.

Through this process, you send your documents to a central location where the scanning and indexing can be done for you, allowing you to instantly upload the documents and relevant data into your ECM and other relevant systems. 

This option can be a very cost effective approach for converting all those dusty boxes of documents into clean, easily accessible digital images.

So there you have it, there really is no reason to feel the pain of manual labor with your ECM system.  Depending on your business needs, you have two very good options to choose from.

In the end, it seems that Bret Michaels was actually wrong.  When penning those famous words in 1988, he had obviously never heard of the quite beautiful and thorn-less Lady Banks Rose. 

It’s likely that he hadn’t heard of Advanced Capture technologies out-sourced scanning providers either.