Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

How Big is Your Net? The Importance of Capture Options in Government Document Management

// December 2nd, 2011 // No Comments » // Document Management, Enterprise content management, Government // Terri Jones

Sometimes when we talk about the value of having electronic versus paper information in government, we gloss over the key first step: how to make that paper content electronic in the first place. The size and coverage of the “net” you use is key to creating a transformational document management system.

From my experience, when it comes to capturing information in government, “options” is the name of the game.  It’s important to consider how documents are used within your organization, and the variety of ways that documents can enter that document management solution that is supposed to change your government life. After all, options at the capture stage can go a long way to ensuring your solution will be widely accepted, especially if it other departments can use the solution.

Here’s a short list of things to consider when identifying what capture options you should look for:

1. What kind of documents do you have? Information comes to government in a blizzard – paper, email, fax, large packets, single sheets, forms that must be returned, official correspondence that needs a file copy, and so forth. With so many possibilities, make sure you’re able to capture all of these different types of content, whether they’re already electronic or in paper form.
2. How many documents do you take in? Not all areas of government have the same volume of documents that need to be captured. But they do all have the same goal – capture as many documents as early as possible. Therefore, having high and low volume options for capture that seamlessly feed your document management system is critical to how well information is captured across departments. For a courthouse or a land records office, high-speed scanning with automated indexing is the perfect mix of speed and minimal human interaction. But in your county offices where it’s just a few pages coming in at a time, small scanners can capture identity documents without a need to get up and go to photocopier.
3. Where do you receive documents? It is also important to consider when and where documents are received, again with an eye towards the vastly different ways that government collects and creates documents. The reality is that oftentimes, county offices are in separate buildings or there are convenient locations for their constituents, so you have to be ready to consider how remote offices will scan documents that might be needed in another location. The internet certainly makes this possible, but can your bandwidth support it? Do your capture options include a way to manage when documents are archived so that it can happen at off-peak times? Again, the efficiency gained by a document management system is enhanced by capturing as much as possible as early as possible, regardless of location.
4. What documents do you create electronically? For every electronically-created document, letter, spreadsheet, PDF file, digital photo or digital audio recording, capture can happen as simply as a drag and drop of the file, avoiding the need to print and scan or to create a file copy and then store it in a file cabinet.

Having flexibility in capture offers a lot of benefits, but it all comes down to this: more departments and agencies can share the benefits of one solution, and therefore they also share its costs. And, if you’re able to implement the document management in a phased approach, you can build a system affordably by growing your return on investment with each department that is brought on to the system.

The White House on Records Management: ‘We Can’t Wait’

// November 29th, 2011 // No Comments » // Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Affordable Housing, Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Federal Government, Finance & Administration, Government, Health & Human Services, Human Resources, Justice & Public Safety, Public Works, State and Local Government // Terri Jones

“Records management can’t wait,” President Barack Obama told the federal government agencies yesterday, via presidential memorandum. It’s likely the federal government could learn a lot from state and local government agencies who have already embraced records management. Maybe you can, too.

The president hopes to transform federal agencies and create more transparency. How this will happen is captured in a White House blog post titled “We Can’t Wait: Bringing Records Management into the Twenty-First Century.”

It is a great post, but I believe it’s possible many readers will overlook a small – but important – phrase:

“…The [Records Management] Directive will focus on maintaining accountability to the American public through documenting agency actions; increasing efficiency (and thus reducing costs); and switching, where feasible, from paper-based records to electronic records.”

In those few words highlighted above, the enterprise content management (ECM) community rejoices. Why? Because ECM is a valuable tool for government, and it is an investment that should be made at every level of government, even in this time of severe budget reductions.

You see, the flexibility of a good ECM solution means the solution can become a tool for many government departments and initiatives. Understanding this, thousands of cities and counties across the country have already embraced electronic records and ECM, and have used the solution to meet a number of needs. We can see the result:

• Reduced costs. From eliminating paper and file cabinets to the costs of storing and moving files.
• Reclaiming staff time. No more searching for files, no lost documents, no filing, printing or photocopying.
• Speeding up government. Workflow automation shaves days off of processes; physical paper files replaced with electronic allow more staff to simultaneously access information.
• Connecting documents and data. Easy information retrieval helps make the transition from paper files to electronic records easy and intuitive for users, and requires little or no staff training.

At the same time, the ECM investment lays the foundation for meeting transparency and open government initiatives, while realizing all of the lowered costs and efficiency government organizations need to survive. So, access to records can take place through a website or a kiosk or a computer station at an office, improving constituent service while reducing the staff time needed to fill requests.

The good news for federal agencies is that they need look no farther than the counties and cities who have invested in an ECM solution. Other counties and cities who are considering an ECM solution can similarly find ideas and proven value thanks to the examples of their peers.

Current government ECM users show that creating transparency is just one of the benefits of moving to electronic records. So, while federal agencies may make this transition to meet a presidential memorandum on Open Government, their efforts could end up improving government operations, reducing costs and reclaiming staff time for the important work they do. The proof is in the results of cities and counties who have already moved to include ECM as one of their IT tools.

What Next ??!! – The Art of the Government ECM Roadmap

// October 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // Document Management, Enterprise content management, Government, IT // Terri Jones

Just back from our biggest ever users’ conference and the question on many government end users’ minds is “What next?”

Not surprising in the current “New Normal” climate of risk reduction, cost-cutting and staff squeezes. Even without these dilemmas, the timing and expansion of enterprise solutions has always required thought, diplomacy and planning. The struggles of these end users include delayed and reduced budgets, less appetite for change in the context of reduced staff and the need for quick success in terms of ROI and the application’s dependability. 

So, what next? Here are some ideas about how to pick your next enterprise content management solution expansion :

• Measure the paper. The fact is, paper-based systems are slower and costly to sustain. Tackling departments with the most paper will produce savings of both time and money. It will also produce benefits in terms of better or maintained customer service levels, because the time your staff used to spend printing, filing,photocopying  and searching for documents is recaptured and can now point toward other needs.
• Biggest cuts. It’s likely one or more departments experienced big cuts in budget or staff. If you find yourself looking for the next expansion, it makes sense to address what is likely the same workload despite cuts. In this scenario, you eliminate low-value tasks associated with paper systems and replace them with fast retrieval and no need to print, file or photocopy. That allows remaining staff to work within a smaller budget and recaptures time to make up for staff cuts.
• Compliance burden. My own experience with document management started with the need to produce and store complete documentation for my department. If you have departments that live and die on the completeness of the documentation of processes, they are great candidates for your next expansion. And in the era of reduced staffing, this may save your agency from a difficult audit or monitoring visit. Why? Because the tools offered by document management can reinforce documentation requirements even as the staff avoids some of the low-value tasks discussed above.
• Horizontal application Savvy deployment folks know user acceptance and change management is often at the core of the success of that government IT investment. They also know this is not easy. Picking a horizontal application for a next step not only brings the new investment into every user’s life, it forces change in a productive way. So, it may be that AP or HR are the logical next steps, and using document management to automate some of these processes can really speed the document management adoption rate. . Horizontal applications may be the best place to start because it tells your users document management is here to stay, but you would be doing that within departments that have had some of the highest reported ROIs.
• Deploying a new application. This one thanks to a great end user. Whenever they deploy a new database or solution they integrate it into document management. In that way they make a change at once and the new experience with their solution includes a hot key to bring up the related documents. That’s smart change management.
• Funding. Sometimes the next expansion is about who has the money. The good news is the solution’s  value, your expertise and your experience grows just the same, but the availability of funding can keep your overall progress going, even during difficult budget times.
• The champion. There is no doubt you are facing change management challenges when you propose document management. Why not embrace those with vision,tackle them first and let the good news about document management make its way around the organization, thanks to these champions of vision.

Government end users that are satisfied with their document management solution are always looking for the next deployment. These ideas form the basis for how to decide between multiple options as you move forward to get the most from your document management investment.

The Evolution of ECM and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM, 2011

// October 20th, 2011 // No Comments » // Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT // AJ Hyland

While the stand-out fact in this year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM, 2011, was the 7.6 percent growth in the ECM industry, even in a down economy and as organizations tighten their tech investment belts, what’s more remarkable is the rapid evolution of enterprise content management as a strategic business solution. 

Gone are the days when ECM was little more than a means by which companies transformed paper documentation into electronic information and then organized and disseminated that information to employees and staff. That still occurs, but it is really now only a foundational piece to a much larger solution.

Or, truly, solutions, because every organization is as different as the business content and process challenges they face. You see, it’s about more than knowing where your information is and how to quickly access it. It’s about leveraging that information in a meaningful way so that you can achieve your specific organizational goals, all the while taking care to achieve just the right balance of focus and flexibility in that endeavor.

What do I mean by this?

I’m saying think of your ECM solution holistically – beyond what you want to capture and how you want to capture it. Consider who will access this information. When will they do it and why? Is your audience an admissions staff? Or a business decision maker whose office is in the air or on the road? Is that information critical to keeping your business moving forward, to beating the competition or better serve a constituent?

In other words, are you leveraging your information in a meaningful way? Do you have a protocol in place should your admissions staff get snowed in during the busiest time of year? Can your managers and executives make decisions via their mobile phones whether they’re in Boston or Bermuda?

A strategic ECM solution must have the flexibility to help answer those questions. It must work in concert with other software solutions, to accurately capture, process and quickly distribute information to staff when and where they need it, and connect the content dots that allow organizations to gain the competitive advantage, better serve their constituents – or both.

Strategic ECM vendors will help organizations elevate their game by focusing on speed of deployment, getting organizations up and running faster, putting them ahead of the competition sooner or offering improved services to constituents faster.

After all, the strategic use of ECM is a differentiator for today’s organizations. And there is ample opportunity to become even more competitive using ECM technology.

Mobile ECM: Your Content In Your Pocket

// October 5th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT // Glenn Gibson

Put mobile ECM into the pocket of your employees

The world of computing has changed. Forever.

These days it seems archaic to have to wait until you get home or to the office just to check your email, because now your email is in your pocket. The idea of printing off maps before heading out on a journey seems crazy because GPS on our phone gives us turn-by-turn directions. Lively pop-culture debates over a pint are now a thing of the past, because we can look up the answers on the internet immediately.

Yes, mobile computing devices have changed the world and changed us.  We expect instant access to information from wherever we are. The iPhone and the iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7 and the Blackberry give us this access like never before.

So what does the explosion in mobile computing have to do with ECM?  Everything. 

Think about it. What is one of the primary driving factors behind an organization developing an ECM strategy? The need to get critical business information into the hands of the right people at the right time. That’s what ECM is all about. 

But what if the right people are in the wrong place at the wrong time? What I mean is, what if the people who are responsible for making important decisions, from approving a critical business expense to agreeing to hire the perfect candidate, can’t physically get access to the information and systems they need in order to execute business decisions, simply because they are travelling or not in the office?   

The reality is that these individuals spend a lot of time on the road and out of the office. This lack of real-time access causes bottlenecks in your processes as the decisions have to wait until they get back online. This causes on-the-fly workarounds with emails and phone calls to get someone, anyone, with authority to make the decision. And once that decision has finally been made, it is very difficult to track all the activity that supports it. 

Yup, bottlenecks and workarounds caused when people who play a critical role in business decisions are out of the office have come to be expected as a normal part of business because, until recently, that’s just how it was. There was no other choice.

But, the world of computing has changed. If the ability to access email from anywhere in the world is not only a reality, but expected in today’s world, why is it any different when thinking about your other important business content and processes?

It shouldn’t be. And when you partner with an ECM vendor who understands this, it is not.

Today you can put your ECM content in your pocket. With mobile ECM applications you are able to not only able access your important content, but also participate in business processes, reviewing, approving and denying requests from wherever you are, directly from your mobile device. 

Now it is likely, for many good reasons that you may not want to make ALL your business information available via mobile devices. If mobile access to your information is part of your requirements when you are choosing an ECM vendor, you should look for a vendor which allows you to control what type of content and processes to make available via these mobile devices. You should choose an ECM system that can truly deliver on the promise to get critical business information into the hands of the right people at the right time, wherever they happen to be.

For your business this is both simple and profound. No more waiting to get back to the office. No more driving to coffee shops just to get access to your system to approve a request. No more bottlenecks caused by business travel. No more un-documented workarounds.  

It is that simple. It is that revolutionary. Because now your content is right there in your pocket.

How Document Management Can Help The Compliance-Driven Agency, Part II

// September 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // Document Management, Enterprise content management, Government, Uncategorized // Terri Jones

Last week, I wrote about the characteristics of a compliance-driven agency. This week, I want to connect those characteristics to key elements of document management solutions to illustrate how a document management system can help the compliance-driven agency. 

Compliance is a concept that cuts across government agencies, levels and missions. And, you could argue, the records that demonstrate or describe how decisions were made are the cornerstone of every government. Unfortunately, realizing this lofty ideal comes at a time when every agency is reducing staff or costs or both, and asking how they can sustain and support compliance responsibilities with these reductions.

So, with such wide-ranging and grand responsibilities, how could document management help these agencies?

1. No more filing and photocopying, reduced printing and storage - This is a key efficiency improvement for agencies because these tasks are traditionally considered low-value activities. In fact, they exist because of our reliance on paper. By moving away from paper, we not only save paper and printing costs, we AVOID tasks that do not serve our constituents directly.
2. Central repository allows simultaneous access - When people think about how to “speed up government” one easy way is to remove the need for physical paper files to travel between staff or departments and allow people to access documents for a process. Document management allows simultaneous access, compressing the process timeframe because you no longer have to wait for documents to arrive on your desk to begin review.
3. Multiple retrieval tools and no lost documents - Not losing documents may be the single greatest contribution document management can make to a compliance-driven agency. But what about finding documents? Analysts routinely estimate significant dollar costs and hours wasted as employees search for documents. This can be eliminated with document management. You can create a variety of retrieval options so that it becomes easy and fast, presenting the document in seconds. How fast could your staff move if they could access documents related to the data record they are reviewing in your case management system? And, if they could access that document with a double-click, could they learn that quickly, even while managing their ever-growing workload? With document management, the benefits of no lost documents are only superseded by the speed and flexibility of you and your staff’s retrieval options.
4. Filing cabinets that “identify” missing documents - Many agencies use file checklists as handy reminders of what constitutes a complete file. Sometimes another department entirely is created to test files for completeness after they are assembled by first line staff. While this might address the needs of our funders (and their funding is important!), this is another place where we have committed staff time with little impact on our constituents. What if a document management system was in place that applied those checklists to the documentation in a virtual file cabinet and told the staff what was missing automatically? How much time could this save while enhancing your overall compliance?
5. Exception reporting that supports internal compliance reviews - Earlier I mentioned that many agencies have created internal auditing, quality assurance or compliance departments as a result of the complexities of complying with their funders’ wishes. Document management helps reduce the number of people or hours committed to this function by simple exception reporting. This can take a variety of forms, but a great one is a document management system’s ability to tell you if a document is missing across the files of many or all of your projects or clients. Imagine you have instituted a procedure that requires collecting a new form and you need to collect the form retroactively. After the collection process begins, you can periodically run a report that examines your files and identifies who has not submitted the form. Or, imagine you are using a workflow process that automatically notifies staff of a needed document or when a document is received, and that same workflow “holds” an application until all needed documentation is received. This would allow continuing quality assurance without requiring you to staff it, reducing workloads while enhancing compliance.

And it all starts with document management and the power of that solution to examine your files quietly and automatically while you provide better customer service to your constituents. That is how government will survive the “New Normal”— by improving how it does its day-to-day tasks and letting technology, like document management, take on some of the burden.

Compliance is a theme that cuts across most government efforts. It has been present, and ever-increasing, for so long we under-estimate the effect it has on the allocation of time and resources in government. Government will continue to struggle to fund and staff paper-driven compliance methods created over the years.  Solving this dilemma is easy with document management. And there are many entities out there we can learn from – once we understand that compliance-driven does not have to mean having paper files forever.

How Document Management Can Help The Compliance-Driven Government Agency, Part I

// September 21st, 2011 // No Comments » // Document Management, Government // Terri Jones

Many times, I have written about how document management helps government agencies with specific missions – public works and asset management, courts and justice, health and human services, and so forth. But there are a few themes that cut across most agencies. One of the most important of these is compliance. 

So how do you know if your agency is compliance-driven? Consider the following list and then ask yourself if these are drivers in your agency:

• You receive funding from county, city, state, federal or non-profit entities. When your agency accepts funding from others, it normally comes with a set of requirements that you must follow More importantly, you must diligently document your adherence to those requirements.
• You decide eligibility for a program. Delivering services to your constituents often starts with an application, followed by supporting documents, annual check-ins for continued eligibility and the ubiquitous file checklist. Losing track of these documents starts the process all over again, and worse, it erodes your customer service with delays and requests for resubmitting documents.
• You are audited by outside agencies or funders. You endure annual or more frequent reviews of your files, your processes and whether you adhere to your stated procedures for making decisions.
• You are judged by the completeness of your documentation. Those annual audits include someone reconstructing your decisions and processes by what they see in the files and they have their own file checklist.
• You hold the permanent or historical records for your community. Records management is often a combination of where documents are during a process and, just as important, if not moreso, who is charged with managing them, now and in the future, and what that responsibility looks like.

I worked for compliance-driven agencies during my entire government career. In many ways, my agencies were frozen in time. The programs we ran were developed before the penetration of computers and were set up to manage hundreds of millions of dollars before these dollars were tracked in accounting and data systems. Because of where our funding came from, because of judging eligibility and because of audits by those funders, we pursued, managed and created an impressive amount of paper.

But what happens now, in an era of affordable document management technology and reduced staff? The compliance-driven agency faces some dilemmas!

First, we do not have enough staff to sustain paper-driven systems – the filing, the photocopying, the archiving and even the security, if we have sensitive information.

Second, with reduced staff, we can no longer tolerate the delays in retrieving documents, and this is particularly the case when a decision is questioned during an audit or increasingly frequent public records requests. Now those files, which you are struggling to maintain, are what proves that you did or did not follow regulations, rule or law. If documents are not filed in a timely fashion or are lost due to the pressures of caseload and reduced staff, you could lose funding.

So, the paper that signaled our compliance has created a system we can’t maintain due to funding cuts. And we can’t risk being out of compliance or we will lose even the reduced funding we are receiving. Finally, as we shed staff, many of them with long experience running compliant programs, we lose some of our institutional expertise for compliance, again leaving us with the files that we struggle to maintain as our proof of compliance.

Sounds like a no-win situation. But really, document management can help! Next time, I will highlight key features of document management and ECM and then connect them to the critical challenges of compliance-driven government agencies and organizations.

Counties Lead the IT Way, Part II – The Four IT Priorities for Counties

// August 17th, 2011 // No Comments » // Government // Terri Jones

Last time I relayed some of the discussions and trends from this year’s Center for Digital Government Digital Counties award ceremony. While it may have sounded like county governments don’t have the budget for moving along current IT projects or starting new ones, that wasn’t true at all. In fact, in areas that ran the gamut from replacement cycles to the realities of the “new normal” of more with less, the counties I spoke with were focused on four specific IT priorities now and into the coming year:

1. County finance and administration departments across the country are focusing on replacing their ERP solutions. These solutions are the backbone of their purchasing, contracting and HR technology investments and because government buys in cycles, many of these systems reached the time when the systems either have to be replaced or upgraded. Either way, this requires a major effort from the folks in government who own these solutions.  But they definitely think it’s worth it – they know that upgrade or replacement is necessary to achieve more automation, utilize enhanced compliance tools and connect data and documents for more efficiency. Importantly, these system replacements are also seen as a direct tie to enhanced transparency and open government.

2. Intelligent transportation systems were the second of the four key priorities identified. With GPS systems, smart phone app development, web applications and system notifications, counties are managing traffic with a large range of technology tools to help. Using these tools, they can better manage emergency situations even as they continue to provide daily options to reroute traffic or respond to situations.

3. Healthcare reform, continued need for social services and initiatives like electronic health records are impacting counties, as they are a critical, frontline provider of these services. At this year’s award ceremony, counties were talking about replacing or adding case management capabilities, especially to further improve service delivery and reduce service delivery cost (or to manage workloads with fewer staff).

Similarly, electronic health records can eliminate paper file costs and provide better security for sensitive and HIPAA-regulated information. In addition to these mandates, counties are exploring ways to use online applications to change the way their constituents work with their healthcare providers.

4. Finally, the strong trends for consolidation, information sharing and shared services were discussed within the public safety and justice areas. A top priority for these counties was ways to use technology to further multi-jurisdiction cost-savings efforts – because it would, in their opinion, exponentially increase the efficiencies and cost-savings in the public safety and justice space. In the minds of these counties, police and sheriff’s departments might be combined, standard forms and documents could be developed and shared, and systems for document management and court case management could be shared to reduce the overall cost of these solutions for their individual counties (and cities) that participate in the multi-jurisdictional effort.

If you’re thinking that reduced budget and staffing was prompting significant reconsideration of the way of government in IT, you’re right. But, government is certainly doing all the right things. It’s reevaluating IT, and focusing on that which promotes efficiency of staff (task automation, self-service) and efficiency of the technology itself (system consolidation and shared services) while re-examing the old models of service delivery. By using technology to achieve additional efficiencies and using the current environment to provoke discussions for new ways to govern, counties are leading the way with the next great innovations for government!