Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

The Future of ECM: The Elephant in the Room

// September 1st, 2011 // Comments // Document Management, Enterprise content management // Glenn Gibson

Question: How do you eat an elephant? Answer: One bite at a time I first heard this amusing question six years ago from an ECM expert, Byron Aulick.  He posed this in an educational video series while addressing the formidable challenge of rolling out an ECM solution across an entire enterprise.  Now, while this analogy helped …

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The Mortgage Technology Industry Today: 3 Themes in the Top Service Provider Ranking

// August 31st, 2011 // Comments // Financial Services // Michelle Shapiro

They say change is constant, but for mortgage lenders, that might be the understatement of the decade. Recent years have brought the highest of high and the lowest of lows. Now, every completed mortgage brings a competitive advantage to its lender and increases the lender’s chances for survival. Lenders rely on proven and cost-effective technology to assist them in getting that competitive advantage.

Since the market has started to bounce back, the corresponding trade media, like Mortgage Technology, have acknowledged that more now than ever, lenders need technology – but with no room for error, they also need help identifying what characteristics to look for in any product they pursue.

Being in the industry for quite some time now, I often look to the “top 50” list that Mortgage Technology magazine puts together annually, called the Top Service Provider list.

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Healthcare Communities, Allscripts ACE 2011 and ECM

// August 29th, 2011 // Comments // Healthcare // Jared Blankenship

As I settle into my new role as Hyland’s healthcare marketing manager, I reflected a bit on the bigger picture of my past experiences in the industry.

One healthcare concept that’s always stood out to me is that of “community.” I can think of few words as resonant and universally applicable to healthcare. On a fundamental level, you have the community of people that hospitals and healthcare organizations serve. But beyond that, those organizations themselves constitute a community, as do the professionals committed to the delivery of care and service.

With Allscripts’ annual customer event this week (ACE 2011), I reacquainted myself with its website. Almost immediately, I noticed the prevalence of this community theme. It reflected the idea that, on a more technical plane, every organization maintains a unique, often complex community of software applications.

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Celent report: Credit unions increase core system upgrades

// August 18th, 2011 // Comments // Financial Services // Michelle Shapiro

Ten percent of credit unions looked to upgrade their core banking system last year, according to a recent report by Celent. Historically, the average hovers between four or five percent.

I don’t have to tell you that changing a core isn’t exactly a small undertaking. Converting from an existing core banking platform, or even just upgrading, is a major project that impacts the entire enterprise. So why upgrade outdated legacy systems or consolidate platforms now? The market’s merger and acquisition activity has been really lively, resulting in a reevaluation of the core systems the credit unions have in place.

This report focuses just on the core, but what does this technology shifting mean for credit unions’ other systems?

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

// August 17th, 2011 // 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 a direct tie to enhanced transparency and open government.

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The Datatel and SunGard Higher Education SIS marriage: It’s about more than the SIS

// August 12th, 2011 // Comments // Higher Education, IT // Tom von Gunden

Though seldom witnessed these days, it was once common practice for the minister or magistrate presiding over a wedding to ask if anyone objected to the unification at hand. Except in rare cases (and perhaps only in the movies), the offer to speak up was generally met with silence. By contrast, the recently announced marriage – er, merger – of Datatel and SunGard Higher Education is already resonating in commentaries and conversations across industry trade magazines, blogs and even Twitter.

While not necessarily negative, the responses indicate a certain degree of anxiety about the long-term implications of what some are calling an “arranged marriage.”

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Life without ECM: One credit union’s perspective

// August 11th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Financial Services // Guest Blogger

I often wonder how we at Anheuser-Busch Employees Credit Union survived in a world of paper and microfilm. Employees struggled to find information that was vital to do their jobs. And there was no central storage location to keep content in line.

But here’s what we did have: massive vaults, dusty file rooms and rusty filing cabinets. Our employees had to battle boxes and folders full of current and previous members’ documents to find what they needed. As a result, departmental processes – including lending, member service and HR – slowed down. Finding a single document could take up to five days! Our members deserved better.

Our credit union’s leaders knew we needed a solution to tie departments together, improve member service and ease reports processing at the same time. That’s when we turned to an electronic document management solution.

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Counties Lead the IT Way, Part I – View from the Digital Counties Awards 2011

// August 10th, 2011 // Comments // Government // Terri Jones

A few weeks ago, I sat amongst some of the most tech savvy counties in the U.S. at the Center for Digital Government’s 2011 Digital Counties Awards.

Each year, the Center selects county winners in population categories based on a survey of their IT efforts.

Because these counties span all different geographies and populations, the discussions were a microcosm of the issues facing county government. Based on some incredible conversations with people who are passionate about government IT, here are my “big three” on what is affecting county governments’ use of IT today:

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