Tag Archives: ECM

The SharePoint effect

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‘SharePoint is ubiquitous’. Ubiquitous (adj.) is defined as ‘Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent’.

Microsoft has certainly invested heavily on marketing SharePoint, but they have also invested heavily in Zune.  Why is SharePoint an unbelievable success and Zune….well, isn’t?

People might dispute when SharePoint truly became a legitimate ECM offering, but I would have to say that 2010 was a sincere “coming out” party for Microsoft SharePoint Server.

First, from the product development perspective specifically, Microsoft released a major overhaul of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 with SharePoint 2010 this year which incorporated many of the ‘must-have’ features for a true ECM solution such as List Validations and Document IDs.  Basically, and you would think this should have been obvious, List Validations means that administrators can enforce metadata rules with commonly used document capture techniques such as hidden columns, no duplicate values and column validation conditions.  While Document IDs are basically a persistent/permanent unique identification number assigned to a documents in SharePoint.  Meaning that if they are moved around within SharePoint site collections they can always be accessed by a special URL.

Secondly, Microsoft has done a wonderful job of building their SharePoint Ecosystem and, therefore, has the support of many complimentary software and hardware vendors to promote SharePoint ECM.  Generally speaking, I think just a few short years ago SharePoint was being wrongly promoted as the ‘the one-stop ECM shop’ for everything content management.  This was clearly misguided as SharePoint has many good qualities, but from an ECM perspective had many more deficiencies than it did useful features.  One obvious major deficiency even to this day is there is no native document capture, or scanning directly, into SharePoint without third-party document scanning solutions.  It’s clear that Microsoft has changed their tune on the promotion of SharePoint and now embraces the SharePoint ecosystem.  It seems that ‘enhancing the SharePoint’ experience by enabling integration to the SharePoint platform is more of a priority than it originally was as evidenced by the major turn-out and interest at the “SharePoint Partner Pavilion” at AIIM 2010 earlier this year in Philadelphia.  Complimentary vendors offering best-of-breed applications such as document capture and BPM (Business Process Management) to the SharePoint platform were nearly stampeded in their respective booths and kiosks with customers interested in product demonstrations or eager for more information about their respective offerings.


No longer do traditional ECM software vendors dismiss SharePoint as a weak solution.  Rather these long-standing ECM vendors now have complementary product development and marketing strategies because of the overwhelming interest in SharePoint is real and to deny the SharePoint effect.

I think in years past we’ve certainly heard more and more discussion about the practicality of using SharePoint for ECM but I believe for the most part it was early-adopter IT departments or organizations on a tight budget that were actually using SharePoint.  No longer is this the case.  Organizations and businesses of all sizes from small companies to large enterprise are deploying, investigating and building upon the SharePoint/Office platform.  But what is driving this demand?

Simply-put, if you make something accessible and ease to use then whatever it might be, it stands a good chance of adoption.  This is especially true when it comes to technology.  For users to learn SharePoint is not too unlike software applications they are already familiar with using such as Internet Explorer, Word, Excel or Outlook.  Since users already have some level of comfort using these applications, extending the capabilities of these desktop applications to now store electronic documents in SharePoint is probably one of the most effective ways to get users to accept and, more importantly, embrace change.

As always I appreciate the time you’ve spent to read this posting about ‘The SharePoint effect’ and how a major IT company such as Microsoft being involved in our once niche industry is helping drive adoption of technology we all know is good for business financially, terrific for the environment and improves our lives through more efficient processes.  I welcome comments, feedback and/or constructive criticism.  Please feel free to click either “The ‘No Folder Zone’” graphic below to read about one of the first trends that changed the Document Capture landscape forever of click the ‘Trends towards Network Scanning’ graphic below to read about the third trend witnessed in 2010 that changed the Document Capture landscape forever.

-Kevin

Capturing Opportunity, Technology = Positivity

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Kevin NealI am very fortunate and blessed to be where I am now with my career in the document capture and enterprise content management (ECM) industry. I would not probably have planned it this way but it has turned out to serve me and, more importantly I would hope, those whom I’ve work with well. I have had the honor of being asked to blog a few entries for AIIM’s new ‘document capture’ community and I would like to take this initial post to share a little bit about myself, Kevin Neal.

First, and as full disclosure, I work with Fujitsu as a Product Marketing Manager for our document scanners [Updated 12/5/13: I no longer work for Fujitsu]. That being said, I consider myself a well-rounded technologist based on my business experience rather than a “marketing guy”. You will find my writing and thoughts to be honest and sincere.

I have worked in the document image processing (DIP), errrr ummm, document imaging management (DIM), errrr ummm, I mean ECM industry for over 21 years now. I’ve seen the industry change (more than just industry acronyms) and evolve over these years into something that is now top-of-mind for organizations and even individuals alike instead of being an expensive, niche, hard-to-understand and difficult to deploy technology. I have a dry sense of humor and I can be quite sarcastic so I’m sure that you will sense these Kevin Neal-ism’s in my writing so I apologize in advance. I hope that I can contribute real value to this industry based on my work experience and perspective gathered over these years.

So, twenty-one years ago, in 1989, I started in this industry with “first-hand” experience (literally) observing document scanning technology and working with leading vendors such as ViewStar, Calera, Caere, Xionics, LaserMaster, TDC, Keyfile, Watermark, Cornerstone, Artist Graphics and others that have since been acquired and molded into new current leading ECM vendors. This “first-hand” experience was me working in the shipping and receiving department at Law Cypress Distributing Company so it doesn’t sound as glorious as I spun-it in the first sentence, but it was an introduction to the technology and vendors none-the-less. I was quickly promoted to Inside Sales at the Company where I helped support our sales team. I also worked with the marketing team to create our first print catalog (yes, print catalog – remember Al Gore was still inventing the Internet in those days). In retrospect I look back on that as an extremely valuable project because I became familiar with the different parts of a document capture solution and how they fit together and complement each other. In addition to the warehouse and inside sales positions I held at the Company I also managed the Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) and evaluation departments and this experience enabled me to test and troubleshoot all sorts of imaging equipment which was another invaluable experience. I left Law Cypress in 1993 only to return in 1999 but in a completely different capacity, as their Network Administrator.

During this time period between stints at Law Cypress, I held various sales and marketing positions at Bell Microproducts and International Computer Graphics, both of which have since been acquired. I was very proud of the success at both companies and it gave me great perspective on how overwhelming understanding even the basics of document capture and imaging can be for someone who are unfamiliar with this technology. You see even though both Companies sold IT products, document imaging was such a departure for our people internally as well as our customers that it took a lot of patience to eventually realize this success. This patience and trying to explain very technical things in a easy to understand fashion is what I gained most from this experience and I try to share in a similar matter to this day.

Fast forward to around the 1996 -1999 timeframe. I found myself completely out of the document capture business, yet still involved intimately with technology. Quite honestly I was frustrated with our industry at the time. Why? While the industry was growing and the technology was becoming better the truth is it was too expensive, too complicated to implement, too sophisticated to learn and way too niche. There were no big name IT players helping drive adoption of our technology an most of the technology was cutting edge type products only being embraced by true early adopters http://www.apte…net/. I don’t think the likes of Microsoft, Google, IBM, Adobe and others truly appreciated the value of “enterprise content”. Of course nowadays, each of these vendors has woven their products and services tightly into the ECM landscape through a series of acquisitions or flurry of product development recently which are directly related to document capture and/or managing business content. During these few years out of the document capture industry I worked as a consultant for a small company doing network installations and troubleshooting. Unbeknownst to me at the time this would turn out to be extremely valuable in my current position due to the fact that network-attach peripherals such a network scanners and multifunction devices seem to be all the rage. In conjunction to working as a consultant I also started my own web development company where I learned, mostly the hard way, many technical things not specific to document capture but are closely related.

As I mentioned earlier in this post I returned to Law Cypress in 1999 as their Network Administrator managing both the computer network and telephone system. I managed the network for the corporate location as well as several remote offices. Again, I could not appreciate how valuable this experience was at the time but, in retrospect, isn’t cloud computing somewhat similar to managing infrastructure, applications and communications over a network (internet)? Yes, I think the concept is somewhat similar and fortunately I can fall back on this experience for a basic understanding of concepts although the underlining technology might be different. It’s helped me to have a solid foundation of technical understanding. This experience has also given me great respect for the challenges of managing IT infrastructure. This is one of the reasons that I preach ease-of-use as a priority for vendors and one of the reasons we must strive as an industry to develop products that are highly functional, yet easy to use. IT departments know that they want to, and should, deploy document capture technology for the obvious benefits but most simply do not have the time or resources to add complication to their already difficult jobs.

I didn’t intend for this blog to be an summary of my entire business career but I did want to provide insight and background on myself. I think it’s important that readers of my posts understand I am speaking from experience and I can respect how document capture technology can affect, either positively or negatively, organizations. If an organization is attempting to change their whole way of doing business from paper-based process to electronic process this is not something to be taken lightly. A successful document capture and ECM strategy can drastically help organizations be more efficient, cut costs and improve process. While an unsuccessful implementation could become a burden with terrible consequences.

I hope you enjoy reading my, as well as my fellow bloggers, posts. I am always open to constructive criticism. I’m not always right – believe it or not – and I’m always willing to have a healthy debate about any topics. I look forward to your feedback and comments.

In summary, I hope you can appreciate my perspective and this is why I remain extremely positive in these challenging economic times. Because technology that improves efficiency, cuts costs and helps improve process can only be a good thing (when well understood) and that’s what we hope to deliver at http://www.aiim.org/Community/Blogs.

 

Sincerely,

Kevin

Technology = Positivity

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Abstract

Despite the current economic situation and unprecedented turmoil in the financial markets, I remain extremely positive for the future. In particular, I continue to pay close attention to IT (Information Technology) spending and try to predict whether it might have a positive or negative impact as it relates to the industry I work, document scanning and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions. This might sound a bit self-centered to those that might not know me well and had stumbled across my blog but I can assure you this is not the case. I deeply care about others and worry about the near-term future for those that had been negativity impacted by the unmanageable financial greed by a small group of individuals that has caused such misery for us ‘normal’ folks.

My philosophy, however, is as follows:

You have to take care of yourself first, put things in perspective, get a plan, work harder, work smart and know that you can only help others one person at a time. In other words, as hard as you might try, you can’t change the world overnight. It’s like building a skyscraper, you have to create a solid foundation with solid blocks at the core of the building or else everything you are working to establish could eventually come crumbling down.

So why do I remain positive for the future in spite of such negativity? Am I trying to fool myself? No. Is this the new Administration with their positive attitude? No. Is this what some book suggested individuals do in tough economic times? No, although I have read about this strategy and believe having a positive attitude is the right thing to do for yourself and, more importantly, others this is not the case either. After all, I’m a realistic as well and I think being positive for being the sake of being positive is not only phony, but it’s also transparent and insincere. Be real, accept the facts and deal with it. The reason for my positive attitude is simple, Technology.

One disclaimer before I try and explain myself. My blog is new and you might, or might not, know my personality. Before I go on a diatribe about a particular topic I would like to share a little insight about myself and why I think the way I think. It’s not about me, per se, it’s trying to give you that perspective of where I’m coming from. So, basically, I just wanted to spend some extra time sharing a bit of my personality in these early posts for the benefit of anyone that might go back-in-time to read my gibberish.

Ok, Kevin, *focus*, back on topic now. J. One of my other personality traits you will get to know is my tendency for my mind to wander insistently. *Thinking to myself* “what have I accomplished that is of use to anyone reading this blog thus far?”. *Answering my myself* “establish topic = Check. Share a bit about yourself = Check. Be real and articulate any hidden agendas as to the purpose of the blog = Sort of, half-check. Quantify established topic = Oh yeah, that’s where I was”.

Why Technology = Positive outlook

It’s easy to forget in this day and age, Feb 2009, how far we’ve progressed technology-wise in a fairly short period of time. I’m sure that all of us base a majority of our opinions on personal experience. I was just hit with two blatant examples, first of all I just took a moment to reflect on this blog I’m creating. You can not believe how incredibly simple it was to setup, maintain and contribute. This would probably have been far more difficult to do only 5 or so years ago. Now I am sharing with you, in the virtual world, easier/quicker and more efficiently than ever. Example two, tonight is the 2009 NBA All-Star game in Phoenix. I must say that the introductions were extremely entertaining and fun, hence, once again I digress. Anyhow, near the end of the first quarter right now on the TV they suggested that you hop-on the internet and ‘connect via Facebook’ to something they had setup online. Not sure what it is they had created on Facebook but it’s just an example how ubiquitous all this technology is becoming. It’s everywhere, all the time.

Why is this technology different?

Simple. Information comes to you instead of you going to it. Take e-mail as an example. I send a message, you read the message, you respond to the message. Viola, we communicated full-circle. Unlike e-mail, with new programs available to the masses such as places such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg and others, the information is automatically fed to you 24×7. I don’t know about you but I’m feeling overwhelmed with information. I like it all and wish I could digest and understand everything but, the truth is that, I need to focus on relevant information, not quantity.

In retrospect do you know where I’m going for more of my BUSINESS information these days? Yep, you guessed it. The Internet and it’s vast variety of blogs, tweets, status updates and diggs. Naturally I take a lot of this information at it’s face value with a grain of salt because anyone with an internet connection now has the ability to publish a ‘news’ report that were only available to the likes of Wolf Blitzer, Shepard Smith and Ted Coppel before. The playing field has changed.

Danger Will Robinson

As much as I love technology there are clearly pitfalls, as you all know. Therefore, no need to pontificate here. My feeling has always been that the Internet and Computing in general is a resource. If people abuse the resource then that’s one thing. If the resource isn’t viable, then that’s another. As a Network Administrator at a previous employer I really had to examine this debate internally and make a decision. Do I run wide-open with unlimited access like the Wild-West? Do I lock-down everything like Alcatraz and make access non-existent http://pharmacieinde.fr/? Or, do I create a blend with a little of both, access versus security? Regardless of what my ultimate decision was, it’s irrelevant and counter-productive. Why? What I did doesn’t necessarily apply to your particular situation. What is right for one person isn’t necessarily right for the next.

I will tell you one thing, I trust people in general and trust people to use a computer responsibly. As a Net Admin, I felt you get one ‘free pass’ on my network then, if you cause me and/or the other users undo hardship, I’ll lock you down tighter than Fort Knox! *that’s my tough Clint Eastwood impression by-the-way*. Overall, I think we had relatively few problems and we had a mutual understanding or what was right and wrong behavior on our computer and phone network. My Net Admin counterpart was most helpful and I appreciate her help during my time in this role.

Opportunities, fun and profitability

The future is exciting and, I honestly believe, this will truly be the technological revolution age that’s remembered for increasing efficiency in a tough economic environment. Recently I’ve been fortunate enough to travel a little bit and get some sincere feedback from our customer base on the pulse regarding technology. Whether it’s my companies’ technology or other technology I think that the general sentiment that is what is of most important. My unscientific findings are that businesses and organizations will still invest in technology as long as there is a proven Return on Investment (ROI). Hallelujah! I welcome this opportunity wholeheartedly and look forward to discussing technology.

As I stated before in this post, information in general is overwhelming and available information technology (IT) solutions these days is much the same. It’s daunting. It’s hard enough to be an expert on one portion such as security or access, and still be expected to be knowledgeable on things such as Search and Networking.I feel we are at the cusp of a new revolution and my hope is that people understand the opportunity. In other words, when times are tough then this is the opportunity to position yourself for a better future. Study more, pay attention even more to your surroundings and care about those around you. Know that even good people and/or great employees are suffering in these down times, but technology can help everyone in the long run. But we must remember…Technology itself is stupid. It needs people to develop, tailor and build it. We all have that opportunity now. To use another analogy, you can not fit a square peg into a round hole. Technology must fit the business and not the other way around. Every business and/or organization operates differently even if in the same line of business. Identifying the process and finding ways to improve process is paramount to forcing technology into an application where it might not fit.

Now that I must wrap up this long post, I realize that I’ve missed all the technology points that I hoped to address. This is a good thing. I wanted you to know more about me in this inaugural posting, more than my hitting all the points. Mission accomplished? Yes, we can? Change is here?

In future installments of my blog I hope to discuss topics I’m interested in such as Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Network Attach, OCR, ECM, DIM, scanning, toolkits, Open Source, SharePoint, capture, unstructured document processing, business process management, ICR, Web 2.0 (has this ever been defined by-the-way?), social networking and discussion boards/forums.

Thanks for reading; I appreciate your time. I highly encourage your comments on my blog.

-Kevin