The Challenge

An interesting challenge for Records Managers, Knowledge Managers and CIOs is the newer document management paradigm of being asked to manage all content according to the ‘Records-In-Place’ paradigm, without a single central repository. That is, to be responsible for all content across a myriad of locations controlled by a myriad of applications and a myriad of departments/organizations and people.

We all realize that Enterprise Content Management, or Content Services as it is now called by Gartner, is a moving target, constantly evolving with new challenges and new paradigms.

For example:  

• How do we filter out only relevant information from social media?
• How do we avoid capturing personal data and being culpable under privacy laws?
• How do we capture all emails containing sexism, racism and bullying without being guilty of an invasion of privacy of the individual?
• How do we meet all of our compliance obligations when our staff are spread across multiple states/counties/provinces and multiple countries with different legislation and compliance requirements?

All weighty challenges for the modern Records Manager, Knowledge Manager or CIO. Now we have a new challenge, how to manage multiple silos of information without a central repository.

Multi-Repository (multi-Silo) Systems

In multiple-repository systems we find multiple document stores or silos, local files, network file shares, local data bases, multiple file servers, multiple copies of SharePoint and multiple Cloud repositories like Dropbox, Box, iCloud, Google Cloud Storage and other hosted document storage. The CIO may proudly claim to manage multiple information silos but what he or she really has is a laissez faire document management ecosystem that may well be centrally monitored (hopefully) but is most certainly not centrally managed.

In the multiple silo model, the documents in our multiple locations are ‘managed’ by multiple people and multiple and independent applications (e.g., SharePoint, Google Docs, Office 365, etc.). We may have implemented another layer of software above all these diverse applications trying to keep up with what is happening but If I am just ‘watching’ then I don’t have an inviolate copy and I don’t have any control over what happens to the document. I am unable to enforce any standards. There is no ‘standard’ central control over versioning or retention and no control over the document life cycle or chain of evidence.

For example, you wouldn’t know if the document had since been moved to a different location that you are not monitoring. You wouldn’t know if it had been deleted. You wouldn’t know its relationship to other documents and processes in other silos. You wouldn’t know its context in your enterprise and therefore you wouldn’t know how relevant this document was. The important distinction is that under the multiple silo model you are ‘watching’ not managing; other multiple pieces of software are managing the life cycles and dispositions of the documents independently.

All you really know is that at a certain point in time a document existed and what its properties were at that time (e.g., historical ‘natural’ Metadata such as original filename, author, date created, etc.). However, you have no contextual Metadata, no transactional Metadata, no common indexing and no common Business Classification System. In this case, you don’t have a document management system, you have a laissez faire document management ecosystem, an assortment of independently ‘managed’ information silos. Most importantly, you are not able to link documents to business processes that transcend organizational structures and silos.

What are the issues?

Sure, SharePoint and Cloud silos make collaboration easier but at what cost? What can’t we do with this multi-silo ecosystem? Why doesn’t this solution meet the best-practice objectives of an enterprise Document Management System? What are the major areas where it falls short? How does the proliferation of multiple silos and content repositories affect us? What are our risks? Here is my assessment of the major shortfalls of this ‘Records-In-Place’ paradigm.

We are unable to: 

1. extract the critical insights that enterprise information should provide
2. define all the relationships that link documents to enterprise business processes
3. find the right information at the right time
4. provide a single access point for all content
5. Implement an effective, consistent enterprise-wide document security system
6. effectively protect against natural or man-made disasters
7. produce evidence-standard documents
8. minimize document handling costs
9. guarantee the integrity of a document
10. guarantee that a document is in fact the most recent version
11. guarantee that a document is not an older copy
12. minimize duplicate and redundant information
13. meet critical compliance targets like Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and the HIPAA
14. create secure, searchable archives for digital content
15. effectively secure all documents against loss
16. implement common enterprise version control
17. facilitate enterprise collaboration
18. Improve timeliness
19. manage enterprise document security and control
20. manage smaller and more reliable backups
21. achieve the lowest possible document management and archiving costs
22. deliver the best possible knowledge management access and search
23. guarantee consistent content
24. optimize management and executive time
25. standardize the types of documents and other content can be created within an organization.
26. define common use template to use for each type of document
27. standardize the Metadata required for each type of document
28. standardize where to store a document at each stage of its life cycle
29. control access to a document at each stage of its life cycle
30. move documents within the organization as team members contribute to the documents' creation, review, approval, publication, and disposition
31. implement a common set of policies that apply to documents so that document-related actions are audited, documents are retained or disposed of properly, and content that is important to the organization is protected
32. manage when and if a document has to be converted from one format to another as it moves through the stages of its life cycle
33. guarantee that all documents are treated as corporate records, that common retention policies are applied determining which documents must be retained according to legal requirements and corporate guidelines
34. guarantee enterprise-wide Regulatory compliance
35. produce an enterprise-wide audit trail
36. share information across departmental and/or silo boundaries
37. centrally manage the security access to documents/information across different areas of the organization
38. consistently classify documents as each repository may be used by a different department and be classified differently  
39. identify duplicates based on document name
40. easily find things based on metadata, as it wouldn’t be common across repositories
41. control access via AD single sign on
42. access all enterprise documents using a single license
43. centrally audit access and changes to metadata

What are your risks?  

Your risks are huge!

 I am sure that you have been inundated with ads, articles, white papers, phone calls, seminars and proposals for Business Process Management, Business Process Outsourcing and Business Process Optimization.

What is it?

BPM certainly isn’t new, there have been many companies offering innovative and often cutting-edge technology solutions for many years. The pioneering days were probably the early 1980’s. One early innovator I recall was Tower Technology because their office was just across from our office.

In the early days BPM was all about imaging and workflow and forms. Vendors like Tower Technology used early versions of workflow products like Staffware and a whole assortment of different imaging and forms products to solve customer processing problems. That is, to turn a manual, paper-based business process into an automated digital process. In those days, it involved a lot of inventing and a lot of creative genius to make all those disparate products work together and actually do what the salesperson promised. More often than not, the final solution didn’t quite work as promised and it always seemed to cost a lot more than quoted but that was ‘normal’ then.

As with all new technologies, everyone had to go through a learning process, usually at the customer’s expense and for many years the promises were far ahead of what was actually delivered with a lot of expensive failures along the way.

Today?

So, is it any different today? Is BPM a proven, reliable, feature-rich and mature technology?

The answer dear friends, is yes and no; just as it was thirty or more years ago.

Caveat Emptor

The Latin phrase ‘Caveat Emptor’ means ‘Let the buyer beware’. Caveat Emptor applies just as much today as it did in the early days because despite enormous technological progress, we are still pushing the envelope (as we always do in this industry). We are still being asked to do things the current software and hardware can’t quite yet handle. The behind the scenes technicians are still trying to make the product do what the salesperson promised in good faith (we hope) because he didn’t really understand his product set and/or the customer’s requirements and processes.

Caveat Emptor means it is up to the buyer to evaluate the offering and decide if it can do the job. Of course, if the vendor lies or makes blatant false claims then Caveat Emptor no longer applies, and you can hit the vendor with a lawsuit based on the products and services being ‘Not Fit For Purpose’.  However, in reality it is rarely as black and white as that. The technology was complex, is complex and will always be complex and the proposals and explanations are full of proprietary terminology, ambiguities, acronyms and weaselly words because at the time of the proposal, no one (vendor or customer) really understands all the requirements. The real requirements develop over the course of the project.

Do you fully understand your requirements and the vendor proposal?

As with all legal agreements, you shouldn’t enter into a BPM contract unless you know exactly what you are getting into. This is especially true with BPM because you are talking about handing over part of your core business processes to someone else to ‘improve’. If you don’t understand what is being proposed, then please hire someone who does; I guarantee it will be worth the investment. This is especially true if you are outsourcing customer or supplier facing processes like accounts payable and accounts receivable. Better to spend a little more up front than suffer cost overruns, failed processes and an inbox full of complaints. In the worst case, a failed business process conversion can lead to a business failure.

Advice

My advice is to always begin with some form of a consultancy to ‘examine’ your business processes and produce a report containing detailed maps, conclusions and recommendations. The vendor may offer this service as part of its sales process and it may be free, or it may be chargeable.  However, I believe in the old adage that you get what you pay for so I would prefer to pay to have a qualified, experienced professional and independent (not employed by the vendor) consultant do the study. The advantage of paying for the study is that you then ‘own’ the report and can then legally provide it to other vendors to obtain competitive quotes. Three competitive quotes should be a mandatory requirement. The vendors will always sharpen their pencils when they know there is competition.

What are your costs now?

You should also have a pretty good idea of what the current processing is costing you in both direct and indirect costs (e.g., lost sales, dissatisfied customers, unhappy staff, etc.) before beginning the evaluation exercise. Otherwise, how are you going to be able to judge the added value of the vendor’s proposal? If the new digital process won’t add value, then why do it?

In my experience, the most common set of processes to be ‘outsourced’ are those to do with accounts payable (AP) processing. This is the automation of all AP processes beginning with your purchase order (and its line items), the delivery docket (proof of receipt), invoices (and line items) and statements. The automation should reconcile invoices to delivery dockets and purchase orders and should throw up any discrepancies such as items invoiced but not delivered, variations in price, etc. Vendors will usually propose what is commonly called an automatic matching engine; the software that captures, reads and ‘matches’ all the documents in the AP process and then does its best to make sure you only pay for delivered goods that are exactly as ordered.

What is the Return On Investment (ROI)?

If the vendor’s proposal is to be attractive and add value to your organization, it must replace your manual processing with an automated model that is both faster and more accurate. Ideally, it would also be more cost-effective but even if it is more costly in the short term than your manual direct cost, it should still solve most of your indirect cost problems like overpayments, unhappy suppliers and late payment fees. Project your costs and savings over five years to see the real ROI.

Basically, the vendor has to offer a ‘Value Proposition’; if it doesn’t provide value, why do it?

Before you begin

In essence, there is nothing magical about BPM; it is all about replacing inefficient manual processes with much more efficient automated ones using clever computer software. The magic, if that is the word to use, is about getting it right.  

• You need to clearly and completely define the processes you want automated;
• You need to know what the current manual processing is costing you;
• You need to be absolutely sure that you fully understand the vendor’s proposal and;
  

• You need to build in metrics so you can accurately evaluate the finished product and clearly determine if it is meeting its stated objectives.

Please don’t enter into negotiations thinking that if it doesn’t work you can just blame the vendor. That would be akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face. Remember Caveat Emptor; success or failure really depends upon how well you do your job as the customer. Failed projects are always the fault of both parties; minimize risk by doing your job well.