Coincident with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) beginning in 2008 we have seen the beginning of a seismic shift in the way organizations regard ‘official’ application platforms. Maybe it has a lot to do with cost cutting and the drive to increase productivity; doing more with less. It could also have been driven by the volcanic eruption in social networking that drove the demand for Internet time on both conventional devices like PCs and notebooks but also on mobile devices, especially Smartphones.

Whatever the reason, organizations of all sizes now accept mobile devices into their corporate networks and allow for them in their security systems and application requirements. Before 2008 the BlackBerry was king but just for emails and appointments. It had strong security and integrated well with Exchange. Other phones and mobile devices were seen as just phones or as gadgets or toys.

The Apple iPhone was the beginning of the change and the iPad a veritable tsunami of change. Soon other vendors rushed into the market with new products, many not well thought out, and spent billions of dollars trying to compete with the iPhone and iPad. At the same time the mobile application development industry mushroomed into a major force as software companies of all sizes hurriedly updated their skills to take advantage of the demand for mobile applications.

New operating systems like iOS (Apple) and Android stole the limelight from old timers like Windows and Linux despite having a significant short fall in features and capabilities. Apple led the way with a cool and simple user interface that became the envy of all others. Anyone could use an iPhone or iPad after a few minutes familiarization whereas long term Windows users were still struggling to untangle Windows and work out how to do what should have been simple, intuitive tasks.

The new consumers liked what they saw and bought what they saw in the tens of millions. We are now well into the first really mobile generation. Most people expect to be able to do everything they need to do on a mobile device, even their corporate work. They also expect any application to be instantly and intuitively usable. Their patience for complexity and obtuseness has gone. Microsoft can’t sell them its ‘old way’ anymore because they have seen the future and they prefer it. The future is simple, intuitive, really easy to use and cool; all the things Windows and Linux are not. The Geeks can have the complexity of conventional operating systems; end users prefer the new paradigm as exemplified by the iPad.

Developers like us all over the world have shifted their focus from Windows application development to web (i.e., it runs in a browser on any device) and native mobile application development for devices like the iPhone, iPad and Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets running Android. We have invested in new people and have learnt new languages and new techniques appropriate to this new mobile world. Long live Xcode, farewell  .NET and Silverlight.

I can confirm that our development plans for the future are based on designing and developing mobile and web applications to at first complement our existing Windows .NET apps and then to eventually replace them. We see the future as one where all of our applications are being run either as operating system independent web applications (in browsers like IE, Safari, FireFox and Chrome) or as discrete modules running as native mobile apps on Smartphones and tablets.

Dell and Lenovo and HP probably know much better than me but if I was  in their space I wouldn’t be planning on selling too many PCs and notebooks in the future.

The ISO standard 15489, see the following link, clearly and succinctly defines records as evidence of a business transaction and also clearly says that a record is a record regardless of media. This means that the business of records management means the management of all types of records including paper, electronic documents, images and emails.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_management

For too long records managers have avoided managing emails on the basis that it is too difficult. One of the most common excuses I hear is that they don’t manage emails because they can’t avoid accidentally capturing ‘personal’ emails. This is of course nonsense as all it takes is a corporate email policy clearly defining the ownership of all corporate emails and advising staff what to do to ‘protect’ personal emails (e.g., put “Personal” in the subject line).

Of course why people are using the corporate email server to send and receive sensitive personal emails is beyond me. If it is personal and sensitive then do not use the corporate email server, use Gmail or Twitter or send an SMS. This should also be spelled out clearly in the company email policy; Caveat Emptor, “Let the user (buyer) beware.” That is, if you are silly enough to use the corporate email server for sensitive personal emails then be prepared to be embarrassed when other people read them.

However, let’s assume we have decided to manage emails in the most effective manner possible, and that certainly doesn’t mean printing them out and filing them as paper records, how should we best capture, classify, store, index and retrieve them?

Should we do it the exact same way we have traditionally managed paper records with file numbers, titles and a classification built from a hierarchical taxonomy? Or, should we do it in a way that makes it as easy and as fast as possible to capture and search for and view them? That is, shouldn’t we handle emails in a way most appropriate to their form, structure and content?

Emails don’t start out as paper so why convert them to paper?

Emails don’t start out with file numbers and titles so why assign them?

End users naturally search for emails by sender, recipient, subject, date sent, date received, etc., so why force them to search for emails by file number, title and or classification? Why make it as hard as possible for the end user to find an email when it is just as easy (even easier in fact) to make it as easy as possible for an end user to find an email by its natural and well-known attributes?

An email is not the same as a paper document or an electronic document or an image. An email has structure and content that everyone in the world is aware of and everyone in the world prefers to search for an email using that well known structure and content.

I course am talking about the common fields or elements of an email being sender, recipient, CC, BCC (usually not available), subject, body text and attachments. All we really need is three types of common searches; full text, Metadata and BOOLEAN (combining values of the elements of the Metadata in an AND, BUT OR NOT relationship) searching on these common fields and anyone can find any email in seconds.

By all means link an email to its parent folder (but it is not necessary) but please don’t force the long suffering end user to search for the emails the same way we have searched for paper over the centuries.

Allow the end user to search by date, sender, recipient, CC and subject plus the full text of the body of the email, plus any attachments. Give them a natural search that everyone understands and that no one needs to be trained on.

If you want to be as efficient as possible then don’t try to capture emails at the desktop, capture them at the server. Capture them before someone has the opportunity to delete them or simply forgets to capture them.

Capture them efficiently and totally consistently with an automatic rules-driven process that consistently and reliably (not forgetting or deleting anything) applies your corporate email policy day in and day out come hail or shine with no time off for  maternity leave, paternity leave, compassionate leave, public holidays, illness or vacations. You can do this because emails are different to paper, they can be easily captured, stored and indexed automatically; paper can’t be.

That is, use the computer to automate the capture of emails in a way that you cannot do to automate the capture of paper. Use the structure and content of emails and the power of the computer to your advantage.

Contrary to popular opinion, emails are actually much easier to capture and index than paper records but only if you use the computer to take advantage of the email’s natural structure and content. However, if you choose to manage emails the same way you manage paper then emails will indeed be difficult and time-consuming to manage.

But for heaven’s sake please don’t bog down the whole process in an overly complex, inexplicably intricate and incomprehensible Taxonomy. Please keep it simple or you will end up with hundreds or thousands of unmanageable rules to maintain. I have written about this previously in a paper entitled “Do you really need a Taxonomy?” and I recommend that anyone contemplating managing emails first reads this paper.

The message is as simple as simple can be; keep it simple or it won’t work!

The golden grail for any manufacture wanting to dominate the mobile device business market would be the ‘perfect’ form factor. A key second requirement would be the ability to hold all your working files and run all your work applications.

By ‘form factor’ I mean both the size of the device and the size of the screen and keyboard.

We business users (I have a BlackBerry, iPad2 and a Dell notebook) are tired of having to carry multiple devices with us on business trips. Look at the chaos in any US airline check in line and see the frustration and exasperation generated by having to unpack and then retrieve multiple devices.

I would like to carry just one device and I want it to be really easy to use and power up and to have a really long battery life. Unpacking and powering up a notebook and then starting a browser and then running the Windows Outlook web client is a huge pain in an airport when all you want to do is quickly check your emails.  The notebook is also lucky to last two hours without a recharge.

So, when I need to quickly check my emails I use my BlackBerry. But, when I want to read and study a large document or spreadsheet or create a new document the BlackBerry is hopeless (the screen and keyboard are too small) so then I have to use either my notebook or my iPad 2.

I could probably use just my iPad 2 but it doesn’t fit into my pocket and neither does it run my normal office applications like Word and it doesn’t have a file system where I can maintain copies  of all the files I will need on my trip so it is a pain. It almost does the job but I still need the notebook for serious stuff.

I love the iPad 2 but it isn’t there yet as the true alternative to the notebook. I am hoping that Apple is listening to its customers and that it will address the dumb limitations of the iPad (like no file system or separate USB port) in the iPad 3 next year.

In the meantime, I almost get by by using a clever little iPad app called Wyse PocketCloud. This is the equivalent of Microsoft’s remote desktop and it enables me to see my desktop PC at work and all my folders and files when I am travelling. It also allows me to run any of the applications on my desktop and even allows me to demonstrate our Windows products like RecFind 6. It is easy to set up and in my experience works really well and is amazingly fast.  However, you obviously need a Wi-Fi connection to get full benefit but I am hopeful that when the iPad supports 4G we will be able to operate successfully without Wi-Fi.

And of course the iPad 2 isn’t a phone and neither is the notebook (yes, I know I could use Skype but I hate it) so I still need the BlackBerry.

Now back to form factor and we still don’t have a solution that will enable us to carry just a single device because everything we have is either too big or too small. Too big to fit in my pocket and too small to view and create serious business documents.

I have seen experimental devices that have folding screens and also ones that project the screen onto any handy wall but so far these are just gimmicks. No vendor has come up with a solution to the classical dilemma – that is, give me something that is small enough to fit into my pocket but which can become big enough (keyboard and screen) to do serious work.

So RIM, HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple and Samsung how about it? When are you going to invent something for the business traveller that replaces all three of my travelling devices and provides the perfect compromise between small size and usability? If you do, you will certainly get my business.

For the future I am going to try and travel with just my BlackBerry and iPad 2 using Wyse PocketCloud. I also use Pages, Numbers and Keynote on the iPad 2 as my serious business apps. I am going to see if I can live without the notebook which is the heaviest, most inconvenient and most difficult and slowest to get up and running with the shortest battery life. I will let you know how I fare in a future Blog.

In this chapter we talk about how we can use standard tools to automate the capture and processing of all electronic documents and emails – the biggest challenge for any organization struggling with compliance and trying to manage its vast store of information.

I said in an earlier chapter that all of the tools we need are available and proven, such as RFID tags for paper documents. This is also true for all forms of electronic documents.

We at Knowledgeone Corporation have developed our own tools to enable full automation just as I am sure our competitors have developed similar tools (and if not, why not?).

However, first I need to explain the difference between structured and unstructured information and how important it is to add structure (content) to any electronic document if we are to achieve our aim of self managing records.

As a general example of structured versus unstructured an email has structure and a Word document does not. It is true they both have natural attributes (properties) that we can automatically capture like original filename and author but we need more.

An email has structured content in the form of:

• Sender
• Recipient
• CC
• BCC
• Subject (text)
• Body of email (text)
• Attachment (text)

A Word document doesn’t have a ‘standard’ internal structure and we can’t easily extract contextual information out of it as we can with an email. We therefore describe an email as ‘structured’ and a Word document as ‘unstructured’.

This means that automatically processing emails is relatively simple but that Word documents present a challenge because of a lack of a standard structure that we can interrogate.

It is true we can write clever algorithms to extract the text from Word documents (and we have) and then analyze it against our business rules but it isn’t easy and it is not one hundred-percent reliable.

If you want to make you job infinitely easier and the results much more reliable you need to add content. We do this via a proven technique called ‘tags’. We have the ability to process tags in our standard products and you can easily add tags to electronic documents. In fact anyone can add meaningful tags (e.g., File Number or Contract Number) by using standard templates for all key electronic documents. The only effort is in setting up the templates, after that it is a virtually automatic process.

Conversely, it is actually much harder to add tags to emails because most of the emails we process come from outside our organization whereas most of the electronic documents we process are created within our organization.

So, for our fully automatic model let’s assume we are automatically adding tags to all the important electronic documents we create using templates. These tags contain all the information we need to be able to correctly capture, classify and manage (including workflow) the documents in our records management system.

We also assume that we are able to process all incoming and outgoing emails at the email server and correctly select and classify emails based on their structured content, i.e., the values in the any and all of the components of an email, e.g., the domain name of the sender, the recipient, the subject line and keywords in the text of the body of the email or the attachment.

Now all we need are the tools to do this. In the Knowledgeone Corporation RecFind 6 product suite we utilize RecFind 6, RecCapture and GEM. These three products contain all the functionality we require to fully automate the capture, classification and management of electronic documents and emails.

RecCapture (for electronic documents) and GEM (for emails) both include the functionality that allows you to add your business rules. They are therefore called ‘rules-driven’ automatic processes. The rules interrogate the natural properties of the document plus any structured information (including embedded tags) as well as the full text of any component (e.g., an attachment). You can add as few or as many rules as you need to correctly identify, capture and classify any electronic document or email.

We have used both RecCapture and GEM internally at K1Corp for many years in this manner to fully automate our electronic documents and emails. No one at K1Corp has to manually capture anything. I guess that makes us unusual in this business, a software company that actually uses its own products.

The final message is that a fully automatic records management system isn’t just a possibility, it is a reality. All it takes is the will and effort; all the required tools are available and proven.

This article is about using RFID technology and Active tags in particular to help us fully automate the paper records management process.

However, the first thing any organization should do is to remove as much paper as possible from the equation and in doing so reduce its RFID costs as far as possible. This is usually done by a proven process known as ‘Document Imaging’. In regular parlance we ‘scan’ as much of our incoming paper as is practicable and legally allowed and convert it to an electronic record usually in the form of an indexed PDF.

What this means is that the first result of the document scanning process is a TIFF file, a bit image (where no text is extractable or searchable). In order to add more value to our document and improve search results we should next process our TIFF image with an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool to extract the text from the bit image. We then combine the bit image and the extracted text into a single document by converting both of them to a single PDF document. The PDF now contains both image and text so it is full text searchable and the text can be extracted if required.

I will cover how we fully automate the management of all electronic records in the next chapter.

Now to the core paper problem; paper is generally either sent to us or produced in-house as the result of some business process. If we are smart we produce as little paper as possible in-house and manage all of our in-house documents as electronic documents (e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). As mentioned above, we also try to capture as much of the incoming paper as we can by scanning it and converting it to electronic records (indexable PDFs). It is the paper we can’t or are prevented from converting to an electronic record we now have to deal with.

Our paper records are usually managed as ‘loose’ paper (i.e., as single documents) or file folders (loose paper collections) or archive boxes (file folder and loose paper collections). We have to decide which of these classes of paper records to apply RFID tags to (i.e., loose papers, file folders and archive boxes) and what data to encode on the tags.

I think the usual decision would be to apply tags to a small number of loose documents (e.g., important documents that travel ‘loose’ throughout an organization) and then to all file folders and archive boxes. There may be an argument that says we don’t need to tag archive boxes if the contents are tagged but that decision will depend upon each organization’s specific needs and tools.

As to what data to encode that is totally dependent upon each client’s needs and the various classes of documents and containers it manages as well as its compliance needs. It is probably worthwhile mentioning here that Active RFID tags can also differentiated by the way they store data. There are three types of data-storage (and again I generalise):

1. Read-only
2. Write-once, Read-many (WORM); and
3. Read-Write

Read-only tags are the least useful because they can’t be changed or added to once they have been created. WORM tags can’t be overwritten but can have data added at a later time. Read-Write tags are the most useful because their data can be modified at any time. Each type of tag has its most appropriate uses depending upon your needs and budget.

For my fully-automatic solution I will again choose the most expensive option, the Read-Write tag because it provides us with the most features and most flexibility and again let me say, “Computers are cheap, people-time is expensive!”

In my system, our Active RFID tagged documents now communicate directly with the records management system and database. Our paper documents are now active, not passive and are able to both receive and pass on information as they are processed.

They can tell us where they are, they can tell us that a process is due or overdue and they can tell us when they are due to be archived or destroyed.  They will tell us if they are moved and they will signal an alarm is they are moved away from a predetermined area or building. If we have also RFID tagged our employees (either chipped them – probably not practicable but certainly possible, or more reasonably, RFID enabled their employee badges) then our active documents will tell us who has them and who is reading them and at what time. They will also maintain a complete history or ‘Audit Trail’ either on the RFID tag itself or within our database.

It may sound like science fiction but it is not as all the technology and tools required are current and proven and ‘affordable’ and in use in other applications like container and freight and asset tracking. Our task is to simply adapt the most appropriate elements of RFID technology to paper records management.

Our now fully-automatic new system obviously requires a records management computer system and database plus RFID reader/writers at strategic locations in our enterprise. We also need a suitably appropriate and well-designed Taxonomy or classification system and a predetermined set of rules (workflow) with which to manage our now RFID-enabled paper. The Taxonomy and Workflows should be combined into what we usually call a ‘File Plan’ such that we can encode all of the information required to manage the full life cycle of the record (the Continuum model) into an RFID tag. As each document is captured with an RFID tag its information is automatically entered into our records management system’s database and the management process immediately begins with the document and computer system in constant contact thereafter.

The Read-Write tags chosen provide us with the flexibility required by for example allowing us to reprogram the workflow or retention as and when required. This feature is essential if we are to meet the real world requirements of the records management profession. We can do this via our records management system in a controlled and audited and secure way.

This article is just a skeletal view of what is possible and how it can be done. A complete description would entail writing a wordy tome inappropriate to this medium. However, the above is all possible; it is not science fiction.

Records are evidence of any business transaction and as such include all types of documents including paper, electronic and email. To meet any records management standard or compliance standard you must be capturing and managing records of all types. If you are not, then your practises are seriously deficient and I predict that at some time in the foreseeable future you will be discussing these same deficiencies with a judge or government bureaucrat. I can also predict that you will not enjoy the discussion or the financial consequences.

When looking at how to implement our new fully-automatic paradigm we need to apply tools and technologies appropriate to each type of ‘record’. In this chapter I will discuss the best technologies and tools to use to automate the management of paper records.

I started giving presentations on the coming paperless office in 1984 but gave up some 5 years later because it patently wasn’t going to happen any time soon. I made the point then that until government outlawed laser printers and copiers that paper usage was bound to increase, not decrease and so it has been over the intervening years. So, managing paper in all its forms (e.g., loose paper, file folders, archive boxes) is still a major challenge and a major cost for all enterprises.

The most common technology currently applied to paper is barcoding. Barcodes are usually placed on file folders, archive boxes and shelf or storage locations and then human beings point barcode readers at these same containers and locations to register and track them. It works fine when used properly and barcodes can be super labour-saving devices but it is still a very labour intensive and decidedly non-automatic process.

Barcodes are proven and reliable and in wide-use (e.g., UPC barcodes on all the products you buy in a supermarket) but there are better technologies now available.

A quick review of current and proven technologies provides us with a surprisingly short list and comprises:

1. Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
2. Global Positioning System (GPS)
3. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
4. Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)

Of the four I think that GPS and RFID are the most appropriate for paper. However at this time I have rejected GPS because of technical difficulties (e.g., finding a satellite from the basement) and cost. This leaves me with RFID as the sole choice from proven technologies for our fully-automated paper management paradigm.

RFID has progressed a long way since its inception in the 1970’s both in functionality and cost-effectiveness (RFID tags now cost just cents) and it is now an entirely appropriate technology to utilize to automate the management of paper.  The question is, “how best to utilize RFID technology?” A second question may well be, “why aren’t more organizations today already utilizing RFID technology to automate paper processing?”

Let me answer the second question first. Historically the rollout of RFID has suffered because of high costs and a lack of standards. There are industry standards for barcodes (e.g., Code3of9) but historically each RFID vendor came up with their own standards both for the tags and for the computer interface required for other systems to ‘talk’ to them.

Whereas there are still issues with RFID standards the situation today is light years better than it was say ten or even five years ago to the degree that  the lack of standards is no longer a reason not to use RFID technology.

Before answering the first question let’s talk a little about RFID technologies. I will generalise and say that there are three types of RFID tags for us to consider:

• Passive
• Semi-passive; and
• Active

Passive tags are the cheapest to buy (say from 7 cents up) but have the shortest maximum reading distance, usually no more than twenty feet (six metres).  Semi-passive and Active tags are more expensive because they have more circuitry and batteries but have a far better maximum reading distance of up to one-hundred feet (thirty metres). And finally, Semi-passive tags still rely on the reader for power to transmit but Active tags can transmit under their own power.

For my fully-automatic solution I have chosen Active tags despite their higher cost because as I keep telling my customers, “computers are cheap and people time is expensive!”

Active tags provide far more options for us when trying to solve our problem so in the end they are the better choice and I believe, the most cost-effective choice because of their inherent benefits.

In the next chapter in this series I will answer the first question posed above and explain how I would best utilize Active RFID technology to fully automate the management of all paper records.

In the first Blog on this topic I asked the question “is the solution fully-automatic, self-registering, self-classifying, self-managing records? Is it possible? Do we have the technology?”

Since I invented the concept of fully-automatic, self-registering, self-classifying and self-managed records I would have to say, with a degree of bias, that it certainly is the solution to what appears to be an impossible to manage problem using current tools and methods; what I earlier called “this burdensome task.”

As to whether we have the technology I think we do but the solution may involve a synthesis of technologies from other industries to achieve our aims.

I have visited with hundreds of our customers all over the world plus hundreds of prospective customers and I can confidently say that not one manages its records one-hundred percent and that most don’t even come close. In a few cases it is because they don’t have the right tools but in most cases the tools have a super-set of the functionality required, they are just not being utilized effectively.

Certainly, not one organization I have had contact with meets all of the compliance legislation it is supposed to meet. Even when they have the tools required the job is just too big, too complex and, that word again, too burdensome. The biggest problem, apart from the huge scale of the problem, is getting the co-operation and ‘buy-in’ from all staff.

Many systems rely on each and every staff member becoming an expert records and electronic document and email manager and on each staff member always behaving in an entirely consistent and reliable manner. This basic assumption is of course fatuous and ignores both the diversity of human beings and human nature. We may all be born equal but we don’t end up equal in intelligence, experience, expertise and attitude. I also don’t know anyone who exhibits one-hundred percent consistent behaviour day after day after day. Au contraire, in my observation we are all human and we all have failings and we are all sometimes better and sometimes worse. Let’s call it the human condition.

The effect of the human condition means that any system that relies on each and every staff member behaving in an entirely consistent and reliable manner is seriously flawed and will never work. Let me repeat that, “will never work!” In fact, any system that ignores human nature is a bad design and will inevitably fail.

So in my mind, if I can’t rely on human beings to be perfectly consistent in the application of a given set of rules and processes then we need to take human beings out of the equation and replace them with something that is perfectly consistent in the way it analyses, captures and classifies records. Ergo, my fully-automatic model bereft of human frailties.

Because technology isn’t quite there yet I am not proposing to use robots or artificial humans (i.e., Androids) a la Blade Runner. I am however proposing to use rules-driven systems and where possible, artificial intelligence. I am also proposing to utilize technologies currently available but not yet generally applied within what AIIM calls the content management industry.

In the next chapter I will discuss the tools and technologies I would use and explain how my method will address most of the problems of this burdensome task.

Back in 1995 I wrote a paper called ”Document Management, Records Management, Image Management Workflow Management…What? – The I.D.E.A”

IDEA stood for “It Does Everything Application” and I predicted the merging of what were then disparate applications like records management, document management, imaging and workflow into a single ‘it does everything’ application. It made sense back then and it makes even more sense now because most content management vendors now have applications that encompass all of the aforementioned applications plus many more.

We have of course also followed the same path and the RecFind today is a far cry from the RecFind of 1995. Today’s version, RecFind 6, is in fact the 7th total redesign and rewrite of our iconic product. Just like the grandfather’s axe story; “the handle has been changed 6 times and the blade 4 times but it is the same axe my grandfather used  60 years ago.” It is the same RecFind just improved somewhat over time.

We have in fact moved way past the original concept of an IDEA and the current RecFind is now able to be configured by our customers to be almost any application. This is possible because of a new architecture which allows RecFind to run multiple and different applications concurrently. We believe that this is the new model for all high end information management software going forward; a significant improvement over my original IDEA paradigm.

Our customers can now leverage off a single investment (RecFind 6) to satisfy multiple application software requirements. These include Asset Management, Business Process Management, Case Management, Content Management, Contract Management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Digital Asset Management, Document Management, Document Scanning, Imaging, Enterprise Content Management, Electronic Document and Records Management (EDRMS), Email Archiving, Email Management, Help Desk, Human Resources Management, Knowledge Management (KMS), Library Management, Records Management (RMS) and Workflow.

The big difference and major improvement over past generation systems is that everything is done via a high level configuration tool, not by changing source code. This means every RecFind 6 customer in the world runs a ‘standard’ version of our software even though each customer has RecFind uniquely configured to its precise requirements. This means every customer can benefit from our regular updates and new releases and that no customer is impacted by a ‘special’ maintenance contract.

When I presented the concept of RecFind 6 to a bunch of other vendors during a round table discussion at a records management convention a few years ago they all scoffed at the idea and said it was impossible. One vendor even said they had investigated doing what we proposed but that it was impossible.

As we developers all know, nothing is impossible in IT; it just takes time and money. RecFind 6 is evidence that it can be done and I already see other vendors following our lead.

The concept of  generic application solution (which is one way of describing RecFind 6) is one that both empowers and liberates the long-suffering customer. The customer can now change anything, including the data model, reports, language and any business process without waiting on the vendor or sending the vendor money. The customer can leverage off an investment in a single product to create multiple products and realize significant savings. Surely this is the model the world wants and needs, especially in these difficult economic times we all live in?

Is it just me or have the rest of you noticed a re-emergence of this scourge?

I am not talking about the situation where the purchase form or the install program up-front asks you if you would like your maintenance or monthly product supply to be automatically renewed or not; that is fine by me and good business. I am talking about the situation where you eventually discover that you have agreed to an automatic renewal of supply or maintenance without being aware of it.

As far as I am concerned, if it can happen without you being aware of it, it is at best an unscrupulous practice and at worst it is fraud.

I don’t care if the automatic renewal condition was cunningly ‘hidden’ in the densely-packed and obtuse terms and conditions you had to say “I agree” to. I consider that excuse the refuge of scoundrels.

The scoundrels also rarely give you the opportunity to cancel an unrequested automatic renewal via the web-site; that would be too easy. They usually make you search for hours to find a phone number you can call and then you have to go through torture on an automated phone system (they hope you will give up) before you can finally speak to a human being and demand that the auto-renewal be cancelled.

My first experience with this awful form of marketing was with the original AOL email service; cancelling was a nightmare. This practice was around a long time before AOL however with the ‘book clubs’ that sent you piles of unrequested books every month and insisted that unless you returned them, you owned them and had to pay for them. Charging consumers for products or services they didn’t ask for was disreputable back
then and it is disreputable now.

Three of the products I have bought on the Internet over the last month have incorporated the invisible automatic renewal into their online sale process. I have managed to battle all three and cancel the automatic renewal but not without a reasonable degree of effort and time. None of them notified me of the automatic renewal in either the purchase process or the install process.

My theory is that this is one of the ‘innovations’ coming out of the tail-end of the GFC as companies scramble to reduce costs and increase and lock-in revenue.

The problem is how to combat this scourge; it is akin to stopping a burglar when you are way from your home. How do you stop something when you don’t know it is happening?

The best advice I can give is to be aware it is happening (more and more if my experience is anything to go by) and to refuse to do any repeat business with any company that practices this deceitful way of misappropriating your hard-earned money. I should probably start a website to name and shame the practitioners but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fighting law suits.

FrankK1Corp

Frank is a senior executive of Knowledgeone Corporation and spends a large amount of money every year via the Internet of hardware and software for our software development group. His message to vendors is that he will not deal with them if they employ hidden automatic-renewal practices.

The records management process has been a bothersome burden since primitive man first began cutting notches in sticks and tying knots in string to record things. You can just imagine the excuses for bad record-keeping a few hundred thousand years ago.

“The dog ate the string.”

“The stick caught fire.”

Unfortunately, modern man has millions more things to manage than his ancestor and no more time (I imagine our ancestors were pretty busy just staying alive and catching food). In fact our ancestors had a few advantages. It is pretty easy and very fast to tie a knot or cut a notch and no training is required. Additionally, notches and knots are naturally multi-lingual and multi-cultural and avoid all the language difficulties we are faced with today. Knots and notches are also pretty durable (if kept away from the fire and the dog) and lend themselves to long term preservation. We on the other hand struggle with the need for initial and ongoing training and overcomplicated software and processes and paper and cardboard that disintegrates after the first serious storm cause leaks to appear in the roof.

Basically, modern man has a much more difficult job to do with harder-to-use tools. Is this what we call progress?

So, is the solution fully-automatic, self-registering, self-classifying, self-managing records? Is it possible? Do we have the technology? Do we really want to rid ourselves of this burdensome task?

In my mind the answer to all of the above questions is yes but then I do have an active imagination. I really do envision a world where the records manage themselves and all we have to do is search and find what we need. In fact, the next phase should really include some really very clever ‘push’ algorithms such that we no longer even need to search, the system correctly anticipates what we need before we need it, “Bacon and eggs for breakfast sir with a little wholemeal toast and the files on the Clark-Deakin case?”

Unfortunately I am also a software designer and developer of records management systems so when I say silly things like the above I eventually have to follow rhetoric with product.

I already have most of the core components and technology and algorithms and most are already in use, in various stages of development, in our current product range. The ‘fully-automatic’ part of the process is already evident with products like RecCapture and GEM but market acceptance of the fully-automatic paradigm is still a major problem so we have been reluctant to get too far ahead of the curve. I am prone to the disease of designing products about five years before people are ready to use them because I often let my enthusiasm and imagination over-rule a more conservative view of what the market is actually ready to accept. This is probably because:

a)      I am the owner of the company; and

b)      Designing and developing application software is still fun and exciting and even more so if you use your imagination to its full.

In subsequent blogs I will further elaborate on how this abolition of the records management burden is not only possible but probable in the near term barring a total collapse of the world financial system because Greeks don’t pay their taxes and banks give money to anyone in good times all the time hoping that the government will bail them out if it all goes belly up.

Frank