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White Paper: WP-007p |
Last Modified: July 07, 2003 |
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Centralized Document Management Systems |
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Author: |
Michael Cruz (mail@thecramgroup.com) Systems Specialist, The Cram Group, LLC
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Categories: |
Executive, Management, Applications |
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SUMMARY: The shift to a centralized document management system is critical to the growth of any company. Focus items include:
DEFINITIONS:
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Introduction |
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A recent push for technology afforded many companies a cursory evaluation of new systems for their workflow. Changes in the market, however, have now forced many to more carefully evaluate the penetration of technology within their company. Once your company has determined its needs, how will technology help reach those goals? The answers are always conditional, but many typical patterns exist to help guide you. One such pattern exists in the current business practice of your company. Is the retrieval of records vital to your business?s growth? A clear examination of your existing file management system might show a random collection of file folders on the company network. This is a nominal system of file management with little potential for growth. Unfortunately, this system is only leveraged by those who create the folders, not the company. Employees are constantly subject to unfamiliar folder structures and may have to repeat steps in order to retrieve their document. A poorly maintained file management system may also be indicative of larger management issues. This problem is demonstrated when knowledge retention between employees is low and frustration leads to high turnover. Employees who choose to leave the company take with them their added value to the company, and their departure is therefore destructive to company operations. Improved systems management and administration have already begun to take hold in many company initiatives. Yet, how do you see those systems evolving? One might first have to identify which environment best describes his or her company, software deployment or record deployment. |
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Case I: A Record Dependent Company |
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A new IT liability has presented itself in the last couple years. No matter how inexpensive server-space is becoming, it still presents a significant cost. Companies are either forced to purge data or transfer it from online hardware (web-servers) to offline hardware (data storage tapes). Retrieving a record is even more complicated when you consider the compound documents and revisions that may exist. Is your IT staff capable of reconstructing a document record? A centralized document management system can help answer those questions. |
Does your customer satisfaction rely on swift collection of trustworthy records? |
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While organizing current resources, one can also prepare for requests for prior records. At the same time, a CDMS provides smooth transition to offline storage mechanisms.
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1. IT Consolidation |
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The cost of storage plays a significant role in any IT budget. Yet, the challenges of how to reduce storage costs are largely the fault of the storage industry itself. The industry can't agree on a common storage model, so every storage platform must be administered separately. Vendors can't agree on a common storage management technique, and instead provide proprietary and non-interoperable "hooks" that force expensive storage management. Any opportunity to minimize the number and size of storage systems can result in savings. Separate document systems and even unmanaged documents require storage and maintenance. However, their growth over time may force your company to redefine its method of storage. This can lead to a ballooning IT budget, because there is no mechanism to control all systems all at once. Many companies have gone so far as to outsource their storage management for this reason, but that can prove expensive. A more practical approach to solving the problem of chaotic document systems is to consolidate them. Once documents reside in a central location, the issue of storage becomes less difficult because variables have been eliminated. |
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A consolidated system provides a direct savings by eliminating the need for more than one system and avoiding the unnecessary duplication of files. The ability to eliminate redundancy is critical to saving money. For example, if employees within your company are searching for a document, they should have some basic tools at their disposal. This is complicated, however, if they cannot confine their search to one system, or if they don?t know which document system contains their file. Consequently, time and money are wasted on inefficient systems, not inefficient workflows. |
Redundancy is often the source of tremendous costs. |
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New budget restrictions come into play daily. A consolidated document system helps answer those challenges as well. For example, it may be too expensive to house your company?s current document management system. A Remote Data Center may prove to be the best alternative when weighed against the current environment. A natural progression would be that you begin to consider web collaboration and even portals in your company?s future. However, transition of your company's existing files to a Remote Data Center is a considerable task. A segregated document system will only compound the issue. The benefit of a CDMS is that it can make moving much less painful. |
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2. Improved Company Methods should translate to your Document Management system |
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The ability to manage larger volumes of data is essential when planning for growth within your company. Your company?s capacity to take on larger clients and traffic more data must always be one step ahead of your current demands. If it is not, the opportunity for growth will result in mismanagement and lack of resources. |
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A well-planned CDMS can help your company prepare for growth when it comes. It will put in place a system that will help you control your current data as well as monitor for potential problems, allowing you to balance the needs of your data with incoming work. |
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Comprehension of your company?s needs comes from exposure to the right data. |
Once you have a CDMS in place, you begin to develop methods of analyzing your data. The information needed to make decisions comes directly from the CDMS. There is no need to hire an independent analyst. Using the tools within the CDMS you can bring the position in-house. Without a CDMS, exposure is subject to too many variables. |
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For example, an employee has several contact points within a company, from email to word processing and everything in between. Keeping multiple records of the same document is difficult on its own, never mind the fact that the information is unstructured. The need for structured data, as well as unstructured data is obvious. What is unclear is the method by which to integrate the two. That new employee may have files on his workstation that are unorganized but just as valuable as those delivered to the network for official release. A centralized document management system can solve this problem. By placing all documents into a CDMS, structured and unstructured documents can be leveraged by appropriate parties. This interoffice activity demonstrates a unified workforce. When everyone within the office can search the same system to find documents and records, your company can take on a new dimension since co-workers can leverage all their work at once. |
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3. Expansion of your Knowledge Base |
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The knowledge maintained within a CDMS can take on many components that help to define a company?s success. Consequently when a CDMS is augmented with external information, it can result in a substantial competitive advantage. An organization?s increased ability to monitor its own internal needs as well as those of a competitor can expand its competitive edge. |
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A reliable knowledge base can help department heads and their faculty work more efficiently. The information they share will no longer be regulated by a nominal document system that they may not be familiar with or may not have access to use. A CDMS presents a knowledge base that all coworkers can access and are trained to use. The diagram below demonstrates how employees within a company may use a CDMS with other office systems. |
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Once you have understood the purpose of a CDMS, the next logical step is to pace this system with your workforce. As the needs of your employees to retrieve documents grow, so too must your CDMS. Yet, there is an inherent risk involved in this step. If you outpace the needs of your workforce by developing too sophisticated a system, your employees will disapprove. If, however, you maintain your system at a basic level for too long, your employees will soon find the need for improvement themselves. So how does one keep the balance between core competency and pacesetting improvements? The answer may lie with a Content Management System.
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Case II: A Software Dependant Company |
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The increasing need to store information in high volumes has been met with the introduction of high-end business servers into several new environments. Many have also adopted custom software to collaborate with their clients. These companies have taken little time to realize that the value of their system lies in the content of the documents they share, not in the documents themselves. Consequently, they use documents to pull content from specific areas and store directly into databases. Once in a database, this content can easily be recalled without the use of tags or metadata that might add additional cost to the system. These companies are no longer dependent on their electronic documents, but managed instead by database-driven software. |
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Once you subscribe to a Content Management System (CMS), you will find it easier to leverage your system?s performance in a collaborative environment. For example, if the data is stored in XML (Extensible Markup Language), you will have the ability to author, browse and analyze your content over the web from any platform. Your data can be transformed to fit all other types of digital formats, allowing you an easy transition into next generation software. The benefits of XML alone do not encompass the opportunities afforded by a content management system. They do, however, exemplify the flexibility of data once that repository is made accessible. Imagine scalability, manageability, and availability all working for you instead of against you. An XML based CMS can significantly advance your company?s web capabilities. Web Collaboration is only part of a larger company mission. Perhaps you see Remote Server Applications on your horizon, how better would you start than with a CMS? Applications can then be channeled to a remote server where the best value is provided. At the same time, your company can reduce the burden of reinstalling software for every new employee. Companies that take advantage of Remote Server Applications can point all users to the same CMS. Since data is no longer forced through endless personal storage methods, information obtained from the CMS is real time data and is ready to be executed upon. Immediate value can be extracted from an environment where both the document and the application are being served. All that is missing is your own knowledge management. But how might your company leverage knowledge management? Some might approach the challenge similar to a CDMS or CMS, but they are in fact different tasks. Employee knowledge management is best quantified by a web portal where applications, documents, forums and personal calendars all meet in a browser environment. Corporate web portals may be built upon a Consolidated Document Management System or a Content Management System, but are not limited to them. They will remain inseparable, however, due to the gradual process of organizing your company?s resources. |
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Summary |
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Improvements to your company workflow through technology cannot be viewed as a patch solution. They will exist only if there is a long-term commitment in both resources and attitude. File management systems are no different; they will work only as far as their users embrace them. While data consolidation may be the first point of priority in evaluating systems like CDMS or CMS, it should not be the only one. The ability to continually organize and reorganize information is an indispensable resource. Only the latest retooling of data will provide accurate justification for corporate decisions. |
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Reasons to Choose?CDMS |
Reasons to Choose?CMS |
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? Redundancy Elimination ? Remote Data Storage ? Document Driven ? Trustworthy Document Retrieval
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? Data Flexibility ? Remote Application Server ? Software Driven ? Independent of Metadata
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