Author: Alfredo DeVanna, VP Solutions Architect – Managing Partner

The most important thing to consider when writing posts is to think in the shoes of the customer. To date, in our scanning series, we’ve been focusing on how scanning can potentially reduce complexity in your business. This is because; according to IBM’s newest CEO study complexity is the #1 challenge the CEOs want to tackle.

A Quick Summary of Our Scanning Series

So far in this blog series we’ve asked if you can take complexity out of your company, and suggested areas where complexity may exist.

The following posts dug deeper into how scanning can relieve complexity and how conducting a document inventory and document mapping are key steps prior to architecting and implementing a scanning solution in your business.

Some Industry Data on Scanning Deployments

At this point in the series we’re going to share some industry information that we think will help you in your decision making process as you decide where and how to scan in your organization. This combined, hopefully, with the advice we’ve given so far will provide you with some solid direction. We’re happy to provide you with this advice and information as our way to help you succeed and if you need some outside help, we’re qualified to assist you.

Key Information and Insights

A recent report from AIIM provides some great information on the successes and challenges organizations are having with their scanning and capture projects. Some key charts struck me as very important that can help you when planning your scanning project, they are:

• What are the strongest drivers for scanning in organizations
• What scanning projects have been implemented by other organizations
• What the success rate has been on those projects
• What the ROI period has been

Top Three Drivers for Scanning

This chart is telling because it tells me that the top three drivers all can be related to complexity and things like lowering costs and being more environmentally friendly, although important, are considered less important in the scanning decision process.

Source: AIIM Document Scanning and Capture: Local, Central, Outsource - What's Working Best?

Most Popular Scanning Projects

This chart shows that over 60% of respondents to the AIIM study are scanning legal and contract documents, invoices and application forms. These tend to be documents that require a manual signature. Scanning these documents for compliance purposes or to automate accounts payable or your mailroom may make sense, especially if they address the three key drivers outlined above.

Source: AIIM Document Scanning and Capture: Local, Central, Outsource - What's Working Best?

The key here is to look for complexity in your business, consider the key drivers that are motivating business and I.T. leaders to implement scanning technology and what projects they’ve completed. In my next post I’ll talk about ROI and project successes.

About the Charts

If you haven’t joined AIIM yet I encourage you to do so. It is a great organization with a wealth of information at your fingertips. The charts in this post are from AIIM’s 2009 report Document Scanning and Capture: Local, Central, Outsource – What’s Working Best?

Special Offer

We hope these blog posts are of value to our clients and prospective clients. If they are please let us know so by getting in touch with us. If you’d like for us to cover a specific topic please fill out our contact us form and let us know. Or, you can leave a comment below.

About the Author

Alfredo DeVanna, is VP Solutions Architect – Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has over 10 years of international experience deploying over 80 critical information technology and enterprise content management systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.

Author: Victor Bensusan, Vice President and Managing Partner

Giving to our Community

I recently was invited by Kevin Stevens, Labour Program Manager at Newcomer Centre of Peel to present at their IT Club event

The IT Club is a platform for IT specialists, employees, employers, freelancers and job seekers to exchange ideas, share best practices and to build portfolios.

Newcomers with international experience and Canadians with their established networks have the opportunity to work together to enhance the future of the IT industry in Canada.

There is no cost to join and members can benefit from:

• Improving job readiness and career path building skills
• Share job and contract opportunities
• Learn about IT trends, new products and services
• Building a network of peers, thought leaders and prospective employers

The fact that this group focuses on connecting new residents, from around the world, with IT professionals and entrepreneurs is very important. A diverse and multi-cultural workforce gives Canada and our company a competitive advantage over those countries and companies that are less diverse. We understand global markets better and can literally speak and translate our customer’s language!

In fact diversity makes it easier for global companies to outsource services to us knowing our workforce speaks many languages, respects cultural differences, is well educated and experienced.

A Special Thanks

The IT Club’s motto: “Bringing Canadian IT Experts and Newcomers Together” pretty much sums up what the experience was like for me. In fact, someone approached me after I presented and introduced herself – she’s now joined our team.

Special thanks to Kevin for the invitation and Bjoern Kingsley for his efforts in organizing the event and sharing his pictures. Enjoy the photos from the event. I’m the handsome guy presenting.

Book us to Speak

Both Alfredo and I are available to speak at events like these where we can share our experience as entrepreneurs, our knowledge of Enterprise Content Management and the IT sector at large. Contact me if you’d like us to speak at one of your upcoming events.

Photo Attribution:
IT Club NCP photostream

About the Author

Victor Bensusan is VP Finance and Operations – Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has 20 years experience in Finance and Information Technology primarily in the area of process automation, information management and business performance improvement.

Author: Victor Bensusan, Vice President and Managing Partner

In our last post in our scanning series Alfredo covered the first key step in implementing a scanning solution in your company: conducting a document inventory.

The key outcomes of the document inventory include:

• An organized record of what key documents are created and received in your organization
• A proper document naming convention or taxonomy is put in place so documents are named consistently and reliably
• Establishing a good foundation for the next step in deploying a scanning solutionin your business: Document mapping

What is Document Mapping?

Document mapping is the critical component that connects a document to key processes, people, and workflow in your business. It involves taking a look at the key documents that have been inventoried and answering the following questions:

• How critical is this paper document to your business? What would happen if it went missing?
• Who uses the information from these documents? What departments and what roles in the company?
• How much information from these documents is being inputted into databases and systems? How many times and how many people are inputting this information?
• Where do your receive these documents? Multiple locations or one?
• What documents do you produce and where are they produced?

These questions, and others, are asked in order to understand two things:

• 1) It helps you to rank the importance of the documents and decide whether they should be scanned or not
• 2) It relates these documents to your business processes and workflow that will uncover areas where complexity exists and potential cost savings

To Scan or not to Scan?

This is the perfect time to begin deciding which documents should be scanned by who, where and when. It pivots on the importance of the document, the work and costs involved to manage that document and the risk if you lost that document. There are other decision making factors but these ones are important.

If you’re curious as to what types of documents should be scanned based on importance here are some examples:

• Municipalities: Invoices, Purchase Orders, Land Transfer Requests, Parking Tickets, Permits
• Transportation & Logistics: Waybills, Confirmation Sheets, Bills of Lading, tariff documentation, Lines of Credit
• Banking: Know Your Client (KYC) documentation such as: Memorandum & Articles of Incorporation, Power of Attorney, W-8BEN/W9, Application Forms, Passport Copy, Board Meeting Resolutions
• Insurance: Application Forms, Medical Records, Claim related documentation including Drugs and Dental receipts

Putting it together

Document inventory and mapping are arguably the most time intensive activities, yet they are extremely important in laying the right foundation for implementing scanning technology in your company. This exercise will save you time, money and hassles and help ensure your implementation is successful.

A Special Offer

If you’d like to see examples of document inventories and templates used by Yakidoo, please fill out our contact us form and add the following  in the comments section: Document Inventory.

About the Author

Victor Bensusan is VP Finance and Operations – Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has 20 years experience in Finance and Information Technology primarily in the area of process automation, information management and business performance improvement.

We are pleased to announce two new members to the Yakidoo team.

Mohammad Ghias, Technical Senior Specialist

Mohammad is a solution designer and architect specializing in document, data capture and ECM technologies. He has over 15 years experience in the design and integration of business applications with capture and content management systems for public and private sector enterprise organizations.

He is a Kofax Capture Certified Consultant (KC3) who specializes in process automation, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and using .Net technologies to customize capture systems. Key industries where Mohammad has implemented capture and document management solutions include healthcare, insurance and financial sectors.

Robert Triggs, Vice President of Sales & Business Development

Rob started his career in customer service at Xerox Corporation and over his 18 year tenure he held leadership roles as a customer service engineer, national customer service trainer, major account manager, sales support manager and eventually held the position of general manager.

Recently, Rob was a key member of the sales management team at Unis Lumin helping shepherd the growth it experienced from 2008 to 2010.

During his career he has developed a customer focused perspective due to his varied experience in engineering, support and sales roles. Rob is a certified adult learning facilitator and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.

Welcome Rob and Mohammad.

Enterprise Content Management is a concept, set of practices, standards, technologies, processes and disciplines all intertwined to do one thing: productively manage and leverage the information your business generates and uses daily.

If you’re new to ECM or need a high level overview of what ECM is this blog series may be useful to you. Why? There is so much information on this topic it can be a bit overwhelming, so we’ve created this series of blog posts entitled: ECM 101.

This six part series introduces you to AIIM’s (Association for Information and Image Management) ECM process. Ideal for professionals new to ECM these posts provide a brief overview of each stage of the ECM process with non-technical examples and analogies.

We hope this series helps you and your peers better understand the ECM process:

1) Introduction to the ECM Process
2) Phase One: Capture – What is Capture and Where Should We Start?
3) Phase Two: Manage – The Three Key Things to Managing Content
4) Phase Three: Store – Storing Content as Part of the ECM Process
5) Phase Four: Preserve – When Preserving Think of the Mona Lisa
6) Phase Five: Deliver – Delivery, the Last Phase of the ECM Process

We hope this series provides you with useful information and can help you as you plan your ECM strategy. If you have questions you can contact us through our website or give us a call at (905) 267-3949

Series Authors

Victor Bensusan is VP Sales and Operations – Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has 20 years experience in Finance and Information Technology primarily in the area of process automation, information management and business performance improvement.

Alfredo DeVanna, is VP Solutions Architect – Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has over 10 years of international experience deploying over 80 critical information technology and enterprise content management systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.

Author: Alfredo DeVanna, VP Solutions Architect – Managing Partner

A 2010 global study conducted by IBM identified complexity as the #1 challenge on the minds of today’s CEOs. That’s why we’re dedicating some of our posts in our Scanning Series to discuss and demonstrate ways that scanning can help reduce complexity in your department or business. This post covers, at a high level, a key step you should take before using scanning technology in your company.

Finding the Perfect Storm of Complexity

In “How Scanning Technology Can Reduce Complexity in Your Business” we recommended you look for the perfect storm of complexity. Typically, this occurs where there is a core process that is dependent on manual tasks and generates unstructured data (records) both physical (paper) and electronic in nature.

Attribution: NASA

What to Do When You’ve Found that Perfect Storm of Complexity

Attribution: Staples UK

There’s no “easy button”! No fancy tools to use, no software to install or scanners to turn on, well at least not yet.

In fact, what is now required is some good old hard work, time, experience in records management, and some heavy thinking and concentration.

So what’s this important step to take prior to scanning any piece of paper? The answer is a document assessment and inventory.

There are two key reasons why taking inventory of your paper documents is important, they are:

• It is important that all physical documents being generated are reviewed and accounted for. It provides you with the opportunity to decide whether the documents are still necessary and must be scanned or not

• As part of the inventory process, the documents will be classified so they can easily be scanned, indexed, saved , stored and accessed. This is a critical step, because paper documents that are converted to electronic versions cannot be subjected to an unstructured way of naming, organizing and saving them. In fact, it isn’t uncommon that we end up taking inventory of electronic documents at the same time

How a Document Inventory Is Done

Each business or department is unique, so when Yakidoo conducts a document inventory, we carefully assess what documents are critically important to a business process, who depends on the information in the document and where the information and the scanned document needs to go.

At the same time, we introduce a disciplined approach and rigor that involves properly classifying each core document. There are many questions you must answer with respect to the use, importance and shelf life of each document. These questions are dependent on what industry you are in, whether your company is public, the specific document and the department(s) that depend on it.

All these questions, and many more, are asked when conducting the document inventory. The answers all roll up into, more often than not, a spreadsheet that lists all the core documents that are to be scanned. But, this inventory is not only a list of documents; it also classifies them such that they can be indexed, sorted and found once scanned.

Classifying is typically done by giving a document a unique #, category (e.g. procurement), type (e.g. expenses), naming convention (e.g. PROC expense reports) and association to a core department (e.g. accounting).

This inventory and classification scheme helps vet what documents and information are no longer needed while ensuring that the ones that are, once scanned, will be easy to index and find.

A Special Offer

If you’d like to see examples of document inventories and templates used by Yakidoo, please fill out our contact us form and add the following  in the comments section: Document Inventory.

Photo Attribution:
Hurricane Isabel, NASA
Easy Button, Staple U.K.

About the Author

Alfredo DeVanna, is VP Solutions Architect – Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has over 10 years of international experience deploying over 80 critical information technology and enterprise content management systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.

Author: Alfredo DeVanna, VP Solutions Architect – Managing Partner

Welcome to our next post in our Scanning Series. With complexity being the number one challenge on the minds of today’ CEOs this post explores where scanning can help cut some of the complexity fat.

In my previous post, Picking the Right Place to Reduce Complexity in Your Business, we recommended you look at your core processes and unstructured data when seeking ways to reduce complexity in your business.

I’m oversimplifying but the illustration below represents where complexity may lurk in your organization. Each core process produces unstructured data in the form of physical and electronic records. There’s evidence that suggests that as much as 80% of all information in your organization is unstructured.

Where complexity thrives, is in areas where there is intense manual processes and an abundance of unstructured data in the form of physical and electronic records.

A record can be either a tangible object or digital information: for example, birth certificates, medical x-rays, office documents, databases, application data, and e-mail. In other words it exists physically or electronically.

Two Key Ways That Scanning Reduces Complexity

Scanning of physical records that tie to core processes reduces complexity by systematically gathering, indexing, storing and archiving key pieces of information that reside in physical documents.

Below are three examples of physical records including a form filled out by hand, a letter from a supplier and an invoice.

Scanning does two important things. First, it introduces process automation and second it records key data and puts it where you need it. The document is scanned and data is automatically added to key information systems and business line applications used to generate sales, bill customers, provide service, measure profitability etc.

There are two key complexity busters that scanning tackles. It improves visibility to key information and automates key process activities. This is important because in the 2007 Aberdeen “E-Payables: Advancing Accounts Payable Automation” Benchmark Report” lack of visibility and manually intense processes were cited as key causes to complexity.

While the study is three years old I would venture to guess that many organizations still have some of these visibility “blind spots” identified below.

In fact, the most popular scanning projects implemented that yielded the greatest return, according to AIIM’s 2009 Document Scanning and Capture Report, were process and document intensive in nature.

Scanning Helps in Two Key Areas

While every business is unique a simple approach to reducing complexity is to isolate core processes that are manually intense and generating a lot of unstructured data. Ascertain if scanning can automate some of your process tasks, improve visibility to important information and overall productivity. In my next post I’ll introduce the first key phase in putting in place a scanning strategy: Conducting a “Document Inventory”.

Do you have any questions or insights on how to take complexity out of your business? Feel free to leave a comment below. Feel free call (905) 267-3949 or direct message me via Linkedin if you’d like to discuss this topic more.

About the Author

Alfredo DeVanna, is VP Solutions Architect – Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has over 10 years of international experience deploying over 80 critical information technology and enterprise content management systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.

Author: Victor Bensusan, Vice President and Managing Partner

If you’re interested in knowing what work we’ve been doing and in what industries here’s our growing list below.

Projects include Enterprise Content Management consulting, integration and support. We’re spinning quite quite a bit of plates but our focus is on providing the best performing ECM solution for your business. (Our marketing guy came up with that line and the picture!).

Attribution: AFI

Insurance

• Assisted in the deployment of a solution which included the capture of emails, paper and faxes using Kofax Capture and ImageMaker components
• Assisted and supported the deployment of a new Kofax and Kofax Transformation Module Infrastructure
• Assisted in the deployment of new Kofax workstation with a Kofax Transformation Module Environment
• Performed an upgrade of Kofax Capture v6.1 to v8.0 and assisted with the virtualization of a Kofax environment releasing data to IBM Content Manager WAF and an external DataBase
• Assisted in the deployment of a Kofax Transformation Module solution

Banking

• Assisting in the deployment of a new scanning infrastructure
• Provided a new hardware scanning solution
• Provided IBM DB2 Content Management service to merge 3 clients desk into one
• Deployed two Content Management Workflow Processes
• Performed an upgrade of DB2 to the latest version and fixpack for Content Management environment
• Upgraded IBM DB2 Content Management system to v8.4.2
• Implemented Index Type Changes
• Provided end-user training
• Provided Kofax Validation services for off-shore banking institution

Distribution

• Provided a consolidated Maintenance Program for their Kofax Infrastructure

Government

• Performed a Content Management migration of images residing in an optical jukebox back to DASD on an iSeries environment
• Provided new Kofax Batch Class to capture new document type

Property Management

• Provided and deployed a new scanning infrastructure and upgraded their VRS environment
• Implemented new Kofax Infrastructure for new area of business
• Upgraded Kofax Capture and Kofax Network Server environment to v8.0
• Implemented new DB2 Content Manager for iSeries test environment
• Provided consulting services in regards to form design

Information Technology

• Provided scanning services and data capture services for an Information Technology company

If you’re interested in learning more about these projects just let us know. You can contact us through our website, give us a call at (905) 267-3949 or send me a direct message me via Linkedin.

Photo Attribution:
Spinning Plates from Affordable Housing Institute.

About the Author

Victor Bensusan is VP Sales and Operations – Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has 20 years experience in Finance and Information Technology primarily in the area of process automation, information management and business performance improvement.

Author: Alfredo DeVanna, VP Solutions Architect – Managing Partner

In my earlier post “Can You Take Complexity Out of Your Business” I noted that the #1 challenge on CEOs minds is complexity; this according to IBM’s 2010 CEO study entitled “Capitalizing on Complexity”.

Reducing complexity is simpler said than done! Where should you start? We suggest you look at your core processes and the unstructured data that drives those processes to see if you can cut some fat out of complexity so to speak.

What Exactly is a Process?

Wikipedia defines a business process as:

A collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for customers (external and internal).

I’m sure this can be debated and no two businesses are similar, but for simplicity sake business processes can be broken down into two types: primary and supportive, here’s a simple definition

Primary Processes – tasks, activities and information exchange that result in a product or service that is received by an organization’s external customer

Secondary Processes – tasks, activities and information exchange that are invisible to the external customer but essential to the effective management of the business

Now, core business processes have maximum impact on the success of your organization, as these processes deliver results that are directed towards specific and measurable business goals such as generating revenue or managing costs.

These are the business processes that an organization must excel at to remain competitive, in the industry – both now and in future. In other words these are the real value creating processes in the organization that customers and shareholders are concerned with. This is where you need to reduce complexity.

What is Unstructured Data?

In our blog posts we try to simplify things, sometimes overly, in order to get to the point. So, here’s a simple definition of unstructured data:

Unstructured data consists of all information that is not in a database AND all of the physical paper documents in your organization.

Too often we see definitions for unstructured data that don’t include paper documents. We believe paper documents should be included in this definition.

Varying reports out there say that 80% of all corporate information is unstructured. What does this mean? Well, it’s potentially a cause for complexity especially if the information is in various formats and in various places.

What complicates things is this information should all be consolidated and under one “file” so to speak. Right now information is rapidly coming in to your organization in various formats and from various sources. It must be gathered together and properly tied to core processes so you have a 360 degree of your customers and suppliers information exchange and transactions.

There’s a Process for a Process!

In “Is There a Simple Way to Define Enterprise Content Management” we introduced the Yakidoo’s Follow the Content Process.

This diagram illustrates how unstructured data can be captured, organized and fed into key systems that you can use to better manage data, reduce complexity and improve overall productivity. We cover, at a high level, in our post “What is Capture and Where Should We Start”. In my next post I’m going to introduce two ways you can start reducing complexity in your business by using scanning technology.

Do you have any questions or insights on how to take complexity out of your business? Feel free to leave a comment below. Feel free call (905) 267-3949 or direct message me via Linkedin if you’d like to discuss this topic more.

About the Author

Alfredo DeVanna, is VP Solutions Architect – Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has over 10 years of international experience deploying over 80 critical information technology and enterprise content management systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.

Author: Alfredo DeVanna, Vice President & Managing Director

Complexity Ranks as the #1 Challenge

The number one challenge on the minds of over 1,600 CEOs, general managers and public sector leaders surveyed and interviewed by IBM is complexity. This rang loud and true in their recently published, biennial, research study entitled: Capitalizing on Complexity, Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer Study.

In the report’s introduction, Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman, President and CEO, says:

“The world’s private and public sector leaders believe that a rapid escalation of “complexity” is the biggest challenge confronting them. They expect it to continue — indeed, to accelerate — in the coming years. They are equally clear that their enterprises today are not equipped to cope effectively with this complexity in the global environment.”

Change was the number one challenge cited by CEOs in the previous three studies published in 2004, 2006 and 2008. It’s safe too assume that change is still something companies must contend with as well.

Key Insights and Take-a-ways

Complexity is not only a challenge now, but many see things getting more complex in the future.

• 79% of CEOs anticipate greater complexity ahead
• 69% consider the business climate much more volatile as compared to previous years
• 87% anticipate greater government intervention and regulation over the next five years, compounding their sense of uncertainty

The top four external factors contributing to the complexity challenge are:

• Market
• Technological
• Macroeconomic
• People skills

It’s a pretty safe bet that complexity is a key challenge for most companies regardless of industry and size. The question really is how to tackle it. This is pretty heady stuff though!

What Does Complexity Look Like?

In fact, complexity is a pretty generic term and the biggest challenge is finding out where it exists in your business and then deciding what can be done about it. The 76 page report identifies key strategies to deal with complexity and the next step is to figure out the best places to tackle it.

In earlier posts we’ve identified key areas where symptoms and causes of complexity can exist including compliance, the mailroom and accounts payable.

Find Out Where Complexity Lives in Your Business

One area where you can look for complexity is in the key processes and paper documents that are critical to the success and health of your business. Are these processes antiquated and time consuming? Is the information on your paper documents being manually implemented onto spreadsheets and in to accounting systems?

How is the information from those documents being recorded and by whom? Can it be found? Is there key information in a paper document or EDI transaction that triggers a service call, an invoice or a payment?

One core process is invoicing which in many companies is still paper intensive. This process depends on various types of documentation (e.g. waybills, contracts, purchase orders, check registries, electronic communications and transactions) combined with information input and reconciliation.

In summary, take a look at your mission critical processes, your core documents and information. Ask yourself if there could be a more productive way to process documents while automating manual tasks. This is the best way to start the conversation as to whether implementing a capture solution and scanning infrastructure makes sense for your business.

Do you have any questions or insights on how to take complexity out of your business? Feel free to leave a comment below. Feel free call (905) 267-3949 or direct message me via Linkedin if you’d like to discuss this topic more.

About the Author

Alfredo DeVanna, is Vice President Solutions Architect and a Managing Partner at Yakidoo. He has over 10 years of international experience deploying over 80 critical information technology and enterprise content management systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.