A scanning project worthy of a 'Band of Brothers'

I opened a letter that has sat untouched for the last 70 years. Musty, brittle, and faded, I pried the paper from its well-worn sleeve. For the past few days, I’ve repeated this ritual hundreds of times as I’ve meticulously prepared and scanned the letters from my maternal Grandfather, Bob Mann, a WW2 Veteran. Most are written to my Grandmother, who passed her time during the war assembling parts of B2 bombers, and writing letters daily to “her Bob” on the front lines. They tell stories of fear, love, triumph, tragedy, and adventure. He would sit in a foxhole and read comic books, and write letters home to his sweetheart; dreaming of a cottage on a tranquil lake to occupy his thoughts and take his mind off the constant sniper and artillery fire.

Nothing is more fun than scanning onion paper.

People know me as someone who lives in a paperless office, and enjoys a paperless lifestyle, in fact I don’t own a printer. So you might be asking, why I have held onto this particular paper. My grandfather’s letters from the war tell a profound story. He was part of the invasion of France, liberated Paris, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, freed Belgium, and smashed the Eagle's Nest. That would make a great movie, right? Correct, and HBO turned his division’s story into ‘Band of Brothers’. I had heard some of this growing up, but now digging into his letters; it became totally real and personal for me.


This letter is dated June 22, 1944, a few weeks after the invasion of France.


“Don’t worry too much – the Germans may be tough but they don’t come at us with invincible and bullet proof skin. We shoot to kill like they do, and the chances are even, although I do believe we have them worried more or less. Did you know too that I’m the Army’s secret weapon- they never heard of me yet! Ha! Ha!” Clearly, a sense of humor and pride runs in the family.


To help me with this project, Canon sent me 2 scanners to test, a P-215 portable scanner, and a DR-C125 desktop scanner. I originally thought that given the age and condition of the paper and the contents, I’d have to use a flatbed scanner and painstakingly prepare and scan 1 page at a time of thousands. After a quick chat, I was assured that the DR-C125 was built to handle fragile and delicate paper. 


My pulse was racing as I fed the first letter into the document feeder. Would it eat it and make for awkward conversations around the family dinner table? To my delight, the machine whipped into action, neatly separating each page, bringing the words to life on my screen. Using the integrated ImageFORMULA scanning utility, the process was a breeze. Page by page, note by note, the documents assembled themselves into perfectly arranged PDFs. I did a fist pump at my computer as technology revived the words locked on the page for the last 70 years.


Once I had a few pictures and letters scanned, my first message was to my Mom on Facebook when I shared the incredibly well reasoned status update with the photo below; “Liberating Paris, suck it Hitler.” 


Over the next few weeks, I’ll complete this project, and pending family approval share all of the letters online for others to enjoy as well. Thanks again to the fine folks at Canon for providing the scanner for this project and helping me recapture a piece of my history.

What can Katy Perry teach us about making end users happy?

I recently was speaking with a SharePoint user who told me one of the biggest challenges she faces with her deployment is that users don’t want to use the system, and they prefer their old ways. Now, in my office, typically I don’t have a choice when it comes to what systems are used and how work gets done. “Do you want me to juggle chainsaws, sing Katy Perry songs and integrate this new cloud project management tool?”

Sure boss, if that is what’s required.

So this instance led me to thinking that maybe the troops could use some tips on how to win over employees or customers when launching a new system or changing the way you alter data:

1) Make it fun. No one has to be told to play Angry Birds or check Facebook, because they are fun by default. (Espeically when you see that an ex has once again set their Status to “single.”) When engaging new users, make things fun! I always keep candy on hand and use personal stories and silly pictures to get people engaged. If people are laughing and smiling, you are winning them over to a new way of thinking. If that doesn’t work, forget to put your pants on after lunch.

2) Provide lots of training opportunities. Some systems don’t require training but you should support different methods of learning. I like to record two minute, bite-sized videos that can be sent and shared easily, in addition to documentation and live sessions. Let people experience it live, or on demand.

3) Be there to answer questions. Bedside manner is critical when it comes to dealing with reluctant team members. Don’t be afraid to make yourself available in person. I like using “office hours” where people can call, drop in, or message me for instant answers.

4) Use the carrot and stick. This is critical, because you can’t have one without the other. Just as people should be trained and rewarded, they should also be punished for not doing their jobs and working as part of a team. Don’t be afraid to crack down on people that seek to derail your efforts and projects.

What do you think about these approaches to making end users happy? What methods do you use to create smiling faces? (Besides the colon and parenthetical keys.)

Starting a new ECM project? Don’t pave the cow path

Have you ever driven through downtown Boston? If so, you might scratch your head as to why some streets wind and twist seemingly at random, driving you around in circles, sometimes literally, while raising your blood pressure like Clark W. Griswold trying to exit from London’s Lambeth Bridge roundabout.

As legend has it, the streets in the downtown quarter were the old livestock and dirt roads used by the first colonists, and have stayed relatively the same for hundreds of years.

When you embark on a new BPM, ECM or SharePoint project, it is important to not jam a superhighway of sharing and productivity on top of the cow path. Enshrining an illogical, unrefined and often unplanned path is not the ideal method of project execution or user adoption. The best question you should ask before working on any new project is, “Why?”

• Why are things being done a certain way?
• Why should they stay the same?
• Why should they be changed?

You have a wide variety of options here, ranging from hiring a dedicated PM, diagramming things in Visio, or even drawing a process on a whiteboard. I think the critical component is actually seeing what a workflow or system currently looks like before you embark on changing or refining it. If you can understand the process first, and the people involved, then adding technology to improve things is easy.

So have you ever paved a cow path on a project? Narrowly averted disaster? Leave a comment below and let me know. 

Cloud Computing and ECM, 5 things you need to know

Before we get started: if you are in the Los Angeles Area, come join the AIIM LA Chapter this Thursday, April 28th to learn more about cloud computing and content management. Register HERE.
Cloud-based enterprise content management (CECM) is still a toddler in the mature world of the legacy big boys, walking around without much stability but tons of potential. The future is bright for this one.

Naturally, there are still way more questions than answers with CECM, and I wanted to share with you some of the most common things that I deal with when discussing it in and around LincDoc. I'm also a daily end user of a ton of cloud systems, so I have addressed these concerns for internal projects, as well.

1. Security. You must have a detailed understanding of both your cloud and internal security models. For example, how do you currently manage groups and users? How do you handle files and secure access to information? Straight up migrating to a new system might not be a good fit for your security model, so understand whether you should explore things like "single sign on," for example. You should also consider things like forced SSL, which makes users establish a secure, encrypted connection for any sites you would access.

2. Cost. This is a pro and a con, since the cost to enter a cloud solution is almost always a fraction of going with an on-premise ECM solution. Most customers I speak with could convert entirely from a legacy ECM system into the cloud for less than one year of basic maintenance on existing systems. Some of the other costs to consider are conversion, end user training, and the ongoing subscription that you will be incurring to use a CECM system.

3. Reliability. In light of the recent Amazon outage, making sure your system has a redundancy plan and that you maintain local backups of information is crucial. But Amazon's stumble is a great lesson. For example, at LincWare we use Box.net and maintain synced local copies of all business critical files and documents. So even if we cannot access the cloud, we still have local data to use. Remember, even a guarantee of 99.9% uptime per month means 40 minutes of downtime in a given month. I suspect that 40 minutes is substantially lower than the planned and unplanned downtime for on-premise ECM systems, especially when you consider the general downtime of employees simply not using your software and any hardware problems. So yes, it still helps to speak to your provider about their infrastructure; and don't let them blow that off as if every data center in the world is protected by a phalanx of trigger-happy Decepticons. While rare today, the potential for data loss still exists.

4. Access to information. A critical question to ask your provider is "who owns the information?” If the answer is anyone but YOU, go on red alert. A real world example of this: your administrator forgets his password to a CECM account and thus, is locked out on a Saturday evening. His being home on a Saturday night crying about a computer system password aside, without vendor intervention, he might be locked out until Monday. Or, maybe you get sued for something and have to produce data from your cloud ECM account but can't retrieve the information. Can you work with your vendor to reproduce information if required? Present this scenario to your vendor. Leave out the Saturday night part. And give up on Internet dating.

5. Conversion of existing systems. The age of cloud computing and CECM is finally here and a lot of the people I talk with are looking to convert from their 199X, Windows 95 systems to something more modern. The workforce is changing as tablet devices and mobile tech alter both how and where people work. To accommodate these changes, converting to the cloud makes a lot of sense, allowing you to add it to your infrastructure where it fits. Some vendors, like Box.net, provide a bridge that connects systems like SharePoint and Documentum to the cloud—a blended approach to help with the conversion.
So cloud superstars, what issues to do you ponder around cloud-based content management? Are you a luddite/naysayer who still uses floppy disks? Or, are you the next Aaron Levie, who rumor has it doesn't even have hard drives in his computers?

How to conduct a needs analysis for electronic forms

One of the best ways to analyze and refine your electronic forms projects is to conduct a brief needs analysis to determine what forms are targets for optimization and which can be eliminated or discarded. At their core, most paper forms represent business processes, for example, applications. Since they are representations of business processes, their life cycle is easy to diagram and understand. Electronic forms offer the additional benefits of enhanced customer service, the elimination of paper, and the removal of manual data entry. With that in mind, here are some steps you can take to analyze your forms:

1. Set goals and expectations for your electronic forms and address individuals specific concerns or expectations.Consider why you even want to explore and implement eForms in the first place.
2. Gather the forms that you feel cause you the most headaches. I often focus our customers on the forms that are most common but often overlooked. The more often you see a form, the better it is to automate. Often, external facing forms make good targets, so see what PDF forms you currently have linked on your website.
3. If you can, physically walk through your office or facility and trace the journey of forms. If you can’t do it in person, try diagramming it on a whiteboard to better understand what people and departments are involved. When you look at the form life cycle, how many data entry processes are there? How much of the workflow is done ad-hoc?
4. Who is your primary consumer of forms, internal users or external users? The answer will impact your vendor selection since some don’t easily support external forms or processes.
5. Currently, in what format are your forms? Most often they will be PDFs, Word documents, and occasionally, spreadsheets. If your forms only exist on paper and no original can be found, you might want to consider redesigning or eliminating that form. I encourage LincDoc customers to use their existing forms when possible if they are appropriate, or make minor adjustments and improvements as they see fit.
6. Do your paper forms suffer from space constraints? Were they originally designed to cram as much information and fields as possible onto a single page? How would you feel completing such a form? Is some data hard to enter given the space constraints?
7. Do you currently require signatures on your forms? If so, why? I often hear from people that their forms require signatures but what they really mean is that they require approvals. If you do require signatures on forms, consider how you collect them now and what kind of security you need on the signatures.
8. When considering your other systems, is the data you are entering in your forms contained in other systems? For example, do you have HR information in Peoplesoft? Accounting data in Lawson? If so, you can often reuse that data in your electronic forms to speed up the data entry process?
9. What is your mobile device strategy? Do you want to provide access on things like kiosks, iPads and other tablet devices? If so, you will need to design forms that are easy to complete on devices without a standard keyboard.
10. What ECM / repository / content management platform do you use? Do you currently archive forms into that repository? This will also impact vendor selection, as most tools are proprietary to their own vendors. For example, tools like InfoPath from Microsoft requires custom development to integrate with systems other than SharePoint. If you want to avoid vendor lock-in with your electronic forms, consider applications like LincDoc that work with a wide variety of systems.
11. How can you make the entire process easy? As you engage with your forms ask yourself, “Am I making this easy for the user?” and “how do I feel when filling out this form?”. If you can create a user guided approach that walks a user through completing a form, you will be in better shape than recreating the mess of legacy forms.
12. Are you prepared for change? Seriously, this is the most important question since electronic forms will significantly enhance your workflow speed and efficiency. If your organization isn’t ready to be more effective, and your business processes aren’t up to snuff, you might hit challenges with implementing forms.

So readers, what was your process for electronic forms? 

Scope Creep- the silent deadline killer (with bonus podcast!)

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The new year has been kind to my team. We have been fortunate to earn a number of new customers in the past month or so, including one of the country's most prestigious universities and a major energy resources company. As we are implementing these projects and working with their organizations, I thought it worthwhile to share with you some of my observations on scoping capture projects and issues surrounding change management.

Specifically, let's talk about how to avoid scope creep. Sometimes I call it "the creep," but generally it is defined as uncontrollable changes in the scope of a project. With a few strategies, you can avoid "the creep" and roll out an outstanding capture project. Other times, you just crash and burn. So good luck!

1. Make your project an elephant that needs to be eaten one bite at a time. I regularly kick off meetings with a picture of a giant elephant—and not just because I think they are awesome. So, when trying to choke down such a monstrous mammal, do you attack it from all sides by throwing expensive tools at it? Do you hire outside help? No, you don't. You take one small bite at a time. One of the best ways to minimize scope creep is to break your project down into distinct steps with dates. For example, by June 1st, we will have created five electronic forms and have them integrated into SharePoint. Simple goals produce great results.
2. Communication! One of my friends told me recently that "projects fail because of people, not because of technology." Having a plan for communication, assigning roles and responsibilities, and finding project champions all helps put the "people" back into large technology projects. All of my customers have my personal phone numbers, know my dog's name and can tell you my favorite color. (It's probably time to turn off the 24-hour Dan Cam though. It's getting to be a bit much.) I try to learn as much about them as well, because having a personal relationship is key to fostering a great communication environment for your project.
3. Have a change management plan. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. (Holy cliche Batman!) All capture projects inevitably have changes and refinement in their scope and purpose. As vendors and customers, you need to allocate time and resources for unknown challenges. I encourage people I work with to add in extra room for items and issues that are unplanned. Like flare-ups of my YouTube addiction.
4. Listen to your team members. One of my tricks is holding short status meetings with people to show them what we've been up to. People greatly appreciate being kept in the loop and having a change to voice their opinions. Some of the best information you will gather will come from short, informal conversations. If your project team is distributed, consider tools like instant messaging, Twitter, or a service like Campfire to keep people up to date with the project.

So community, do you also loathe "the creep" and eat elephants? What is YOUR story? And is it on YouTube?

Making the business case internally for ECM and ERM

How do you make the business case for implementing an ECM or ERM system? As an electronic forms and document automation focused company, we often see ourselves as an on-ramp that connects to the highway of many other systems, so we’ve had a chance to observe the process and see what works and what doesn’t work. Here are some of our suggestions based on what a particular organization is facing.  You can follow the discussion at http://goo.gl/4SnK7 . Since LincDoc doesn’t exist in a vacuum, we wanted to share this with our VARs and customers who might face similar problems.

The Customer Situation: We’ve outgrown shared folders and need to be more efficient

• Engineering firm in the UK with 50 employees
• Over 500,000 files are in a shared drive without a formal structure.
• No retention schedules
• No user control, anyone can move and delete anything
• Looking for a quick fix, not considering a long term plan and strategy.

Their Questions, our advice (paraphrased):

1) Should we stop and create a plan, take an inventory, and do things right? Or just try to go with a quick fix?

It will work, but first you have to stop the bleeding. Luckily it is only 50 or so users, so you can train them easily on the new processes and new systems. Our advice would be to lock that volume as read only once you get a new system.

2) What are some tangible outcomes from the inventory process – such as typical documents that would be produced (e.g. info system map) that would help then perceive the worth of this work.  I have indicated the time taken for the different info gathering stages to give them a fuller picture of the detail involved.

You can expect significantly improved findability of information, greatly shortening the time it takes to find the right file or document. Likewise if you audit those records, you can most likely reduce the amount, cleaning up the signal to noise ration on that content. An analogy I give is that if done right, it should be as easy to find things on an internal system, as it is to search for facts on Wikipedia.

3) It may be a case of ‘how long’s a piece of string’ but are there any general timescales for how long inventorying takes?  Whether it’s in terms of ‘allow xhrs/days per y number  of people’ or any other rule of thumb from those of you with experience of this kind of work?

This is variable, but what you can do is take a look at 5-10% of the system, and estimate how long that will take (so 25 – 50k records) and extrapolate from that sample size. Still, there are some hidden variables such as change management and process control you’ll need to factor in. my quick advice is however long you THINK it will take- double it. It will set expectations, and give you room to breathe.

4) Is it  common for companies, even when they seem to understand they have a real info problem, to just underestimate the worth of this kind of work?

What you are doing is incredibly important, and yes it won’t be appreciated until that organization is sued, or audited- and they have to produce records from your new system. In fact, you have two methods of making the business case internally- carrot and stick. The carrot is all the nice things, speed, accessibility, better client service, and faster collaboration. The stick of course is what happens if you don’t change things, and something occurs.

Last but not least, make sure that your organization is fully committed to process improvement, and that the people are ready for it as well. With a good communication and training plan, and clear business objectives, you give yourself the best probability for success.