For more information about Electronic and Digital Signatures visit www.arx.com or contact John at johnmarc@arx.com.  

Have you downloaded a copy of our 8 things book?  Check it out.

8 Tips for Selecting a Digital Signature Solution

As the traditional “paper-based” world gives way to digital documentation and transactions, enterprises are demanding innovative solutions for digitally signing and authenticating such documents, files, and forms with iron-clad protection against forgery. Solutions must guarantee non-repudiation and promise the same level of security and trust that exists with conventional documentation. At the same time, such a solution should be simple to use, easy to deploy and offer a rapid Return on Investment (ROI). With the rise of global digital businesses, transactions and documents may need to be signed by many people in different parts of the world. Users should be able to sign documents directly from their desktop or via a zero technology footprint using any web browser. 

Digital signature solutions should be able to: 1) Verify recipients outside of an organization; 2) Enable employees to sign documents while traveling; 3) Enable cross platform capabilities; 4) Enable the use of numerous applications, such as Microsoft Word®, Adobe Acrobat®, and TIFF images. 

1. Sealing Documents

Digital signature systems should allow you to seal the document using standard technology, allowing you to add your graphical signature to the document.  

Some solutions add a graphical signature image to any document created in Microsoft Word. This signed document can be easily changed by any recipient while the graphical electronic signature remains intact. This security flaw opens the door to fraud and forgery. The solution used has simply placed a digitized “picture” of the signature on the document, it doesn’t seal the document, verify the authenticity of the person signing, or guarantee the transaction cannot be altered.

In the traditional paper world, transactions are validated by signing them either on an accepted form, such as a check, or in front of a trusted third party. A notary or lawyer, then “stamps” the signatures, so that they cannot be changed. In the virtual paperless world, digital signatures must perform the same function. A digital signature must be able to seal any electronic document and guarantee that it is tamperproof. It uses a one-time “fingerprint”, unique to both the signer and the document to ensure that the signer is indeed the originator or owner of the document. This “fingerprint” cannot be reused or reassigned and proves that the message has not been altered in any way. 

2. Multiple Application Support 

A digital signature system needs to support multiple applications. Many electronic signature systems enable the signing of documents created with the most commonly used applications, such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat. However, many electronic signature systems do not support popular applications like AutoCAD, ERP, and others. Traditionally, when signing paper documents, it doesn't matter what type of document it is, be it a form, an invoice or a typed contract. The paperless world requires the same flexibility. 

3. Multiple Signatures 

It should be possible for more than one person in more than one place to sign a document. There are some electronic signature systems that only allow one signature and when the document has been signed and sealed, and it is impossible to add more signatures. 

Traditional document-intensive organizations, such as insurance companies or financial institutions, have large volumes of many different types of documents that must be processed every day. Many of these documents must be reviewed, approved and signed by more than one person. In some cases, one part must be approved by one signatory while another section needs approval by a different person. With a traditional "wet" signature, it is a simple matter of signing or initialing any place in the document. In the virtual world, an effective digital signature system should enable "sectional signing", which allows signatories to edit and sign their portion of the document. 

4. Compliance 

To be considered legally binding, documents and transactions – paper-based or electronic – must meet many basic requirements and strict standards. A digital signature solution must meet the same criteria as a “wet” signature. These include the following basic requirements: 

1. Authenticity – the signature can be authorized by a secure process.
2. Integrity – any tampering during transmission can be detected.
3. Privacy – the signature cannot be accessed by unauthorized sources.
4. Enforceability – the signatures must be verifiable by all parties.
5. Non-refutability – the signature cannot be denied or disavowed. 

The first two requirements prove that the recipient and the sender are authentic and authorized to perform this transaction. The next two provide methods to prove that the message content is authentic and that the recipient can be certain that the data has not been altered or lost in transit. The last important requirement is that the message must be able to “stand up in court”. Referred to as “non-repudiation”, this means that the digital signature must ensure that the parties involved in the transaction cannot deny sending the message or its contents. In addition to the above general requirements, some industries such as finance or pharmaceutical have specific requirements. 

5. Transportability 

An effective digital signature system should ensure transportability. If a company implements a digital signature solution and sends a signed document to a client who has not installed the same digital signature system, they will not be able to verify the document. In the traditional paper world, signed documents sent to third parties can be read and understood without a problem. In the paperless world, however, documents must be recognized by the software application. To be truly versatile, a sender must know that a digital signature will arrive unaltered anywhere in the world and that it can be easily verified without the need for complicated, proprietary third party applications. 

6. Seamless User Sign-Up 

In the traditional paper world, people who need to sign documents are identified in one of several ways: via a signature card, in-person or through a photo ID. In the virtual paperless world, signatories register electronically and obtain a digital certificate. The certificate provides electronic identification similar to a birth certificate or a passport. Digital certificates contain information about the user, such as the certificate holder's name, e-mail address and other specific identifying information. Digital certificates verify that the user is who he or she claims to be. Certificates are generated by the Certificate Authorities (CA) immediately after the identity of the user is validated. Once a digital signature system has been deployed, it should be both simple to use and as transparent as possible. Neither the users, nor the IT person, should be aware of how a certificate is generated or maintained.  

7 -- Simple-to-Use 

In the traditional paper world, signing a document is simple, intuitive and quick. In the virtual paperless world, signing a document should be just as easy. It should take no more than 10 seconds or 1-2 mouse clicks – to ensure that the document is signed, sealed and legally compliant. Users should not be required to learn new technologies or require assistance from a Help Desk. 

8 -- Total Cost of Ownership 

Traditional paper signing leaves mountains of paperwork. This requires physical storage in archives that often mushroom to warehouse proportions. To reduce costs and improve efficiency, companies should move into the world of electronic processes. Standards-based digital signature systems enable companies to become totally paperless. However, when considering a digital signature solution, it is important to look into the potential hidden costs. Many traditional digital signature systems are difficult to deploy. They involve complicated software requiring a heavy investment in IT support and development. Sometimes, a Help Desk needs to be created or additional staff employed to support the system. Other costs that need to be checked include registration and renewal fees for digital certificates, cost for smart cards, etc.

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Some other posts that may be of interest:

1. Declare war on the enterprise
2. Allow walled gardens to flourish
3. Accentuate the negative
4. Try to replace email
5. Fall in love with features
6. Overuse the word ’social’

Here's the original post -- The S Word -- check it out.

AIIM's E20 training program.

Here are some of Andy's thoughts re SharePoint 2010...

[Keep in mind these are Andy's opinions -- obviously well reasoned but his.  I'm open to helping circulate alternative viewpoints -- the point of this column is to foster communication and discussion about the options out there.  I know a large number of the recent posts have seemed a bit "Sharepoint-y" as we flesh out the content for our next e-book (on SharePoint).  Just FYI, I've decided to wait until after the first of the year to publish it -- just not enough hours in the day.  So in the next few weeks I'll get back to a bit more of the usual mix of content -- have columns coming up on legacy data, on indexing, and open source.]

Microsoft recently released the beta version of SharePoint 2010.  From a content management perspective, their goal was to provide “ECM for the Masses."  But what exactly does that mean and how does Microsoft expect to achieve it?  

I spent time over the last few months test driving the beta and the technical preview versions with an eye toward “ECM for the Masses” and below are my opinions on key investments Microsoft has made in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) that will bring this quest closer to reality.

8 Ways SharePoint 2010 Moves Toward "ECM for the Masses"

1 -- Traditional ECM Capabilities

Traditional ECM vendors have generally focused on solutions for a targeted set of users within the enterprise such as information managers and records managers.  Microsoft’s goal of “ECM for the Masses” is about changing the landscape of ECM to provide capability and access to the wealth of information across the enterprise as a whole.  The 2007 product introduced the first set of “out of the box” Records Management features and integrated the Web Content Management capabilities that were previously in their Content Management Server product line.  When you combine these features with the strength of the collaboration platform, the ease of use, and the integration with the Office client applications, Microsoft had the basis for an ECM platform that could span the enterprise and provide tools to end users that would cross the entire content lifecycle.  Even still, the product had its limitations.  Enter SharePoint 2010…

Recognizing that most large organizations have implemented more than one ECM product, Microsoft teamed up with other large ECM vendors (including IBM, EMC, Alfresco, OpenText, SAP, and Oracle) to define an ECM standard called Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS).  The goal of CMIS is to define a standard for interaction between ECM products.  This will allow the enterprise to surface and act on content in a broader way regardless of where the content actually resides.  CMIS 1.0 entered OASIS public review on October 23, 2009.  Microsoft announced that they will support CMIS in SharePoint 2010.

2 -- Taking the “Tax” out of Taxonomy and Metadata

Microsoft is introducing the Managed Metadata Service in SharePoint 2010.  This service will provide the basis for organizing and managing the “language” that end users will use to describe and categorize their content.  The service will provide the ability to synchronize the corporate managed taxonomy and the metadata model across the enterprise thus ensuring a consistent view and usage.  Further, the service provides end users with the ability to add additional context by allowing them to describe the content in their own language (folksonomy) that will also be synchronized across the enterprise.

3 -- Bringing “Social” to Content

Microsoft is investing heavily in the social aspects of content management.  When the corporate taxonomy, user defined folksonomy, and corporate metadata model are applied to the content, it gives the content more context and increases the relevance to the end consumers.  This additional context can be surfaced in a variety of ways such as tag-clouds, enterprise search, and My Sites.  When you add in user defined content ratings, content organizers, and people search, I think Microsoft is achieving the end goal of making it easy for consumers to find and act on the most relevant content in the enterprise.

4 -- Document Sets

Also introduced with SharePoint 2010 is the concept of document sets.  This will allow the enterprise to define and treat multiple content items as though they were one entity.   This is true for all of the standard content features including digital rights, business process, policy, retention, etc.  Microsoft has finally provided the enterprise with a means of managing multipart content.

5 -- Flexible Compliance

In addition to providing enterprise scale to their records management (RM) capabilities through a corporate defined hierarchical file plan, in-place records, and location based policy, Microsoft has extended their RM capabilities directly to end users in a manner that does not impact their existing work habits.  The content author and content consumer do not need to know the details of their corporate content policies in order to participate in the process.  All of the RM details can be managed behind the curtain through workflows and policy.  Additionally, content holds for compliance and/or litigation can now be applied across the entire SharePoint environment and include many new content constructs such as wikis, blogs, conversations, etc. 

6 -- Process Transparency

Microsoft had a mantra when looking at Business Process in SharePoint 2010 of “process transparency." This means that business process is surfaced everywhere with the goal of providing simple participation. You will see that the underlying workflows are surfaced through the Office clients, browser, and even through the contextual ribbon.  To put a fine point on it,  Office clients are now aware of SharePoint constructs defined for the enterprise thus allowing the end user to interact and participate in business processes from within the context of the tools that they are most familiar including metadata capture, workflows, policy, document  library locations, and more.  Lastly, the workflows themselves are now visualized in the browser so the user can see the status of the content in the context of the entire business process.

7 -- Discovery and Action

Microsoft has invested heavily in extending the discoverability of enterprise content.  Many of the topics already discussed provide building blocks that allow the end user community to discover the most relevant content within the enterprise, act upon it, and collaborate throughout its lifecycle.  You will see extensions in the SharePoint platform targeted at assisting end users in this discovery such as content ratings, search navigators, and social context.  For the enterprise with the most demanding search needs, Microsoft also offers FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint that extends the search platform with features such as deeper search refinement, broader language coverage, and more extensive visualizations of the results.

8 -- Ease of Use

A conservative failure rate estimate of ECM projects within large organizations is 50% and the number one reason for failure is low end user adoption (Source: Doculabs).  One of Microsoft’s key pillars in developing SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 is ease of use which has direct impact on user adoption.  The features outlined above are implemented to fit into the end user’s existing work habits with minimal extraneous impact and maximum productivity gains (example: integration of metadata model into Office client applications so the user doesn’t have to switch context or applications to capture metadata, initiate workflows, or publish content to SharePoint).

Conclusion

Microsoft has implemented a set of content management features in SharePoint 2010 that will help them drive toward the goal of ECM for the masses.  The integration of client and server, the ease of use, the transparency of business processes, and adherence to the CMIS standard will enable the end users within the enterprise to participate independent of their role.  The ability of any user to collaborate, develop, publish, discover, and use the content of the organization will help increase the overall user adoption and satisfaction with the underlying implementation.

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You might also be interested in the following posts:

• 8 things you need to know about SharePoint governance 
• 8 things SharePoint 2010 needs to be a true ECM system  
• 8 things to consider when implementing SharePoint with another ECM engine
• 8 ways to use SharePoint for social computing 
• 8 more things you need to know about SharePoint 
• 8 reasons you should consider automatic classification and metadata tagging in SharePoint  
• 8 things you should know about transactional processing in SharePoint 
• 8 ways SharePoint helps in Enterprise Governance, Risk, and Compliance 
• 8 things to do to make content more findable in SharePoint 
• 8 things to consider when selecting an application to scan or capture into SharePoint 
  

For next week, watch (hopefully!) for release of a new e-book on SharePoint.  

8 things you should know about open source ECM

8 things you should know about transactional processing in SharePoint 

8 steps to going green with ECM

8 reasons why CMIS will transform the ECM industry 

If you haven't seen the presentation noted here, now would be a good time to do so.  And in the process, would appreciate it if you could nominate it for a Zeitgeist award.  You'll find the nomination link in the upper right hand corner.

8 reasons you need a strategy for managing information presentation.

 Cheryl McKinnon is Chief Marketing Officer for Nuxeo. With more than 16 years experience in Enterprise Content Management,  Cheryl has developed a keen interest in the challenges facing information workers in the increasingly electronic and online work environment. Her specialty is researching, writing and educating on current and emerging trends in information management.  Check out her blogs: http://blogs.nuxeo.com/cmckinnon/ and http://candyandaspirin.blogspot.com. 

Just as an FYI, you might also be interested in our upcoming webinar on key ECM trends in 2010.  And also, 8 reasons why CMIS will transform the ECM industry. 

Here's a perspective from an open source vendor on the benefits of open source ECM...

8 Things That You Should Know About Open Source ECM   

1 -- You Can Get Started on an ECM Project – NOW.

Need to get an ECM project moving now--even if you don't have much budget today?  Open source ECM offerings let companies get started with early requirements research, prototyping, and piloting just with a simple download and installation.  In the spirit of community, of transparency, of truly believing that ECM is a critical platform for any customer in the 21st century knowledge economy,  open source ECM vendors actually want you to get moving forward on a project.  

2 -- ECM from the Open Source World Puts Value on Things that Matter to You – Not the Vendor.

Companies who need ECM will measure their return on investment once the system is up and running and savings and gains are evident. Automation of routine transactions, reduced storage costs, faster reuse and retrieval, more time to let your knowledge workers focus on the important stuff – this is why you RFP'd.  But most proprietary ECM software vendors derive their value on the upfront seat purchase – hence the haggling and legal review over the license acquisition phase of the deal. The customer and vendor parties aren't in alignment on what is of mutual benefit.  Open source ECM vendors make it easier to align the value – applications can be downloaded at no upfront cost, letting customers invest in the support subscriptions when they're ready to go live. 

3 -- You Don't Need to be a Developer to Use and Deploy ECM from Open Source Vendors.

There's a lingering out-of-date perception that open source applications are intended for the uber-geeks. That's not true as we approach 2010.  Content management applications coming out of the open source world today are simple to download and deploy and have clean and approachable UIs designed for everyday information workers.  They're built to be used by a wide range of customer skill sets and IT platforms, but still ensure companies with specific needs have full access to source code to meet unique requirements. 

4 -- Don't Confuse “Open Source” with “Free."

It's important to approach open source ECM with the same long-term planning as traditional ECM products. Be careful not to skimp on the appropriate needs-analysis, training, change management and ongoing care and feeding of the underlying IT infrastructure.  While you don't need to pay for typical license seats with open source, you do need to plan for all the same ongoing ECM deployment and support costs to be successful.  

5 -- Open Source ECM Vendors Have Been Walking the Talk Around Enterprise 2.0 for Years.

Was 2009 the year your current vendor finally set a goal to be more transparent? More community-driven? Be more open to input and feedback from customers and partners? Guess what... this is how open source ECM vendors have been operating for years.  Customers drive innovation, roadmaps can be turned on a dime to support cool new things or updated platforms. Tips and tricks are openly shared online across community sites. 

6 -- Not All Vendor Business Models Are the Same.

Nobody likes surprises.  When doing due diligence on ECM products to short-list, make sure there is full transparency on which products are vendor-supported and which are not.  Some open source vendors have free products which are great for demo/prototyping, but are not actually supported for production use. Ensure the vendor is willing and able to support the product that you've tested and meets your requirements.  Also understand the type of license agreement the vendor uses to ensure it fits your company's business needs. How well will it fit into the rest of the organizational technology ecosystem that increasingly is a mixture of open source, SaaS and proprietary enterprise applications? There are a small number of well-known license options, making it easy to verify what will work for you. 

7 -- Open Source ECM products are not are written by some guy in his mom's basement.

All of the major industry analysts agree that open source is here to stay.  Companies in this space are growing, doing business globally, and invest in the same  marketing, sales, development and support resources as traditional ECM vendors.... maybe even more when it comes to those last two, because peer to peer and community contributions are highly valued. 

8 -- ECM is no longer a frill – it is an essential platform for the 21st century digital economy. 

The rise of the web means small or new businesses can compete globally with bigger incumbents.  But with this democratization of opportunity comes the inevitable democratization of risk.  New and emerging regulations – including the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding electronically stored information – apply to everyone – not just large publicly traded firms or regulated industries.  The need for an ECM platform to share, protect, preserve and dispose of business content is now for everybody.  Innovation, ideas, intelligence – this valuable business content is stored in our electronic corporate memory. Open source ECM helps keep this playing field level. 

 Rutherford Wilson is the VP of Application Product Strategy at Atalasoft. Atalasoft publishes Vizit, the Document Viewer for SharePoint and DotImage, a .NET Imaging SDK.  He can be reached via email at rutherford.wilson@atalasoft.com or on Twitter (@rutherfordw).

8 Things You Should Know About Transactional Processing in SharePoint

SharePoint is making inroads as an ECM or Records Management system, primarily because of its document library features, price, and integration with Office. But, for SharePoint to move beyond that and become the system to do document-centric transactional processing, you’ll need to customize and plan your SharePoint installation more carefully.

1 -- Design your Document Taxonomy. 

Before you even start using SharePoint for your document-centric workflows, create content types for each type of document, taking care to define the meta-data that must also be captured with this document. Think about the full life-cycle of the document and what data will be needed at each step.

2 -- Scan your paper documents into SharePoint. 

Many transactions start as paper, so get them into SharePoint as soon as possible. Advanced image processing techniques, such as forms recognition and OMR, can detect the content type and kick off the correct workflow automatically.

3 -- Extract information with OCR, barcodes, and manually. 

Documents that start as paper need to have their meta-data extracted from the document image that results from the scan. This can be done automatically with OCR and barcodes or manually. Even if it’s done manually, OCR can assist the data entry. 

4  -- Automate your workflows as much as possible.  

Building workflows can get complicated very quickly so start with simple processes first. As your workflows become more complex the key is to minimize the need for manual intervention as much as possible.

5 -- Use document viewers that are SharePoint-aware. 

When you do need view documents in a workflow, use a document viewer that is SharePoint-aware. When you open a file with Office in SharePoint, it knows that the document came from SharePoint and can save modifications and follow your checkout procedure. But, what about other types? There are third-party viewers that are SharePoint-aware, or even better, are integrated right into SharePoint’s web interface.

6 -- View documents in context. 

When working on a document, use viewers that can show you more than just the document. To efficiently work on a document you need to see its meta-data, its location in SharePoint, and any outstanding workflows.

7 -- Use side by side comparison. 

Many transactional workflows need to view two documents at the same time. For example, in accounts payable, you need to see the invoice and the purchase order simultaneously in order to pay the bill. Use document viewers that can support side-by-side viewing with some kind of page synchronization.

8 -- Plan for Archiving and Retention. 

The full lifecycle of a document includes its transition into a record. Design your content-types so that different policies are represented in the documents meta-data and use workflows to trigger the transition automatically.

You might also be interested in the following posts:

• 8 things you need to know about SharePoint governance 
• 8 things SharePoint 2010 needs to be a true ECM system  
• 8 things to consider when implementing SharePoint with another ECM engine
• 8 ways to use SharePoint for social computing 
• 8 more things you need to know about SharePoint 
• 8 reasons you should consider automatic classification and metadata tagging in SharePoint  
• 8 ways SharePoint helps in enterprise governance, risk, and compliance 

8 steps to going green with ECM

ECM is uniquely positioned to help organizations reduce the impact they make on the environment. And yet, if this is the case, then why haven’t we seen thousands of case studies flooding the press touting the environmental benefits of ECM?   

The answer probably lies in many of the same old reasons we’ve heard before about slow adoptions of ECM.  There is no doubt that is implemented properly and with a clear focus, ECM can assist in reducing carbon footprints. It is not the silver bullet.  But it can be one of the tools that should be used as part of an organization-wide environmental drive.  Think “Less-Paper” rather than paperless, and look for processes in the organization which could be changed to become more environmentally friendly.  Adopting an incremental step-by step approach should assist in building trust and acceptance of the value of ECM in this regard.

1 -- Build a team that is committed to the initiative.   

Senior executives should be a part of this team, and need to be committed to making sure that the staff under their employ know and understand the rationale and benefits of the environmental drive.  Included in the team should also be members of the compliance or corporate governance unit, legal, IT and affected user departments. If an environmental champion has been appointed, they need to be a key figure in this team.

2 -- Make sure a robust framework of policies and procedures is in place that supports the drive.  

These corporate instruments should send a clear message of commitment, so that “green” becomes embedded in the ethos or culture of the organization.  The policy framework is essential if staff members, clients and suppliers are to be comfortable about conducting business electronically.   

3 -- Implement scanning into processes which will deliver clear benefits.  

Chose processes carefully so that quick wins are derived, and which improve productivity, lower cost and improve service delivery at the same time. It must be highlighted that scanning alone does not improve the environment, as the source documents are still in paper format. The source documents need to be formally destroyed and recycled for benefits to accrue. Before destroying originals, ensure that rigidly developed and applied policies and procedures are approved by the legal team. Other than recycling, scanning does play an important role in that it gets staff used to conducting business digitally, and may allow staff to telecommute.  

4 -- Find a relatively risk-free internal process, and go digital from start to finish.  

Once staff members (and the organization) are comfortable with handling digital documents instead of trusty old paper, find a process which can be completely digital. This will normally be an internal process such as applying for leave, or claiming expenses. Implement e-forms processes, and make it impossible for staff to revert to printing and signing the forms. Many organisations already have e-forms technology as part of their corporate platforms, so the cost of implementation could be slight.

5 -- Implement digital signatures.   

Many complex processes, or those which involve multiple parties, may require signatures of some kind. Note that the regulatory environment surrounding digital signatures needs to be thoroughly understood first. The legal team and all participants involved in the process must agree to the use of digital signatures. Involve major suppliers and customers, and identify where digital signatures can be used. Signing of contracts, and agendas or minutes of meetings may prove to be ideal opportunities to use this technology.

6 -- Implement e-forms technology where possible.   

Steps 4 and 5 above should have provided a clear indication of how a process can be implemented digitally without ever producing a paper document. Take a process approach, and find a process that will benefit all concerned by making it easier to populate forms via the internet. It is unlikely that all customers or suppliers will be willing to move to a purely digital world, but a large percentage is likely to embrace the new processes.  

7 -- Implement output management.  

Reduce the volume of paper printouts by offering customers electronic invoices and statements. Once again, involve the legal team to ensure that this meets any regulatory requirements, and then encourage recipients of your output to receive electronic information. Look for opportunities to reduce any internal printouts, by saving the output directly to the ECM repositories.

8 -- Monitor, track, evaluate and market the benefits.   

If the organization is deriving benefits, and no-one knows about it, it will have little value. Look for methods of monitoring the effectiveness of the changed processes, and report these benefits to the compliance and environmental officers. Apply the principles and technology to new processes, and roll out across the organization.

The focus of these improvements has been on the environment, and ECM can make a difference. Couple this to the fact that customer service, productivity, lower costs of doing business, and compliance will most likely also have been improved, should prove a strong motivation for introducing these new facets of ECM into the organization.

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Previous postings that may be of interest...

Our Green ECM microsite worth a look.  And also...

8 things you need to know when using ECM technologies to go green  

8 document management practices that are cost-effective and eco-friendly

AIIM has been extensively involved in the CMIS project.  In the later part of 2008, OASIS announced the formation of a committee to standardize a web services interface specification that will enable interoperability of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. EMC, IBM and Microsoft lead the way by developing the initial draft for the standard. Other EMC vendors such as Alfresco, Open Text, Oracle, SAP and others reviewed this intial draft and provided comments on the draft prior to selecting OASIS to advance the standard through the standardization process. There are a host of resources and presentations available at the AIIM Official Guide to CMIS.  

8 reasons why CMIS will transform the ECM industry

1 -- CMIS is the SQL for Content Management.

According to OASIS the objective of the CMIS standard is to define a common content management web services interface. This approach is very similar to the standardization of SQL by ANSI in the 80s. SQL enabled software application vendors for the first time to offer database applications that could run against different databases. So SQL boosted the growth of software markets like ERP and CRM dealing with structured data. 25 years later CMIS will now enable ISVs to offer content-centric applications that can be run on top of different ECM-platforms. That will enlarge the opportunities for vendors of Content Enabled Applications drastically and will lead to a lot of innovation in this marketplace.

2 -- CMIS is not just another standard.

Maybe you’re thinking that CMIS is just another standard like JCR, ODMA or others which where not adapted by the majority of vendors. But CMIS is different because all major players in the market are backing it: IBM, EMC and Microsoft proposed it and now most of the relevant players like Adobe, Alfresco, Open Text, SAP, SAPERION joint the OASIS CMIS group working on the standard. And many of them have already shown that they are serious about adapting CMIS into their products. Because they know that in a few years CMIS will be a key for successfully selling an ECM Product. Or would you buy a database system today that couldn’t easily import and export data? 

3 -- CMIS is already well accepted by the customers.

According to a survey published by AIIM more than 50% of the customers have more than 10 repositories that could fruitfully linked or managed in one place. Some organizations plan to migrate their multiple repositories to one system but for mid-size or large enterprises this will not be possible. In another survey conducted amongst AIIM-members more than 15% already said that CMIS would be important for them in order to link multiple repositories. For me that is a great number considering that CMIS is not an approved standard yet. 

4 -- No more lock-in to one ECM-vendor because of CMIS.

Until today the ECM industry was driven by high complexity and proprietary systems that prevented to switch to other vendors. Even when a vendor dramatically increased maintenance fees (many customers know what I’m speaking about) there often was no choice to go somewhere else because of the tight and proprietary integrations between the customer build applications and the ECM-infrastructure. CMIS will help separate the applications from the ECM-platform and so there will be no more lock-in to one vendor. Doesn’t that sound great?

5 -- With CMIS the ECM infrastructure will become commodity.

During the last years the differences of the relevant content-repositories in the marketplace became smaller and ECM-systems are a kind of commodity right now. Customers know what functionality they want when looking for an ECM platform and this is why the market is ready for open source alternatives now. These trends are serious issues for the traditional ECM-infrastructure players and with CMIS it will be even harder for them to differentiate on the backend side.

6 -- CMIS-based applications will become the differentiator.

Many smaller ECM-vendors have to recognize that the proprietary ECM-infrastructure they are offering will be history in a few years. Their chance to survive the market consolidation is to make their backend systems CMIS-compliant and to differentiate themselves with outstanding CMIS-based applications that are portable and can be run on the different ECM platforms. New companies and business models will evolve serving the fast growing markets for CMIS-based Composite Content Applications as well as Transactional Content Management Applications.

7 -- CMIS will help to create a 360° view on your customers.

Most large organizations have multiple ECM solutions and the integration of all these into one application is today very expensive to implement and maintain because of the proprietary APIs. CMIS can enable interoperability across repositories and we’ll see CMIS-based standard software in the market that can be used to easily federate multiple ECM systems. So CMIS will help to make sure that even large organizations are able to create the 360° view on their customers. That’s exactly what they’re looking for. 

8 -- CMIS 1.0 is just the beginning.

Some people criticize the fact that CMIS will be a kind of lowest common denominator and say that it will be incomplete in a way that not all the functionality of the different ECM-systems will be covered. That’s true but for me it’s much more important that very soon we’ll get a lean standard which is easy to learn and will be well accepted. Of course there is some proprietary work to do beside CMIS to make a complex content centric application run on the systems of different vendors. But that’s the same kind of work an ISV has to deal with when supporting the different flavors of SQL. I’m convinced that CMIS is the right standard at the right time and can make the ECM world a better place. 

Later on let’s discuss CMIS 2.0…

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There are a host of resources and presentations available at the AIIM Official Guide to CMIS.  

8 Ways To Benchmark Your Collaboration Strategy    

It used to be that a company-wide collaboration strategy was a nice-to-have. No more.  Now, it’s a strategic necessity. 

Even in the current economic climate, 37 percent of organizations surveyed in Forrester's Q4 2008 enterprise and SMB software survey consider implementing a collaboration strategy important in 2009. 

What’s driving the collaboration wave? Forrester sees two broad trends driving this:  there is a critical need to drive information worker efficiency and to manage the unstructured content artifacts they produce and, while the value of improved collaboration is clear, the path to success has become more complex. 

Collaboration strategies today need to encompass a broad array of organizational and technical criteria. The potential benefits can be substantial, and the risk associated with poor management of collaborative content and communication artifacts can be costly. 

I’ll be talking more about benchmarking in an upcoming Forrester webinar (free registration HERE) but, for the time being, here are eight things you need to do to benchmark your collaboration strategy: 

1 -- Assemble stakeholders. 

Collaboration has broad implications, and the stakeholders who you will need to drive the strategy must represent various organizational and geographical parts of your organization. Expect to work with a broad array of business and IT users, including users representing broad business perspectives and other representing broad geographic requirements, IT professionals representing broad business capabilities, infrastructure and operations professionals and human resources and legal professionals. 

2 -- Determine collaboration objectives. 

A collaboration strategy needs to be anchored by business requirements. Key business objectives that require assessment are workers' ability to find relevant information and to identify expertise within the organization. Once information and expertise are identified, what mechanisms are in place to facilitate efficient interaction and knowledge reuse? 

3 -- Conduct a workforce assessment. 

Not all workers will want or require the same collaboration capabilities. Forrester recently published its Workforce Technographics data, a survey of over 2,000 information workers on what enterprise tools they are using. Some will need specialized capabilities like extensive mobile support or the ability to collaborate across organizational and firewall boundaries. Provisioning the correct level of capabilities for each segment of a heterogeneous workforce can drive down costs associated with a broad collaboration project.

4 -- Pay attention to organization and policy. 

Collaboration software requires special attention in regard to organization and policy. The ad hoc nature of collaborative interactions opens the door for breaches in security, privacy, and regulatory compliance. While some of these can be handled programmatically through one or more technical solutions, many will require specific policy. With proper diligence, introduction of new collaborative technology to the environment does not increase risk. In fact, it can aid in significantly lowering risk. Further, collaborative technology is increasingly integrating with other business applications. To that end, the organization supporting a collaboration environment needs to include stakeholders to represent those systems.

5 -- Select a collaboration technology. 

While technology is only one component of collaboration success, it remains the biggest slice of the collaboration budget and an important lever for business productivity. The landscape of available collaboration technology is rich, and choosing and integrating the right technology for an organization is a challenge. The assessment instrument provides detailed guidance on every major collaboration category: information-sharing, communications, social networking, and an integrated user experience across all tools.

6 -- Develop a service delivery model. 

Collaboration requires enterprise-scale services to manage team sites globally, use a single network that allows global presence or search, and implement global standards for the tool kit. In best practice, this means implementing a service delivery model that encompasses operating globally for consistency, access, and governance; deploying servers regionally to lower latency and to allow incremental deployments; and pushing administration and needed control down to local administrators to empower the needs of specific groups and regions. Our assessment tool will help you prioritize and assess gaps in these areas. 

7 -- Develop a change management strategy. 

The old saying, "If you build it they will come," has not always been true for collaboration solutions. Many organizations have struggled to drive adoption of technologies like workspaces, instant messaging, and knowledge management systems. Information workers have a great deal of autonomy in carrying out their jobs and may be hesitant to adopt new tools if they doubt the value. A change management strategy is needed to assess the requirements of tools by workforce need and ensure proper adoption.

 8 -- Measure the impact. 

To link technology investment to business impact, a collaboration strategy will mandate metrics on adoption, use, and impact. A collaboration strategy will help you prioritize metrics in four tiers: adoption, activity, cost avoidance, and productivity improvements.  

The road to success can be complicated, but is definitely manageable. The greater the rigor that can be applied to the process of developing a strategy, the greater the chances of success.

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Have you downloaded our new 8 secrets e-book?  Do it now.

8 things to consider when choosing an application to scan and capture documents to SharePoint

1 -- Do you need a scanning application or a capture application?

The marketplace is filled with applications that provide a means to convert paper to digital form, and I like to divide the offerings into two distinct silos:  scanning applications and capture applications.  If all you need to do is load paper and scan to a document library, and your volume is fairly light, scanning applications provide a simple, easy to use interface for these types of operations.  Capture applications focus on efficiency, standardization and automation.  They provide enhanced feature sets like 2D barcode reading, zone OCR, data extraction, enhanced backend integration and more.  There is a gray area between the two silos, as most scanning applications have some basic capture features.  Choose wisely young Luke Skywalker, and if you can, select an application that can live in both silos.

2 -- Standardization is King…and Queen, and Duke.

We have all seen the typical file server within our organizations, and it looks like a war zone.  The lack of folder and file naming standards allows every user to use creative license, and save things “the way they like.”  Scanning is no different, and putting in a scanning and capture process without standardization allows the end user to take their paper mess and recreate it digitally.  We have all seen the studies on the early adopters of SharePoint that are pulling their hair out at the absolute mess that has been created within their libraries.  It is paramount to select an onramp application that provides document library, folder name, file name and content type standardization through custom rule sets.

3 -- Hardware Agnostic – what about my 3-in-1?

Golly that’s a mighty big word.  Today’s imaging landscape includes all different types of devices: desktop scanners, scanning copiers, scanning fax machines, etc.   A scanning/capture application needs to work with just about anything out there that can be directly connected, or that can create an image file.   Leveraging the investment in existing hardware is important not only from a financial perspective, but also from a user familiarity perspective.  If you give users a simple, familiar way to scan, they are more likely to adapt to new technology.  Also, it allows flexibility in deployment and usage scenarios, and also gives you some hope any future hardware purchases will play nicely in your capture ecosystem.

4 -- OCR, ICR and OMR – feature overkill?

Okay, I just had to delve into the imaging acronym soup.  Probably the most important here is the capability to create searchable PDFs.  Install the PDF iFilter, setup your crawl rules, and you now have a fully searchable repository.  ICR and OMR?  Aren’t those a little overkill for a SharePoint implementation? I see a number of organizations using OMR routing sheets to create a simple and effective cover sheet to route documents to a particular library and folder structure.  Organizations can pre-print these, place them next to copiers, and provide onramp capability from any networked scanning device.  ICR, not so much, but it has its possibilities.

5 -- Barcodes – Aren’t they just overcomplicating things?

Barcodes can do more than just dazzle techies.  As organizations build out there entire document management strategy, the ultimate is the incorporation of barcodes into generated documents.  Take for example the HR Director who has barcodes placed on all her forms to provide separation as well as form identification.  Now when scanning employee packets, the capture software does the work, reading barcodes and routing documents to the appropriate library folder.  With 2D barcodes, we can now place 1,000 characters into a thumbnail size area, and automate the process further by embedding data into our contracts, forms, applications, etc.

6 -- SharePoint Integration – Sure we can scan to SharePoint!

The SharePoint train has arrived, and everyone is getting on.  Integration means something different to everyone.  To one vendor, it means just dropping a TIFF into a library, to another it means full lookup capability, content type mapping and folder standardization.  Dig deep into what goes on under the hood to make sure you get all that you want in an application.  Make sure that they are using the SharePoint API, and that all the connectivity is done through standard communication formats.

7 -- The Sandbox – Do you play nicely with others?

Every organization has multiple repositories across departments and groups.  Maybe it is the Accounting Department that uses SharePoint for AP, but also wants to dump check images to a folder.  Or the Law Firm that has a custom built MOSS Application, but also needs images scanned to their case management system.  Finding a flexible and extensible scanning/capture application that can fulfill multiple needs is an absolute requirement nowadays.

8 -- Usability – “It just doesn’t work for me.”

I have seen it time and time again, the end user revolt.  Put in a difficult, painful application, and it will soon have virtual cob webs everywhere.    The application needs to be user friendly, but should have some power user features as well to please the masses.  Along with this, and most important, is training.  End-user training on the use of the application and its capabilities can speed up the process, and overall adoption rate of the solution.

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The following may also be of interest...

• 8 things you need to know about SharePoint governance 
• 8 things SharePoint 2010 needs to be a true ECM system  
• 8 things to consider when implementing SharePoint with another ECM engine
• 8 ways to use SharePoint for social computing 
• 8 more things you need to know about SharePoint 
• 8 things to do to make content more findable in SharePoint 
• 8 things you need to know about automatic classification and metadata tagging in SharePoint 
  
• 8 ways SharePoint help in Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance