Intro - Compliance requirements for corporations have drastically increased with Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and new Federal Rules for Civil Procedure (FRCP). And they’re about to get even tougher as Congress debates new rules for capping or exchanging "carbon credits" for controlling emissions and waste. Global warming has become an acknowledged threat by both sides of the aisle—new regulations are surely on the way soon. But also, customers increasingly prefer to do business with "greener" companies...

Intro - As orgranizations grow and/or combine, they collect legacy systems, often built using different technologies with their contents organized in different ways.  This complicates locating and integrating information, and unifying an organization...

Intro - The gaping hole in security schemes of enterprise content management (ECM) systems is that few, if any, protections exist once the information is legitimately accessed.  This confidential information, which may include price lists, legal documents, patented designs, blueprints, and reports, can often be printed, emailed or faxed to unauthorized parties without any security attached...

Intro -  Because of the high mobility of patients within and among metropolitan areas, there is a growing need for the exchange of patient information among physicians, medical specialists and healthcare organizations over multiple networks that utilize different standards. The Integrated Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) solution is a standards-based software system...

Intro - The methods and choices for automated remittance processing are being revolutionized. With the addition of the latest technology, solutions and laws, your in-house remittance processing can achieve an ROI that is unbeatable...

Intro - In the September/October 2007 issue of this magazine, John Mancini correctly pointed out that our industry, as Thornton May always liked to call it, is presently at the juncture of an identity crossroads. This is not surprising. Over the course of its thirty-odd years of existence, our industry has consistently displayed a bias toward metamorphosis. The industry has been through...

Intro - Dispatcher, the IDR solution from EMC Captiva, proved a strong set of innovative technologies that enable corporations to streamline their documents flow.  By using Intelligent Document Recognition technology in conjunction with an enterprise document capture platform, businesses can significantly reduce the manual labor required to identify, sort and .....

Intro - Business today relies heavily on e-mail. Maybe too much so. Users make e-mail work for everything from a collaboration tool and knowledge repository to a filing cabinet. It has largely replaced the telephone and fax...

Intro - The expense of processing retail payments becomes uppermost in the treasurer’s mind periodically as decisions are forced about outsourcing the function or when events, such as price increases and expensive upgrades, occur. Concern also rises when paper volumes fall and their unit costs inch upwards...

Intro - In a word: no. Now, let me explain. It’s not that color is unimportant or that color doesn’t elicit the desired response, because it does both those things...

Intro - Imagine your first visit to the local branch of your new bank. The place is disorganized and cluttered; you can’t find the receptionist; the branch manager’s office is located in back of the storage room; the branch signage bears no relationship to its corporate brochures or advertising; and you have to call an 800 number to actually find out the information you came looking for...

Intro - Business Objects, a leading provider of business intelligence (BI) software, will acquire Inxight Software, a privately held text analytics company, in a deal that is expected to close in July. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Inxight provides...

Intro - Various studies show that up to three-quarters of corporate intellectual property resides within email and messaging systems.  Email management (EMM), (the monitoring, filtering, storage and management of corporate email and IMs) is a fast-moving, rapidly-developing market...

Intro - The shift from paper records to electronic records has created a problem for all of us as records haven fallen into a virtual abyss.  Organizations of all sizes in all industries have multi-bytes of records that have been saved and stored in multi places...

Intro - All information has a life within and without the organization that creates it. It is born, matures, has an active life, and, often, dies.  As with men, a particular pieceof information ("content") may have a very different journey from the next...

Intro - Just when knowledge workers thought IT might be getting a handle on managing burgeoning email, IM and other content, the goal line keeps moving.  There is not only an ever-expanding amount of content, but it is coming from a greater variety of sources and there are new requirements for capture and classification of live...

Intro - The inevitability and cost of litigation have become a grim fact for corporations.  Much of the costly detail uncovered in litigation has been found in archived emails or IMs that may have been forwarded and taken out of context beyond the intention of the original sender...

Intro - The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) that governs procedures for civil suits in U.S. district courts was amended in December, 2006 to cover Electronically Stored Information (ESI) and lay out the ground rules for the electronic discovery (EDD) process.  The new rules prescribe a 120-day timeframe for the parties to “meet and confer” and disclose where and how relevant ...

Intro - Successful businesses have always monitored their activity. Daily sales figures, inventory levels, and cash flow are common measures. Now, when much of a company's activities occur electronically and out of sight, monitoring has become more challenging...

Intro - Extensible Markup Language (XML) has garnered a central role in computer applications as a means to represent business data, transaction requests and responses, and even for scripting processing flow—particularly in the world of Web services...

Intro - SharePoint 3.0 has added extensive features that can be employed by records managers for extending the control of records under their supervision. While most records managers have employed some degree of records control automation, new demands arising from a growing web of governance rules and/or laws has created the need for more help than ever before....

Intro - All documents have a life cycle: from creation, through publication, to access and retrieval, to storage and archival and ultimately, to disposition. But the final step in this life cycle presents a challenge for far too many organizations....

Intro - You know the old joke: “Where does an 800 pound gorilla sit?...Anywhere he wants!” Officially known as Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (SPS), this upgrade to SharePoint 2.0 is part of Microsoft’s Vista, Office 12 product suite and evolving product strategy.....

Intro - In today’s business world, email has become a blessing and a curse. Sure, the pace in which we turn around communications, versus the old “dictate-type-edit-type-snail mail” paradigm our fathers used, moves at lightning speed. But all the speed and ease that email brings inundates the average employee today...

Intro - Today's transactional document is being leveraged as the most valuable and cost-effective means of communication with your customers.  Thus, the document's design can break or make the relationship between the organization and its customers...

Intro - IBM has announced its intention to acquire FileNet by year-end for approximately $1.6 billion in cash or about $35 per share. What does this mean to the enterprise content management (ECM) industry?...

Intro - Heavyweights Microsoft and IBM have made recent announcements in the email archiving/management market space meaning that managing and searching email has officially become a serious.  To this point the market has been characterized by a plethora of small, aggressive companies...

Intro - Metadata literally means “data that describes other data.” While true, that definition isn’t very useful. The ISO Records Management standard, (ISO 15489), defines metadata as “Data describing context, content, and structure of documents and records and their management through time.”...

Intro - In the last issue, we covered key trends and some leading firms in the Intelligent Data Capture (IDC) marketplace, which is also referred to as Intelligent Document Recognition (IDR). Both terms refer to the ability to scan documents or electronic pages...

Intro - Imagine. A brave new world with employees interacting in real time—sharing and commenting on documents, even having an interactive discussion. Of course, we call these meetings, and we’ve been doing (too many of) them since the day after the office was invented....

Intro - Recently my neighbor taught his son to ride a new two-wheeler.  From a distance, Sam looked like a proud expert on his "big boy bike". Closer, you could see that Sam's training wheels kept him upright, as did his dad's light hold on his bicycle seat.  His helmet added insurance that he could avoid serious injury if he did take a spill.  What do Sam and his training wheels have to do with records management for police departments?

Intro - What is a multi-function device? The commonly accepted definition, from the Multi-function Products Association, is “Office equipment for paper management connected to a PC or network that handles two or more of the following functions: printing, scanning, copying, or faxing.” ...

Intro - PTC (Needham, MA) has launched the enhanced Windchill® 8.0 content management system which features integration with ArborText XML authoring software.  PTC, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions provider, acquired ArborText in...

Intro - Intelligent data capture (IDC), also sometimes referred to as intelligent document recognition or IDR, is the ability to scan documents or electronic pages that have no fixed layout and extract data from specific fields to populate a database or business system. Data must be pumped into major financial applications like...

Intro - It is a sad, but true, fact that records management (RM) is not sexy. Being responsible for the records management program at one of the world's leading providers of advanced semiconductor solutions, it was my mission to make RM, if not sexy, at least interesting....

Intro - Maintaining long-term access to content can be difficult. Here are some things to consider as you archive your content....

Intro - In the e-mail management marketplace (EMM), a shootout is being waged among a plethora of distinct approaches. Leading infrastructure providers, like Computer Associates (CA) and IBM, are offering information life cycle solutions that include EMM. Enterprise content management (ECM) providers, like FileNet, Hyland...

Intro - Are you one of the tens of millions of people who have watched at least one television episode of “Survivor” or “The Apprentice”?
The premise is the same on all three: contestants are on equal footing at the start of the season. Their shared optimism...

Intro - So you’ve decided you need a taxonomy to categorize and organize your documents and records.  But how do you decide what type of taxonomy to design?  The type of taxonomy you choose is as important as the taxonomy itself...

Intro - What's driving the rush to implement e-mail archiving/management software? One big reason is that an estimated 60 percent to 70 percent of business-critical data resides in e-mail, but there is also a bigger stick: compliance. The law has become a strong motivator for businesses, especially in this era of increased...

Intro - E-mail management (EMM) is hot. Growing e-mail volumes, increased regulatory and legal pressures and concerns about electronic records make managing e-mail a top priority for many organizations. And with a dynamic, healthy marketplace exhibiting a flurry of new entrants and consolidations, the competition is fierce in the e-mail management and archiving marketplace...

Intro - The Canadian General Standards Board has released Electronic Records as Documentary Evidence (CAN/CGSB-72.34-2005), a new National Standard of Canada that outlines the main requirements for ensuring that electronic records generated from electronic information systems are reliable, authentic and trustworthy...

Intro - Extending business processes with Web forms can streamline your business and drive Web-based CRM applications. Over the years, e-forms have become a means of reengineering enterprise business processes...

Intro - Data migration is the transfer of data between storage types, data formats, or computer systems. It is necessary when organizations change computer systems, upgrade to new systems, or move data from one storage device to another...

Intro - A focus on content. Dependence on technology. Changes in media types. Cross-functional records management teams. Those are some of the key trends that have emerged as a result of a sea change in records management (RM) as reported in a new survey ...

Intro - With the increasing globalization of business, and the sharing of information between companies, their customers and suppliers to far-flung parts of the world, protecting confidential information not only within an enterprise, but also once its leaves, has become paramount...

Intro - Enterprise Rights Management (ERM) software manages and enforces information access policies and use rights of electronic documents within an enterprise.  Controlled documents can be emails, spreadsheets and financial statements, policy and procedure manuals, research data, customer data, project data, personnel files, Intranet pages and other sensitive information...

Intro - Patents covering major functions in DRM/ERM will likely play a significant role in the development of the marketplace.  As rights management software proliferates, approved patent holders will attempt to generate revenue by licensing their patents to software development companies...

Intro - With the increasing globalization of business, and the sharing of information between companies, their customers and suppliers to far-flung parts of the world, protecting confidential information not only within an enterprise, but also once it leaves, has become paramount...

Intro - Instant messaging-two simple words that create a great deal of fear and discontent for many organizations. A few short years ago, the mention of ICQ, Yahoo IM, and AOL IM conjured images of teenagers chatting about-well, whatever they chat about....

Intro - Compliance is on everybody's lips these days, but compliance with what? Compliance means different things to different people. For example, if you're an executive at a publicly traded company in the United States, it means compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, various SEC regulations,..

Intro - Microsoft, struggling to find ways to shore up flagging MS Office sales and to fill gaps in its SharePoint Portal Server product, has announced its acquisition of Groove Networks. The transaction was completed April 8. Microsoft had previously made major investments in...

Intro - There’s been an emerging trend in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software market over the last several years: ECM providers have acquired or formed strategic alliances with groupware – often called collaboration software – vendors...

Intro - Compliance in the Life Sciences industry is challenging and the Pharmaceutical segment faces even greater demands, for obvious reasons:  lives are at stake. And the penalties for non-compliance can be severe.  Not only do Pharmaceutical company executives have to worry about disclosures, records management (RM)...

Intro - One of the most talked-about technologies today is the Web log, or blog. Blogs have been around for a number of years, but only in the last two years have they really taken off. In this column we will take a closer look at blogs and their impact on organizations and records programs...

Intro - In the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to sit on both sides of the negotiating desk.  As a vendor, you represent a corporation that has set objectives, policies and a corporate agenda.  As a consultant and advocate for the buyer, you must negotiate the best deal in financial terms and...

Intro - As the Southern writer William Faulkner put it, “No man is a failure who is enjoying life.”  And email management vendors have been enjoying life quite a bit lately...

Intro - We've heard a lot about records management the last couple of years. Organizations know they need to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, and SEC 17a-4, and a host of other regulations. Many organizations already have records management programs in place...

Intro - Most of the information we generate is stored in digital format for two good reasons: first, because it starts out that way, and, second, so we can find it when we need it. According to a study conducted by the University of California at Berkeley, the world produced...

Intro - Document image capture and forms automation share a lot in common. They are built on the same technologies. Both involve scanning, and they each rely on image processing capabilities to enhance or evaluate a document image...

Intro - Collaboration software (often called groupware) is technology designed to facilitate the work of groups. It may be used to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate...

Intro - Storing and Managing Your Email Records
You’ve determined that you need to manage emails just like any other physical or electronic records. You’ve put retention policies into place and trained your staff to declare messages as records, rather than simply deleting them when the mailbox gets full...

Intro - First and foremost: it is important to understand that organizations have been forced to finally acknowledge the fact that the documents that comprise Enterprise Content – images, text, computer print stream data, e-mail, voice, and video are a key part of the corporate memory. This is a major paradigm change that primarily affects productivity but also leads to some consideration of the manner in which this content is stored and accessed...

Intro - Web services provide the bridges and tunnels that offer an effective way to integrate our content management, workflow, and business systems in a manner that is splendidly free of our previous concerns about the laws of software physics...

Intro - A list of storage definitions (along with other ECM terms) can be found at www.aiim.org/ecmdefinitions. We use a variety of systems to store knowledge. This article will provide a basic overview of information storage systems...

Intro - Moving the Scanner into the mailroom. In today’s Internet-biased envi¬ronment, there is considerable pressure to cut costs of paper handling in the mailroom. The trend in imaging systems is to move the scanner closer to the mailroom...

Intro - Alicia always wore blue. The shopkeepers in town would stock blue hats because they knew if Doc walked by, he'd buy one. From the movie "Field of Dreams" . In its broadest sense, every aspect of an IT infrastructure that manages data, documents, or content could be considered part of personalization...

Intro - The Domesday Book was written in 1086 to provide an accounting of the lands and people under the control of William the Conqueror. In 1984, the BBC began work on a project to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the Book and make it accessible to schoolchildren throughout Britain...

Intro - While current auto-categorization tools can't eliminate the need for human intervention, the tools are still worth a look. Document and record systems are worthless if you can't easily find information when you need it...