In a recent poll on the OHA (Ontario Hospital Association) web site, 67 of the poll responders said their organization was prepared for managing FOI requests. That’s great news! The OHA has many documents that help Healthcare Organizations, here’s one:

https://www.oha.com/Education/Documents/Overview%20of%20FIPPA%20June%202%202011%20%28wn%29.pdf

At a very high level right now I see most organizations preparing for and they should be well in to the governance plan for FIPPA.

What can be requested? Anything recorded, or that can be made into a record, whether in print audio or electronic form and includes the following;

1. All emails, whether on the desktop, laptop or mobile device

2. All electronic files and databases/tangible documents

3. Non-final drafts and working notes

4. Expense claims and accounts

5. Day boos, agendas, meeting minutes

6. Handwritten notes, spreadsheets, sketches

That’s a pretty hefty list of records; imagine that these are spread out throughout the organization physically and electronically.

First thing comes to mind to me is after you made you governance plan will be how you will handle the FOI request? How will you gather the information? Who has the information you are looking for? Is the owner of the information still in your organization? Can you meet the timelines to respond to the request?

I think for most organizations this task of gather the documents for the request will be the most difficult part.

In my next document, I have some more information to help those struggling with meeting FOI requests.

Brooke

I truely enjoyed Rochelle’s Blog and thought it was worth sharing with you today.

Dolphins, Whales and Sharks.

Have a great day!

I help business reduce their paper and document handling issues, that result in hard dollar savings and reduce the requirement for future expenditures such as filling cabinet hardware!  

On this particular manufacturer web site they had a case study and quote from a municipality in my area:

 “(name deleted) systems save floor space, are easy to use, and are transportable. If we ever move, the systems can be easily relocated to another building.”

(Name Removed)
Accounts Payable Clerk,
The Corporation of
the Town of Paper World

This is an actual quote! Geez let me see…  Imagine that your paper storage needs increase so much that you have to move and you’re willing to pick up and move the paper and the cabinets…that will be a nice expenditure for sure.  Was this really part of their value proposition and ROI at the town?

Today there are so many good document management solutions out there that address accounts payable, at very reasonable costs and good return on investment numbers.   I cannot believe they bought into this paper manual handling idea. Even sadder, is that our industry could not convince this municipality that a document scanning and management system, aka EDMS, was the way to move forward in the future.

The good news is they are a prospect  now and I am sure there’s still more of that thinking out there… that’s why it so exciting to be in this business.  

Out to kill the paper today, have a good one!

I appreciate listening to his idea’s and knowledge,  I decided to asked for some time with him  about  BI and Reporting for his specific (niche) financial services industry… after a while the conversation drifted towards what I was doing with SharePoint… that end up being about a good 15 minute conversation… Then I brought up a comment about Microsoft’s new Cloud Strategy.

I kept it simple and never went more than puddle deep… just so I didn’t get my self in trouble!!… and most senior executives have a good understanding of technology, but you can always get too deep! We discuess MS Exchange in the cloud and the value to his company… no more servers, no more back ups, reduced storage requirements, less IT Administration, lower costs!

Funny enough he had just had a similar conversation the other day. I think the tide is turning and there will be a fast adoption on the cloud… certainly MS Exchange in the cloud was easy to explain.

Have a great day and do something that changes the world for the good!

worried and gossip

Fighting for survival will at times bring out mis-information? Be honest we’ve all done it… me included… usually because I didn’t have the knowledge I needed at that specific time or I read the information somewhere without further investigation. It happens  we’re all pressed for time! 

One mis-conception on the market is that SharePoint will not scale, because of the way it is built. That will depend on your usage of your SP2010 site.

One of the great things about SharePoint, aka SP2010 for me, is the rich developement of third-party tools in the partner eco-system. Did you know at the 2009 SharePoint Conference: http://www.mssharepointconference.com/Pages/spc2009.aspx  there were over 6000+ attendees! That’s exciting!  ah but you Oracle lovers say we do better… there’s always someone bigger

So back to the point, creating a robust SP2010 platform requires some thought… don’t all good business technology  projects?

If you have the requirement to keep you SP2010 system in tune and running well,  then consider some of  these great partner products:

MetaLogix, AvePoint, EMC, NetApp

There’s probably more out there, let me know of your product and I’ll add you to the list. 

In the end I am just offering some advice to my clients, prospects and partners of the tools in place that work… and stop the nay-sayers from spreading the untruth!

Have a great day… and remember SharePoint is for Business!

Because of the internet, buyers sometimes see technologies as a commodity. The internet changed the way people see your company and turned the sales process upside down. Prospects now have as much information about our products, solutions and delivery as the sales people who sell the technology. In fact even before we (the vendor) get the call they (the prospect) in many cases know what they want buy…hmmm 

Let’s think about SharePoint in the same manner. There’s a whole lot going on with it and without some thought and effort… the  Choices of what SharePoint will do for your business will bog you down. Implement it wrong, without some governance and thought leadership; it’s a waste of time, money and resources…so choose your SharePoint partners well…there’s lots of them out there some good, some really good and others… well not so good. 

 Have a great day! 

I’ve sat for a while watching and waiting for the release of SP 2010… read the blog’s from the SP lovers to haters… I think the debate has to slow down and stop - way too many technobable discussions about the product… sure it has some limitations… but the benefits are 1000 fold! The rich partner ecosystem will make it a great business tool: Nintex Workflow, Abbyy, BA INSIGHT,  VIZIT by Atalasoft and even EMC! Great companies extending the value.

SURE, SharePoint has ECM functionality, but I look at it as  a platform to deliver rich business benefits to organizations of any size.

Let’s look at one aspect only: Business Intelligence (BI)
No ECM product that I know can deliver  a BI solution, and if they did it would be on content only in their repository. Microsoft’s purchase of Proclarity and branding it PerformancePoint Server 2007 and now placing it in SP Enterprise 2010 has huge value for the business, by placing the power of analytics in the hands of the people running your business.

Next week I’ll look at another aspect of the value of SP2010… stay tuned…

One of many great values of the Document Management System (DMS) is quick and  efficient  access to your documents; resulting in  less time spent preforming a look up in a filing cabinet or someones desk. The access to documents in an orderly fashion results in better customer service, reduced costs, less risk and better department or corporate performance.
Whether your researching solutions and/ or purchased a solution, it’s now time to consider an indexing strategy. It  will be a top three of critical factors you make with a DMS and can make or break your solution adoption and effectiveness.

Poor Indexing Strategy: If your organization does not prepare and work with the business groups and come up with a strategy that makes sense, the net effect is you might as well throw all your documents into a large box in any order and go look for them at some later date! Not so efficient for the effort put in. What is an document “index” it is sometimes referred to as a keyword or meta-data. Index values are the search able fields that will be applied to the document at the time of inputting/saving the document into document management system. Here’s some examples: invoice number, purchase order number, received date, due date, vendor name, employee name, student name and number…it goes on depending on the document type (invoices, student transcripts, employee record, purchase order, POD or Bill of lading, contracts etc)

Start by creating meaningful groupings of information to address common search needs. This will help you determine what to index. A university admissions office might index by a unique student ID number, name, birth date, year admitted, area of study, campus or college, and high school name or code. An insurer might index policyholders by first name, last name, street address, document type, date insured, claim number, and more. Separating each criterion into its own indexed field is vital for quick, targeted, and easy retrieval.
Now that we have a better understanding of what index values are, lets look at the deeper importance. Index values allow users to access to their documents in a structured and predictable manner. Not like a google web search where you type in any combination of information and get almost anything back. As an example of an index structure for an invoice document type, we might apply the following index values:
• Vendor Name
• Vendor Number
• Invoice Date
• Invoice due Date
• Invoice Amount
• PO #
• Taxes
• Department
• Requistiion Name

When users begin their search in the document management system, they will be presented with search screen to input invoice information, such as invoice # (123456) and vendor name (ABC company) Why two index values? In the above case utilizing two search indexes improves the accuracy of the search results . There could be many invoice #’s in the system that are the same and therefore using two index values is an improvement in the returned documents.

Index values are also important enablers in your workflow strategy, if workflow is being considered, proper indexing allows for better workflow processing and allows for a multitude of events in the workflow. As an example of you have the “invoice amount” as an index, you can route the invoice based on the dollar value of the invoice. Let say you have a business rule that requires all invoices over $10,000.00 to be approved by a senior manager. The index value will drive the invoice to the appropriate queue and notify the user that he has work to perform. With out the data, the routing would need to be manfully started by a staff member and therefore taking away the value of the workflow.

Another great value of index information is for reporting. Using your DMS as an efficient tool for making better business decisions. Good index values allow you to perform searches such as the following case. I want to review all the invoices that are due on “X” date, with an invoice amount over “$5000.00” and belong to vendor name: ABC Using the above case you will only be presented those invoices equal to the index values. Quick and efficient!

Some other best practices for indexing strategy:
• Keep the number of index’s between 5 and 10
• Plan and explore automatic population of index values at the time of capture- To be discussed another day
• Make sure you understand the document types you will be indexing and the relationship between them. Invoice, PO and Requisition may all have a common index value

Proper indexing aids  in compliance and retention to meet the corporate, government and legal requirements of your organization. Let’s assume you have a mandate to keep information for 7 years. The retention of documents can be set off by using the creation or import date  index value’s of the document.  Therefore for an invoice with an index value date of 1/1/2010 the deletion will be 1/2/2017.

Proper indexing maintains a secure, compliant and robust DMS resulting in reduced risk of lost or misplaced documents.  Improved workflows resulting in better performance with predicable outcomes and finacial gain!

Have a great day!

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/A_CEOs_guide_to_reenergizing_the_senior_team_2444

Is Corporate Waste- intentional or unintentional? Is the question we need to be asking… I hope it’s mostly unintentional. The fact is, no matter what part of your business you look at there is waste.

Waste is can be seen in all companies, but are very systematic problems that appear in average to below average companies or as the Aberdeen Group calls them: Laggards and Average companies.

Waste in Manual Intensive Transaction processing and some examples are: Accounts Payable processing, Journal Entry changes, and Travel & Expense Management to name just a few.

These highly manual transactions cost your company an above average risk to: fraud, lost revenue, higher operating costs and poor transaction visibility.

I think there are some simple causes of these items:
- short-term focus- 3,6,12 month cycles
- frequent executive management changes
- lack of executive vision and cultural changes
- rewarding the same old “ sacred cows”
- no measurement system in place to benchmark against leading peers
- success syndrome, when times are good cash is always coming in- all is good?
- and there more – feel free to let me know

Can we fix these, sure we can and here’s some simple strategies:
- Leadership change and guidance
- Focus- clear strategy and plan
- Measurement- benchmarking your group against industry peers
- Rewarding the right behavior and killing the “sacred cows”

Other companies are doing it and are gaining a competitive advantage… what are you waiting for?

Have a great week!