Facebook Celebrates Sixth Birthday, Approaching 400 Million Users

Six years and counting. Facebook is celebrating their six birthday and according to Mark Zuckerberg (check out is his blog) they will surpass 400 million users this week. Wow! that is a large number.  When I joined Facebook about a year ago, it started out as a way for me to share information with our customers, partners, and employees in the EMC Documentum community. But what started out as a way to share information related to the work I do, has also allowed me to stay in touch with friends and family, and reconnect with many old friends.  This certainly has made for an interesting mix of friends, family, and co-workers all co-mingled together.

I still wonder about some of the frequent status updates people post. You know, the ones like “Bill is taking his dog for a walk.” And then an hour later “Bill just got back from the grocery store”.   I’m sure I’ve been guilty of a few of these.  Do we really care? I guess so, because then I’ve seen friends give those same status updates the “I like this” thumbs up. It appears we are addicted to the Facebook experience.

400 million users and counting…I give it a “I like this” thumbs up.

New Online Tool on Measuring the Benefits of Document Capture

Here’s the scenario. You are evaluating various document capture products, and on the surface you know it is a good thing for your company. But you are struggling with how to quantify the potential benefits and need more evidence that the investment will in fact result in costs savings, improved productivity, reduced risk, and so on.

Well, here you go. Here’s a link to a relatively new EMC Captiva online benefits calculator tool that helps companies assess the potential benefits of their investment in document capture.

www.emc.com/CaptivaCalculator

The tool is very straight forward, and only requires a few minutes of time to get a response on what the potential benefits might be for a company. Unlike other tools that don’t allow you to drill down into the details that drive the cost benefits, this one exposes the assumptions and lets you adjust them to fit your companies particular situation. It lets you fine tune your assumptions like known hard costs – document storage, shipping and handling, printing, etc. You can also adjust variables like time spent performing data entry, per hourly costs of your employees, hours spent sorting and routing documents, and many other variables. You can also select what your specific business challenges are so that the costs savings it produces are specific to your challenges. If managing the risk of paper is not your real pain point, then you can simply turn that off.

The tool basically takes the information you input and creates a before and after picture. At the end of the process, it generates a detailed report (requires registration) that you can share with co-workers.  The benefit of registering is it saves your work so that you can come back later or invite other co-workers into the project.  This is often necessary as you collect information and collaborate with other people on the team.  But again, the tool has default assumptions built-in based on industry stats and other best practices data, allowing for a quick analysis and fine tuning over time.

If investing in document capture is one of your companies 2010 initiatives, then this new calculator is probably of interest. Take the next step and give it a try. If you have questions, please comment and I’d be happy to discuss.

Recap From Recent Webcast – “Why Captiva Over the Competition?”

Why Captiva over the competition?  Well there are lots good reasons (both technical and business) which I covered in a recent online Webcast. If you missed the Webcast, here’s the link to where you can listen to the recording.

Webcast: Why Captiva Over the Competition?

Enterprise capture defined

One of the areas I talked about in the Webcast is this notion of enterprise capture and how we define it. In a nutshell enterprise capture is about using a common document capture platform to capture documents for use by different departments, people, and processes.  Use of the software often spans across the entire enterprise supporting centralized mailroom/back office capture and distributed capture (front office, mobile workers, many devices).

There are a several key elements that make up a “true” enterprise capture product. Key elements would include:

• Scalability - High volume processing of forms and documents. The ability to scale and handle large volumes of pages. One thing to keep in mind is what volume a single server can handle. Anyone can claim supporting high volume environments by simply adding more servers. But is that really the best approach? If one vendor can handle X volume with 2 servers, but the other vendor requires 5 servers (this is all hypothetical), wouldn’t my support and maintenance cost be more if in fact I had to use 5 servers? I’d probably opt for the vendor who can do the same workload but with less servers.
• Speed (it’s blazing fast) – Time is money. And in some cases documents being captured are time sensitive. So the more effective I can breakdown and distribute the work, the better off I will likely be.
• Flexibility- Providing lots of flexibility so that capture is well-integrated into your processes and systems, and the process flows meet  your business needs.  Nothing is more painful than finding out later that the software really can’t do what you need it to do and being forced to add unnecessary steps to a capture process.
• Intelligent capture – Intelligent document classification and data extraction. This is very important! Some of the biggest savings will come from eliminating manually classifying documents and keying data. Manual document sorting and keying data  is very slow.
• Integration – Open architecture, with modern SDKs (.NET, Web services) for building custom modules and integrating with other systems is very important.
• Architecture that supports the full spectrum of capturing documents (distributed, centralized, scanners, MFPs, and other digital devices)
• Modular / services oriented – if you take a closer look at some vendors who claim to have an enterprise capture offering, you are likely to find that it is not in fact modular. Rather all the functionality gets delivered in one application.

These are just a few key points to consider when evaluating an enterprise capture product. Keep in mind enterprise capture is not just associated with high volume implementations.  Sometimes we get caught up on this notion that unless a company is doing very high volumes, than enterprise capture is not for them. This is really not the case. There are many requirements that are part of the evaluation and selection process, that go beyond what your document volumes will be.

Independent competitive report shows how Captiva is better

The other topic of discussion during the Webcast is  a new independent study that is out which shows how Captiva is better than another competitor in the market.  The vendor (Wipro) performed a series of lab based test looking at all key areas – setup, production, management, and design. Captiva scored better in all areas than the competitor. The recorded Webcast will give you a good overview of the highlights from the report.

Enterprise capture made easy

This is really about delivering the best of both worlds. We’ve taken the flexibility and powerful capabilities of Captiva InputAccel, and added a simple drag-and-drop capture process design application to make it easy to set up and deploy a capture process with the new InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application.  You can read more about this new application in one of my earlier post.

So there you have it…enterprise capture defined, the key enterprise capture technical requirements, how Captiva is the better choice according to the latest independent competitive report, and now enterprise capture made easy with the new InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer.

-Bill-

2010 Brings a New Name and New Look

So if you have followed me over the past year, I started this blog back in late 2008.  I have to say last year was a bit of an experiment on my part. I started the blog since I wanted to experience how blogging could provide another effective source for communicating with customers, partners, and employees. What I did learn is that people like honest opinions.  Nothing I wrote about last was really all that controversial, but picking the right topics like writing about the Kofax partner survey poll, really get people talking.  What was great is I didn’t have to make it up. Someone else started the poll and I simply reported on it!

The challenge that I had in trying to frequently update my blog was time.  There is just not enough of it. But 2010 I plan to set aside a certain amount of time each week to the blog. With that said, I’m very committed to this blog and plan to push harder than ever to write about interesting topics in my area of expertise – document capture, process improvement, etc.

But one of my first order of business for this year was a new look and name.  The old blog theme did really do it for me, so I’ve changed the appearance a bit (but the content will be as good as ever). I also changed the name of my blog. “Bill’s Blog” is really not all that exciting and doesn’t mean all that much. So I’ve changed the name of my blog to “InformationCrunch”.  The topics I will write about will continue to have an angle around how companies can better capture, process, and mange the information in their company, so InformationCrunch seems to be a “better fit” to what I generally write about.  Then again, I guess anything is better than Bill’s Blog

Latest Forester Report Names EMC Documentum as Leader in Enterprise Content Management Market

The latest Forester Wave report is out, and Forrester Research has positioned the EMC Documentum ECM suite a Leader in the enterprise content management (ECM) market.

The report states that “EMC continues to build on its ECM suite leadership, with a broad range of capabilities and strengths in document management, document imaging and capture and records management.  The vendor continues to make significant advances with focus on development and deployment acceleration, integration enhancements to third-party applications and UI improvements.”

You can download a free copy of report from www.emc.com/forresterecm.

Videos Highlighting New Captiva InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer

Back in December I wrote about the new EMC Captiva graphical capture design tool and how it delivers the power of enterprise capture made easy.

If you have taken a look at this announcement, I wanted to point a couple videos that are available for viewing. The first one is a demo that shows the InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application in action.

The second video is a quick video talking about the benefits and various use cases where partners and customers will find this new application very useful.

As I noted in the earlier posting, the new application will enable system integrators, value-added resellers, IT developers, and power users to build document capture processes in just a few hours, at a substantially lower cost, without any coding.  And it is part of the Captiva InputAccel product at no additional cost.

Key Findings from New Document Capture Survey by AIIM

A new survey from AIIM is now available on EMC.com.  The report survey polled 882 information and records management professionals, IT staff and line of business executives, looking at the issues and potential benefits of  different document capture approaches, and considers the potential Return on Investment (ROI) across various  application areas. A free copy of the report is available at: http://www.emc.com/CaptureStrategies

Some of the findings included:

• Centralized in-house scanning and mailroom scanning are set for considerable growth compared to outsourced scanning and capture.
• Knowledge management in the form of improved searchability of business documents is the highest driver for scanning, closely followed by compliance and business process improvement.
• Forty-six percent of users report ROI within 12 months with two-thirds seeing returns within 18 months.

It  is safe to say that companies continue to find document capture one of the safest ECM (Enterprise Content Management) investments.

What do you think? Has your company invested in document capture? Are the benefits what you had anticipated?

-Bill-

New EMC Captiva Graphical Capture Design Tool Delivers the Power of Enterprise Capture Made Easy

It’s here, a powerful new application designed to make it easy to develop and deploy Captiva capture processes all without compromising the flexibility of Captiva InputAccel.

EMC has announced the powerful new Captiva InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application, a graphical drag-and-drop tool for designing capture processes. System Integrators, Value-Added Resellers, IT developers, and power users can use this latest capture process design application to build document capture processes in just a few hours, at a substantially lower cost, without any coding.  It is part of the Captiva InputAccel product, so no additional purchase is required.

You can read more and view an online demo on EMC.com by clicking here.

What the new tool delivers

Delivering a new standard in enterprise capture process development, the InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application brings together the advanced document capture capabilities of the Captiva InputAccel intelligent capture platform. It provides an environment for building processes that capture and classify documents, extract and validate data, and deliver information to key business systems and processes.

Here are just a few highlights on what this new application will provide:

• Graphical drag-and-drop process design application for developing capture processes
• Point-and-click mapping of values between capture steps
• Ability to handle both simple and complex document process requirements like adding conditional branch logic or rerouting steps in a process
• Support for both Captiva InputAccel and Captiva Dispatcher modules and services, including scan, image enhancement, recognition, classification, classification edit, validation, and all exports
• Ability to incorporate custom modules into an InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer capture process
• Ability to insert custom code steps into a capture process to execute custom routing and validations

InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application

What it means to IT organizations, partners, and power users

What it means to anyone who has or will be developing capture processes in Captiva InputAccel, is your job just got easier. Imagine this….

• Develop capture process in a few hours without having to write any code.
• Deploying processes with fewer resources improving your time to value and lower total cost of ownership.
• Eliminating project complexity and inherent risks associated with custom coding.
• Still being able to leverage Captiva’s modular architecture and flexibility to handle the most complex enterprise capture requirements.
• Rapidly deliver custom demonstration and proof of concept examples enabling partners to differentiate from other solutions and win new business.

What next?

The new Captiva InputAccel CaptureFlow Designer application is available to all customers and partners running that latest InputAccel 6.0 release. All you need to do is download, install, and you are off and running.  In future postings, I’ll share additional technical details on what this new application enables you to do.

Enjoy!

Extending Your SharePoint Environment

Today, EMC announced the latest round of solutions that enable customers to further leverage and extend their Microsoft SharePoint environments. The latest solutions bridge the gap between Documentum and SharePoint for content control and an integrated user experience, EMC SourceOne eDiscovery for direct management of SharePoint repositories to conduct legal discovery searches and execute legal holds within the repository, and finally EMC Captiva for capturing and delivering information into SharePoint. With this latest round up of solutions, EMC provides customers several ways to extend their SharePoint environments to meet their content management requirements. For the latest release, you can go here:

www.emc.com/about/news/press/2009/20091019-01.htm.

Intelligent Capture, More Than Just Scanning

Document capture is not a new concept, but using capture with SharePoint might not be something all organizations have considered. SharePoint has typically been more around collaboration and not seen so much as a document management system. The key to know is scanning software and intelligent capture, are not one of the same. Yes, it is all about turning paper into digital information but that is just the basics.

Simple scanning applications are designed to turn a piece of paper into digital content and allow users to manually index a couple fields so that it can be properly indexed in a SharePoint repository. Now that may be good enough for some, but what the EMC Captiva for SharePoint solution can provide is real automation. By that I mean automatically identifying document (no pre-sorting), recognizing the data, validations like database lookups and pre-fill of fields, and finally delivering the captured information into a SharePoint Server. This is important in the case where capture volumes warrant ways to automate manual task like indexing, or the variety of documents being captured need to be intelligently identified and logically grouped before exporting into SharePoint.

Doing more with Information Captured

Information captured from a document is certainly used to index a document in SharePoint, but there is more you can do with EMC Captiva and SharePoint.  For example, Captiva is often used for line of business applications where the data and documents drive a particular process. Accounts payable, claims, and loan processing are just a few examples. In that type of application the data being captured can be exported as XML and integrated with Microsoft InfoPath forms that are part of a review and approval process. Once in SharePoint, users can open an InfoPath form that contains the data captured and exported from Captiva, along with the image. Simple routing and approval of these forms can take place from within SharePoint.

Controlling and Accessing Content

For those companies who would like to use Documentum and SharePoint together getting the benefits of both worlds, EMC Documentum Repository Services for SharePoint can automatically redirect content normally destined for SharePoint Server’s Microsoft SQL Server repository and send it to a Documentum repository for content aggregation and compliance with zero impact on end-users. What this means is that it addresses operational issues by reducing the amount of content destined for SQL Server, addresses compliance issues by storing SharePoint content in a single repository of record allowing for common policy enforcement across systems, and lastly supports the re-purposing and re-use of content stored in the Documentum repository.

Now you’re likely wondering, do my users have different user experiences now that I’m using Documentum and SharePoint together? The answer is the user experience is absolutely seamless.  EMC My Documentum for Microsoft SharePoint provides direct access to the Documentum Content Server natively through the SharePoint user interface. That means content that is stored in Documentum can be accessed via a SharePoint Web Part and can include Documentum functionality like document lifecycles and renditions, as well as Documentum advanced search capabilities. Companies who want to use SharePoint and need it to integrate with their corporate Documentum ECM backbone will find this latest set of solutions the right fit.

A Need to Discover

One final solution EMC announced is EMC SourceOne eDiscovery for SharePoint. This solution comes from EMC’s acquisition of Kazeon, and provides direct management of SharePoint repositories to conduct legal discovery searches, execute legal holds within the repository and deliver robust repository analysis and review capabilities.

With SharePoint server deployments being used across an enterprise, you probably see where utilizing this type of index and collection of content could be a powerful tool when there is a need to analyze and review specific content pertinent to a specific case or investigation.

What Next?

If you plan to attend the Microsoft SharePoint conference this week, I encourage you to stop by the EMC booth and take a look at the latest set of solutions. See for yourself the commitment EMC and Microsoft are making to deepen product interoperability in the area of enterprise content management (ECM).

Recorded Webcast: Assess the Real Value of Document Capture

I wrapped up Webcast a few days ago that is now available online for playback. Here’s a link to the recorded event.

Assess the Real Value of Document Capture

I talked about how organizations can assess the real value in document capture, highlighting several key areas where advanced document capture capabilities can help organizations drive down costs and improve process efficiencies.  I was joined by one of our customers, Baker Hughes, who talked about their global capture environment in which they use EMC Captiva across 20 countries capturing invoices that feed into their accounts payable process which utilizes Documentum and SAP.  The capture environment is maintained centrally with remote employees scanning invoices and submitting back to the central server for processing.

-Bill-