#1 EMC Documentum Mobile Brings Enterprise Content to the Apple iPad

It is not surprising this was the #1 read blog posting in 2011. I just made the switch from a Blackberry to an iPhone two weeks ago, and I can see why people love all the apps. There is an app for just about everything, and being able to access and act on your enterprise business content is no exception. My old Blackberry was great for email, calendaring, and browsing the Web, but the apps is where businesses are going to benefit.

In August 2011,  EMC released Documenutm Mobile for the Apple iPad extending the power of enterprise content management to the Apple iPad enabling users to act on information faster than ever. EMC Documentum Mobile is now available in the Apple App Store, and users of Documentum can take advantage of it today.

#2 Captiva 6.5 Delivers Breakthrough Capture Performance and Intelligence

Captiva 6.5 (available in March 2011) was a significant release in several ways including breakthrough performance, the ability to learn new documents while in production, and support for processing both single and multi-byte character languages.

The video below provides a good overview Captiva 6.5 and talks specifically about the benefits of the new Production Auto Learning capability.

#3 EMC Partner Launches New Mobile Apps for EMC ApplicationXtender

EMC partner, Business Imaging Systems (BIS), announced at EMC World 2011 three new mobile apps that connect into EMC ApplicationXtender. BIS is calling it MAX and it is described as “content management unplugged”. The new offerings connect users from Apple iPhone and Android devices, tablets, and network KIOSK devices, with the content management environment of ApplicationXtender. You can read more about MAX here.

#4 EMC Announces New Imaging Cloud Toolkit for Developers

I expected this posting to receive lots of attention given the need to deliver scanning within Web-based cloud applications that moves away from the traditional approach of requiring an ActiveX or Java plug-in. In December, EMC announced the release of the Captiva Cloud Toolkit, a cloud scanning and imaging software developer kit (SDK) that enables developers to build scanning into the next generation of cloud-based business application.

You can download the new toolkit today for free and begin adding scanning into your Web-based application. Examples of this could be an application that connects to other cloud-based services like Box, Dropbox, SalesForce, or any other service or application that requires scanning.

#5 Community Bank Selects EMC Captiva to Replace Kofax System

Breaking into the top 5 most popular postings was a posting I did on an EMC Captiva customer win in 2011. There is an ongoing trend we see which is companies who invested in capture years ago are now taking a step back and evaluating their current capture strategy to determine how they can get more value from the use of capture.

There are many legacy capture applications out there that provide businesses with limited functionality which may have satisfied the business requirements years ago, but is falling short today. Today, intelligent capture can offer a level of intelligence and automation that was not possible years ago. Also many organizations are looking to push capture to the edge where paper is captured at the point of presentment (e.g. branch office). These are just a few requirements we hear about today where a customers current capture system is not able to address the requirements.

Have a great new year in 2012!

EMC is pleased to announce the release of the Captiva Cloud Toolkit, a cloud scanning and imaging software developer kit (SDK) that enables developers to build scanning into the next generation of cloud-based business application. You can download the new toolkit today for free and begin developing your scanning application.

Captiva Cloud Toolkit is the future of scan-enabling web-based business applications and is the imaging developer toolkit to support scanning within Web-based cloud applications without requiring an ActiveX or Java plug-in.

Captiva Cloud Toolkit is ideal for document capture vendors, commercial software developers, and enterprises that want to scan-enable their web-based applications to complement their business solution offerings.

Next technology wave – cloud capture

It should come as no surprise the way applications are being delivered to both consumers and businesses is transforming rapidly. No longer are software developers building applications that require software to be downloaded and installed onto a desktop or server. Integrated software vendors (ISV), partners, and even enterprise businesses are developing or already have built Web-based applications that can be quickly deployed or delivered. These business applications can be deployed and managed on-premise, or delivered as cloud services.

The Captiva Cloud Toolkit combines a web service with a scanner-level toolkit to enable full access to document scanner features using the power of Captiva ISIS. It also provides connectivity to TWAIN-based devices.

With Captiva Cloud Toolkit, developers can quickly create a working, scan-enabled, web-based business application—shortening time to market and greatly reducing development, testing, and support costs. This results in a quick return on investment and accelerates the ability to compete in an increasingly competitive distributed document-capture market.

Cloud toolkit delivers a rich set of development capabilities

Captiva Cloud Toolkit delivers a strong set of capabilities, most notably the ability to incorporate scanning into Web-based business applications without requiring a plug-in of any kind, including ActiveX. This is a big step forward in what has sometimes been a roadblock to deploying document scanning across a large enterprise organization given the IT security and support issue concerns around the use of plug-ins. With the new Captiva Cloud Toolkit, Web-enabled scan applications can be developed and delivered without requiring a plug-in.

Developers can also be rest assured the new cloud toolkit works with widely popular web browser platforms, including Windows Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. Similarly, it works with web development platforms such as Microsoft Silverlight, JavaScript, HTML5 and Adobe Flash. This allows for quick integration with existing corporate web browser technologies and development environments used by the enterprise.

By eliminating technology limitations of the past and leveraging established web standards, the Captiva Cloud Toolkit delivers better solutions with fewer restrictions to the user experience.

Getting started

Now is the time to check out the new toolkit. There is a free evaluation version available that can be downloaded here. Visit the ISIS Document Imaging Community on the EMC Community Network (ECN) to get more information, follow discussions, and share information.

We’re excited about the future of building scanning into the next generation of cloud-based business application. We look forward to seeing the many applications that leverage this new technology.

While EMC employees deliver a lot of the content at Momentum and EMC World, some of the most interesting topics and sessions are the ones that customers deliver. Customers who attend Momentum at EMC World want to hear from EMC on the strategy and vision, and the latest technologies and solutions. But they also want to hear from their peers. What worked..what didn’t…what kind of ROI did they achieve.

With that said, if you are an EMC IIG customer who has a great story to tell at Momentum 2012, then now is the time to submit your topic for consideration for the Momentum conference to be held at EMC World, May 21 – 24, 2012 in Las Vegas. If you are a partner and would like to submit a topic on behalf of your customer(s), definitely submit the topic for consideration. The deadline for submission is January 5, 2012.

Click here to submit your topic for consideration and present at the upcoming conference. The chosen presenters will receive a complimentary pass to attend EMC World (registration value of $1,995).

Here’s are a just a few examples on what other EMC IIG customers presented last year:

• Insurance company detailed how they used the new EMC Captiva InputAccel .NET SDK to create a custom import module from any source.
• Healthcare organization delivered a session on how they improved their revenue cycle with applied business process improvements coupled with an executable enterprise content management strategy. They detailed their Healthcare Content Strategy and what their results were post implementation.
• An EMC customer presented on how they automated their accounts payable operations by applying advanced image capture and workflow to centralize and streamline AP operations globally.

I look forward to seeing many of you again at EMC World.

Consider these interesting data points:

• 71%  of organizations are committed or will consider SharePoint for their business (source: IDC 2009)
• 67% of those responding to an AIIM survey stated they needed to either customize or buy third-party products to allow SharePoint to meet their needs (source: AIIM Market Intelligence Report on SharePoint 2010)

The SharePoint customer journey can be looked at in three phases – initial deployment, broad adoption, and business solutions.   While standing up a SharePoint site (or a collection of sites) and allowing people to add content and collaborate sounds like a good plan, you need to have a well-defined plan that covers the users, processes, and the technologies needed to ensure success.

At the EMC luncheon I talked about four key ways you can get more from your SharePoint investment while setting yourself up for success. I’ve summarized those four key topics below.

Managing paper documents

Got paper you want to get into SharePoint? If you do, then you will need an intelligent capture solution to get the information into SharePoint. Microsoft is not going to provide you with this capability. Are considering using a basic scanning application? Think twice. There are document capture solutions today that are far more advanced than basic document scanning solutions. Depending on your requirements – scanning volume, centralized vs. distributed, data capture, workflow automation, and other requirements –  a strong case can be built for why your need an intelligent capture solution.

Enterprise scalability and records

In general, SharePoint Server 2010 was designed to take advantage of SQL Server scale out — that is, SharePoint Server 2010 may perform better with a large number of medium-size servers that are running SQL Server than with only a few large servers. This creates a sprawl of databases across an IT infrastructure.

To help ensure system performance, Microsoft recommends that you limit the size of content databases to 200 GB, except when specific usage scenarios and conditions support larger sizes. Microsoft also generally recommends that a site collection should not exceed 100 GB unless it is the only site collection in the database so that

You may think you can manage the proliferation of SharePoint from within your data center and therefore it is not a problem. Think twice and consider these questions in your planning:

How will I scale SharePoint to meet business demands due to limitations of the SQL backend?

Has this internal growth of SharePoint put IT into a reactionary mode and caused SQL sprawl?

Are backups going to be difficult with these SharePoint environments?

In the case of a failure can I restore SharePoint?

What will my cost of primary storage for SQL be?

Can I trust running SharePoint for our most mission critical applications?

You should ask yourself these questions and consider alternative approaches like externalizing content outside of SharePoint so that you are not storing large files in SQL. EMC Documentum can also be used to manage all content in one repository rather than across many different SharePoint repositories.  The user experience can still remain within SharePoint, but the “official document record” is maintained in Documentum.

Automating business processes

Ad hoc collaboration is great especially in small team environments. However, if you want to automate very specific line of business processes and activities consider this:

• Many customers mistake SharePoint’s workflow for enterprise BPM support
• Microsoft itself recommends against use of SharePoint for enterprise BPM
• Enterprise BPM in SharePoint requires custom coding
• Enterprise requirements go well beyond SharePoint’s simplistic workflow support
• Governance is critical for cross-functional processes… unchecked site proliferation throughout the enterprise creates real headaches

With Documentum xCP, you get the best of both worlds – a SharePoint user experience + a complete set of capabilities that willgive you far more functionality when it comes to using SharePoint for mission critical applications. That includes rapidly building processes, modeling, integrating with business systems, and deploying. Rather than being completely unmanaged, information is directed to queues and task are assigned to users.  And this can be done all in the context of a SharePoint interface.

Pervasive information governance

The last topic I covered was how to manage all the content that people are dumping into SharePoint.

The challenges we see is SharePoint can turn into a repository with a bunch of really good information, but it can become difficult to find and manage some of the older content, when we get to certain volume levels. This can hamper performance and make it extremely difficult governing all of this content.

Here are a few questions to consider when putting together your SharePoint plan:

What are your most immediate needs? Is it managing active or inactive content in SharePoint? Do you have compliance or litigation requirements?

How much content are you planning to hold in SharePoint? What information is being stored in these sites and are they being managed long-term?

What are your compliance requirements?

Do you have other content outside of SharePoint that needs to be managed?

These are all good questions to start with that will help you understand what you will need for complimentary solutions that will help manage the content in SharePoint. With EMC information governance solutions we can help you with:

• Retention and control of archived business-relevant SharePoint content
• Help manage the growing number of outdated/orphaned SharePoint sites and content
• Shorten backup windows and maintain performance
• Enable centralized management & access for content from SharePoint

So there you have it, a recap of what I presented at our EMC event in Long Beach last week.There is a lot to consider here, but the time you spend planning and reviewing what SharePoint can provide and what it can’t, will help set you up for success in the future.

IT beware: SharePoint 2010 is a good way for collaborating and gets high marks for being easy to deploy. But IT and the business users need to be aware that there are some inherent limitations in SharePoint 2010 that need to be considered when looking at how you get your information into SharePoint, how your users are best served when accessing and using it, and finally how to assert governance around the information being stored in SharePoint. 

I’ll be presenting at an upcoming lunch event in Long Beach, CA on December 6th (details below) on the SharePoint topic, and you learn about four key ways to:

• Speed the delivery of paper-based information and records into SharePoint
• Provide direct access to the EMC Documentum repository from within the familiar SharePoint interface
• Automate business processes which rely on the content and collaboration managed by SharePoint
• Enable secure access to active and inactive SharePoint content – while supporting regulatory and corporate requirements

Register for event >>

Location
L’Opera
101 Pine Avenue
Long Beach, California 90802

Date and Time
Tuesday December 6, 2011
11:30am – 1:30pm

We look forward to seeing you at the event.

These five points certainly should not be looked at as the authoritative answer to all your technology questions, rather I hope it leads to further discussions that will help guide strategies among all interested parties - vendors, partners, and customers.

1. Built for the cloud

This should not come as a surprise. Software apps need to run in the cloud. No longer should we be building software products that can only be used when users download and install the application onto servers and desktop PCs. There is already as proliferation of cloud services for everything like sharing files, collaboration, scheduling events, creating to do list, email, customer  communications, document creation, and so on. Many of these apps are targeted at small businesses and consumers, but enterprise apps need to be built for the cloud as well.

Deploying and managing enterprise software can be a daunting task, but Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors like SalesForce.com are changing the game. Plus new cloud deployment models like EMC OnDemand give enterprise businesses other options when deploying enterprise solutions like enterprise content management (ECM), enterprise capture, and customer communication solutions. 

Enterprise applications running in the cloud is only going to become more pervasive.  The best advice I give for those enterprise businesses who are in the early stages of building a strategy is to get educated. Begin by understanding the basics around what it means to run your applications in the cloud. There are different flavors of cloud computing that can be confusing to some - Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

EMC and other vendors are helping businesses to understand what it all means. Invest in new skills and the training that your IT staff will need so that they are ready for tomorrow and the future.

2. Keep it simple

The services and applications vendors build need to be simple. Historically, software applications have sometimes become over engineered with lots of small features that users never used. Think Microsoft Word or even the enterprise applications you use within your business. Many of the new cloud application services provide a rather simple approach so as to not overwhelm the user.   Take for example Dropbox,  which is a simple file storing and sharing service. The concept of storing content in the cloud is not a revolutionary concept, in fact there are many companies that are doing this. Dropbox just seems to be one of the more popular ones that is growing fast.

Enterprise apps are a bit different, but they are not exempt from keeping things clean and simple.  Enterprise apps need a lot more functionality and flexibility to meet the demands of complex business requirements. But that does not mean enterprise apps can’t be easy to use like other basic cloud services. As a younger workforce enters the business world they are bringing a different perspective on how they want to work.  You have to delight that new user and give them the tools to be most productive.

3. Take great care in security

With so many apps being developed as services that run in the cloud, consumers and business users need to feel confident that their information will be protected and safe from attacks. This has to be a top priority. There are some pretty questionable individuals who are motivated for various reasons to get access to our information, whether it is personal identity or confidential business data. 

Enterprise apps need to have a security layer that addresses user authentication, single sign-on, rights management, encryption, and other forms of application security. But it does not stop there. IT will need to look at from an infrastructure level as well evaluating their current procedures, processes, and technologies being used. The question that needs to be asked…are we doing enough?

4. Design for the mobile experience first

I think it is time we start thinking about the mobile experience first given so many users (consumers and business) are relying on their smart phones and tablets to access and act on information. That’s not to say you don’t need to consider the desktop user experience, but the mobile experience is equally as important as the desktop.  The amount of time we spend at home and work using our iPad, iPhone, Droid, Kindle Fire, or whatever device you have today,  is only going to grow. At some point the PC will become less important than the device we carry around in our hand. For many this may already be the case.

 5. Make apps smarter

We’re smart people, and apps need to be smart too. We should build smarter apps so users benefit from a better experience and businesses gain the benefits of much better productivity as well as a way of lowering the cost of doing business.  As a user we want applications to guide us through a task or problem rather than trying to make the right choices or decisions that will get us to the end. Enterprise apps do a lot of this as part of a business workflow where rules are built to make decisions along the way. Smart applications like “intelligent capture” are able to intelligently identify a scanned document rather than relying on a user to make the decision. That results in faster processing, less human error, and better customer service later on.

The use of intelligent technologies like facial recognition, voice recognition, global positioning systems (GPS), and many other technologies are finding their way into larger enterprise apps as well.  They provide information that help a user complete a task or move a process forward. 

A large partner ecosystem can also help foster making apps smarter. Partners often have domain expertise and experience working with other technologies. In many cases they have built solutions on top of a core enterprise application platform using their own in-house developed technology or by incorporating a third-party tool.  This all leads to smarter apps as it relates to the unique business environments.

What you can you expect to learn

We’ll discuss the emergence of cloud-based applications, their benefits, and how you can take advantage of this new type of technology. You will also get a first look at the new EMC Captiva OnDemand (see my recent posting: EMC OnDemand Brings Captiva, Documentum, and Document Sciences to the Cloud). We’ll discuss how the new EMC OnDemand deployment model puts the full Captiva intelligent enterprise capture capabilities in the cloud, dramatically reducing up front and ongoing costs.

I’m sure many are being asked by their IT management to investigate ways to move applications into the cloud – public, private, or a hybrid cloud approach. If so, this Webcast will give you insight into: 

• Why cloud-based applications are growing so rapidly
• How you can benefit from Captiva OnDemand – whether you’re an existing Captiva customer or not
• How to simplify and speed deployment with EMC experts who can get you up and running immediately

We look forward to seeing you at this online event!

The new deployment model will enable customers to stay current on the latest software releases, simplify management of highly complex applications, and lower IT maintenance spend. You can visit the EMC OnDemand page on EMC.com for more information.

What is EMC OnDemand?

EMC OnDemand brings enterprise-class applications to the cloud, leveraging best-in-class technologies from VMware, RSA and EMC, and the infrastructure can contain one or many EMC products and partner products.

To put it into perspective, think about how you deploy enterprise software today.  A software vendor provides you with the software and you are required to install, configure it, and support the applications and infrastructure. The challenges you may have faced in the past include cost, complexity, and time required to implement on-premise content management services. For example,  finding the right resources to implement the system, cost or availability of the infrastructure, or additional products required to run an enterprise content management (ECM).

With EMC OnDemand, EMC enterprise class software solutions - Captiva, Documentum, and Document Sciences – are quickly provisioned and configured for rapid deployment into the “Private Cloud” removing a lot of the expertise you may have needed in the past.

Why move to EMC OnDemand?

There are several reasons why organization might consider moving to OnDemand.  Here are just a few:

• Planning an upgrade that requires infrastructure changes and additions
• Plans to deploy new instances of EMC products into other business units
• Looking for a way to shift the burden and reduce cost of not having to maintain and configure the enterprise application(s) environment
• Looking for ways to improve your current disaster recovery and high availability requirements
• Your organization has struggled to maintain the necessary expertise on staff to support the current systems
• Your organization is making its first major move into ECM and would like ‘EMC Experts’ to help manage the environment

All these reasons tie back to time, cost, complexity, and delivery.  For many large organizations, a cloud deployment model is an approach that is worth taking a look at.

New Approach: Virtual Cube (VCUBE)

So what is the underlying technology and how does it all work? What EMC has developed is a unique approach based upon technologies from EMC, VMware and RSA that makes up a new hybrid cloud deployment model for enterprise-class applications. The new technology is called a “Virtual Cube” or VCUBE for short.  It is best described as a multi-service or multi-product container, and it differs from a “virtual appliance”, which is typically a single-service container.

This means one VCUBE contains many EMC or EMC partner products. Its multi-service capabilities enables administrators to use and manage a range of technologies (e.g. capture, storing and securing content, collaboration, customer communications, etc.) that constitute a business solution. This multi-service capability of the VCUBE  makes the entire cube completely portable from one data center  to another.

OnDemand VCUBE is manged through the VCUBE Manager, which allows EMC or its partners to dynamically monitor, provision, integrate, and update the entire cube environment, and allow customers to configure the system for their administrators and users.

Essentially, EMC OnDemand is designed to do all the heavy lifting – virtualization, provisioning, and configuration. This is done by having individual products pre-installed and provisioned inside the cube using templates, or known as “vApps”, that specifically address requirements like having development, test, and production environments already constructed.

Delivers value – increases IT efficiency and business agility

OnDemand gives large organizations access to a new deployment model that takes advantage of the Cloud and eliminates the need for in-house expertise and infrastructure.  The value of OnDemand is compelling and will help large organizations to quickly capitalize on their investments in content management, enterprise capture, and customer communication software solutions.

Save – Both time and money are saved by having the system up and running in hours. Plus you can scale up or down to fit your business requirements.

Simplify – EMC takes on the complexity of the software, configuration, and ongoing management. EMC experts provide continuous monitoring, support, and expertise.

Transform-  By establishing a path that allows organizations to get to production faster, EMC is enabling organizations to realize the value of their investment quicker. Furthermore,

If you are evaluating enterprise capture, content management, or customer communications solutions, I’d encourage you to take a look at EMC onDemand. If you are a current EMC customer who is planning an upgrade, you may also want to take a look at this new hybrid cloud deployment model.  Depending on your current situation, you may find that the new Cloud deployment model will help with meeting your organizations strategic business goals.

How you turn paper into electronic information is the basis of what the goal is. But let’s not forget one key requirement which is how you will handle the redaction of sensitive data before sending those digital document images out. 

No document capture = a manual paper process involving a black marker for redaction

If you have not invested in document capture, your approach today for handling sensitive data on paper involves the old black marker. A FOIA request comes in, a government employee pulls the paper records, makes photo copies, breaks out the black marker, and proceeds with reviewing each and every document looking for sensitive data that must be redacted before the documents can be delivered off to a requestor.

Problem with this approach is it is extremely manual and costly to the agency.

Capture + redaction = a better approach

There are different approaches to using redaction technology within a document capture solution. A redaction solution that is integrated into document capture will either be a manual or automated solution when comes to redaction data. Both approaches are achieve the same end goal, and for some a manual approach may be “good enough” if the requirements do not demand a more sophisticated approach.

A manual approach would simply involve a user of the capture system, viewing the images on-screen and making a decision on what to redact.

In the case of an automated solution, the approach is automated and less reliant on an operator making the decision. With an automated approach, the “intelligent” capture solution plus redaction uses pre-defined index, text-based and/or zone based variables to locate and redact the information that needs to be protected. As in the case of Captiva Dispatcher, it provides this information, and redaction of the data can be performed automatically.

Once redaction takes place, users sometimes want to verify that the system got it right, in which case the redacted images(s) can be sent to a review queue where a human reviewer can perform a quick review of the redacted information. Once complete, the images are stored electronically in your content repository.

EMC Partner, PaperFree, delivers redaction solution for Captiva

One EMC partner who provides this solution is PaperFree. They provide a solution called BlackMark that is designed for EMC Captiva, the leading enterprise capture solution. With BlackMark and BlackMark+, PaperFree offers both a manual and automated solution to redaction. With the automated solution, BlackMark+, it uses EMC’s Dispatcher product to search entire documents, locating key information and then automatically redacts sensitive data.

Given many federal, state, and local agencies are overwhelmed by FOIA requests it is no wonder document capture is playing such a key role in providing a better (more automated) approach for these agencies. It is important to consider that while turning paper into digital information that can be stored and searched upon later in a central repository is one of the primary goals; we should not forget about how an agency will address the sensitivity of the information that they may be called upon to provide to the public.

Challenges with responding to FOIA requests

FOIA requests continue to be paper intensive and requires searching of electronic and paper documents to satisfy a request.  This has created some serious inefficiencies within agencies when responding to these FOIA requests including:

Lack of access to the information  – Quite often the information is predominately paper and not centrally managed, which requires an agency to take a manual piecemeal approach to collecting the information. This manual approach is costly, extremely slow and inefficient.

Risk of being out of compliance – By law agencies are required to respond to a request in a certain period of time. Agencies are often not able to collect and deliver the requested information in a set timeline, which can result in litigation.

Dealing with confidential information -  In many cases, the information being requested includes documents that contain confidential data (e.g. social security numbers). Before an agency can deliver the documents to the requestor, the information must be redacted (obscuring or removing sensitive data). In the case of a manual paper-based process, this is done by an employee using a black marker.

Operational costs - Government agencies budgets are tight and in today’s economy agency staffing is getting smaller which puts a lot of pressure on agencies to respond to these requests. To top it off, these request often result in added expenses like the printing, photocopying, and mailing of documents.

Document capture helps with responding to FOIA request

What many agencies are doing is getting in front of this problem, by digitizing paper, capturing key metadata, and storing the information electronically in a centralized repository. Essentially creating a digital office for managing and accessing paper as electronic information.  By doing so, agencies are then able to process these FOIA request by simply locating the electronic content (scanned images) in a centralized repository. Searches are done based up key metadata and classification of the content that is captured at the time of scanning and indexing.

A great example of this is the New York State Department of Health – read the EMC press release: “New York Health Department Achieves Compliance; Accelerates Response Time By 50% with EMC Captiva”.

In the case of this state department, they receive more than five thousand freedom of information requests a year, amounting to more than 10 million pages annually that they gather and send out.

To handle the large volume of requests, the department leverages EMC Captiva as the document processing foundation for its automated platform for freedom of information compliance.  The benefits achieved by the New York State Department of Health are quite impressive.

• Requests which previously took 40 business days to resolve, now require less than 20 business days. 
• Ordering of paper and printing supplies were reduced by 95%, along with a 75% decrease in total hard copy communication, and staff training accelerated to 12 weeks from a year.
• Award winning solution—the EMC-based solution received a Best Practice Award in Technical Implementation from the New York State Forum.

FOIA certainly has its benefits in creating transparency between government and the public, but government transparency does not come without an added cost. The good thing is there is technology that can significantly reduce the cost and time it takes to respond to many of these FOIA requests. That technology being intelligent capture. Capture is a first step in making it easier for agencies to respond to these requests in a timely manner, creating a win-win for both the agency and the public.