5 Reasons to Outsource Document Capture

I found interesting article of Priscilla Emery, "Five Reasons to Outsource Document Capture" in documents for day 4 of our course. These points include:

1. Focus on your organization’s core business
   processes.
2. Improve customer service and reduce transition costs
3. Faster and more secure implementation of compliance and discovery initiatives
4. Providing near-term cost savings while avoiding technological obsolescence
   
5. Cost-effective disaster recovery

Because managing documents is a huge effort, it reduces effectiveness and takes lot of precious time from employees. It is recommended to outsource document capture to company who uses proper technology not only to store documents, but also to capture information stored on them and use it to improve business transaction processes.
Storing documents in electronic form improves also security and compliance. Record managers not only want documents to be stored on paper, or on microfilm tapes, but also in electronic form to be accessible online. This should go also with proper backup solution to improve security.
Outsourcing document storage helps in reducing costs also. IT departments usually require high costs. Outsourcing document storage reduces costs of maintaining hardware and software maintenance, while providing near-term return of investment.
It is also helpful when company faces natural disaster. Documents accessible online and having paper-based documents stored on removable media moved to another secure location may bring company back to it's operative state within couple of days.

Open Source in the Application Server Market

Use of open source in the application server market is strong and users can consider the best of the open source application servers as viable alternatives to the leading closed-source offerings for most mainstream projects. Users are often compelled to acquire AS technology that significantly exceeds their functional requirements just because the leading vendors only offer "fully loaded" product options. Users are also pressured to pay more as their applications increase in transaction volume and require additional CPU licenses. The open-source alternative can address both of these challenges:
• Most open-source AS products use a micro-kernel-style internal architecture (also known as "SOA inside"), enabling users to deploy only the required subset of the AS product.
• The costs of an open-source offerings are structured as a support subscription and typically are not linearly dependent on the number of CPUs used.

Most users deploy their open-source AS along with the already established closed-source alternatives, taking advantage of the standards-based compatibility and allowing incremental savings and a gradual transition to open source. Application ISVs are frequent users of the opensource AS as the default foundation for their applications: it reduces their costs and the costs for their customers, while delivering required qualities of service to most packaged application scenarios. Users that never considered an open-source AS may still be using it just because it came inside of a purchased application. Significantly today, and even more in the future, most business software users are and will be affected by the changes in open-source AS technologies and business practices.

Enterprise Networking Infrastructure

http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=682607&ref=g_sitelink

Networking application software are being integrated with hardware and new services are being delivered "out of the box." Understanding the expected transitions can help companies prepare for the future. Enterprise networking infrastructure forms the "nervous system" of enterprise IT by providing the basic transport on which enterprises deploy IT and business applications. newer applications and devices connected on the network demand an upgrade of the established networking infrastructure. It is important to choose a right balance between technically superior products and integrating related technologies. Enterprises must understand their current technological environment and decide whether these products and technologies will meet their future needs. Understanding how various networking components can be interdependent is an essential prerequisite to performing this analysis.

Key Issues for Linux Servers

According to the author of the article next steps in the maturation process for Linux servers will focus on virtualization, interoperability, vendor support and competitive responses from Unix vendors such as Sun Microsystems. Although the Linux operating system (OS) kernel has stabilized, many questions and concerns still must be resolved. Here are Key Issues and topical areas that Gartner plans to address in 2008 and discusses all of them:
How will virtualization affect the Linux market?
How will the OS market and the distribution business evolve? What market disruptions and risks will users face?
What are the hidden costs of deployment?
How will Linux impact Microsoft and Unix vendors?
How will Linux evolve as a role in the data center?

http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=645217&ref=g_sitelink

Best Practices for Understanding and Negotiating Outsourcing Contract Risks

This article discusses best practices for handing elements of risk in outsourcing contracts.

Outsourcing contracts have six major risk areas that come out as financial aspects of the deal that must be negotiated and appropriately documented in the contract: termination and disentanglement; benchmarking; performance-based metrics; penalties and incentives; allocation of resources; and innovation. There are some recommendations what to do before negotiations:

* Build a strategy for each risk element
* Know what you truly need and what you are willing to negotiate;
* Understand the risks that both sides face in the deal.
* Insist on specifics in the outsourcing contract;
* Don’t forget about technology .Gartner has found that once the negotiators get to the bargaining table, they usually spend about 75% of their time negotiating risk elements of the deal, not the technical details, and they often are unprepared.


The article also gives six “best practices” - describes them and gives “tips for success” in that area.


http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=672211&ref=g_sitelink

Some blog comments

I think I read all the blog comments, it took awhile. Some of you are very funny. I can get Polish translated. :^)

A couple comments...

1) I understand your comments about not getting access to resources such as Books 24x7 until it was late in your program. That is unfortunate. But, I can put it in perspective a bit.

First, I probably showed you the best of the best, in terms of Gartner and Books 24x7. The other resources are not as rich, and probably harder to find. All the resources for computer science students are listed on the DePaul library page we visited (where the links to Gartner and Books 24x7 are on top). I think there is a link to some IEEE papers there that may be of interest to some of you.

You probably will want to check the other subject areas on the left menu, and also other Subject Guides, such as Business. See http://www.lib.depaul.edu/eresource/subject_search.asp . The databases ABI/Informs and Business Source Elite are pretty good.

Second, you have access until shortly after you graduate, so for some of you this will be quite awhile. I have found there are too many resources, to a point where it becomes overwhelming. You end up spending more time searching than learning.

Depending on what you want, I think the vendor white paper approach is your best bet. Download the magic quadrant (there's usually a pdf), you get the industry competitors. Then, search their site for more information.

2) You probably know by now, blogging is as much an art as a science. You have to practice to get good at it. Some blog entries can be long, nothing wrong with that, if you are being comprehensive. But, sometimes it's easier to just be descriptive and point to a resource. For example, the Krugle comment about searching code worked pretty well. (You can search for it at the top of the page.)

A blog for 29 students is probably too big in scope. It is probably easier to narrow the focus to a few people with similar interests, that way you know what you are getting. Again, you need to practice.

Trust me, the payoff is worth it over time. It's too hard to find good resources, and you'll forget what you have within a month or so. If you make a blog record of worthwhile resources, you always know they are there. Over time, it saves a lot of time wasted searching.

3) I was able to crunch the numbers and record total number of posts for each of you. Your grade will be based on that, to a degree, but especially the quality of your posts. Some of you wrote very nice answers to the CMS questions, for example, so that counts substantially.

I will eventually post a final letter grade for you to COLWeb, with comments as necessary. It should take another few days.

ASUS DRW-20B1L/B1LT internal DVD rewriter with LightScribe direct disc labeling technology.

The ASUS DRW-20B1L/B1LT comes equipped with the Optimal Tuning Strategy (OTS) for improved disc burning and better overall write quality. With OTS, the drive will perform a test burning before actually burning the disc - intelligently calculating the best burning strategy based on operating temperatures and media and drive variations. This provides the users with optimal write speeds for the new disc. After the disc is burnt, OTS memorizes the particular type of disc, and utilizes the same burning strategy when the same type of disc is used. This not only reduces the possibility to burn unplayable discs, it also provides high quality backups and improves compatibility so that the disc can more easily be read by other drives; as well as extending the lifetime of the drive.

Another innovation of the DRW-20B1L/B1LT is the E-Green Engine technology. This feature provides an E-Green Mode which activates when the drives are idle for 2.5 minutes. Once activated, drive applications are closed when not in use to help conserve energy. According to Asus' calculations: on average, the PATA and SATA versions of the drive will provide 75% and 27% power savings respectively over competing solutions.

Besides boasting fast speeds, the LightScribe technology is also able to provide users with customized disc labeling.

Motorola MC75 in the offer !

Motorola presented their new baby - MC75. AFter great selling of this EDA (Enterprice Digital Assistent) Motorola decided to upgrade this great product. The new one is lighter, has more memory (128 RAM, 256 ROM). Ofcourse, the WM6 is in ! The processor added to the device is XScale™ PXA270 624 MHz processor. Pretty strong....


I guess, that this product will switch the leader's posotion of MC70 in the industrial business, automated by the PDAs. MC75 isn't the revolution in this business, but more the evolution.

In my opinion it is good, that the Motorola improves their products. On the other hand - if You have money, You are looking thw ways to increase the benefits. By giving the latest devices extra strong, and absolutely the best, the Motorola has great chances to stay at the leader seat of the mobile devices.

Source:
http://www.motorola.com/business/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=237def1a5113a110VgnVCM1000008406b00aRCRD&vgnextchannel=08987b103d175110VgnVCM1000008406b00aRCRD

Using videos as part of KM

According to YouTube.com blog YT has introduced new tool called YouTube Screening Room. It is directed to producers/directors (often one person) of off-movies. Thanks to this tool off-movies can be seen by a greater audience all over the world, and producers can acquire more money thanks to ads generated on YouTube site with their movie. How it is related with KM? I thought - if Wikis and blogs are used for posting solutions or Best Practices why we cannot do the same with videos? All the technology we need is reachable, so it is just up to us how we use it. I think that training - how to fix jammed paper in copying machine - posted as video, will be much more effective then the same training posted as photo-story or plain text.

World seen by 1989 generation

Funny list of 'obviousnesses' for a child born in 1989. Maybe not very useful in KM, but shows the difference between new generation and us. What is more we are not the oldest ones on the planet, so sometimes it is good to look at the world from other angle.

Forcing/asking people to use KM platforms.

    While reading Mr. Tom Davenport's article about Intellipedia a question came to my mind - how to force people in your organization to use KM platforms - like blogs or Wikis?

    Problem vanishes when you are starting with a new company and you introduces Wikis as a part of your problem solving platform. When introducing KM to existing and well managed organization the problem rises big. One solution is to simply force people to write articles in Wikis or on blogs. It can give fast results, but also can cause more problems, when articles will occurs to be poor quality. When that will happen, creating Wikis, will be waste of time. There is always second approach. Manager can introduce Wikis and blogs just to one or two groups and encourage them with some bonus - not necessarily cash bonus - to use it properly. He should also show advantages of using KM tools to the people who will, in fact, create them. In this strategy manager has to show workers, that solving problems with Wiki can be ten times faster and much less frustrating, than with traditional approach. Workers should understand that Wikis and blogs allows them to forget about many things and solutions, they had to store in their heads - just because if it is written on a web page it can be found very fast. They will also lose less time answering 'stupid' questions from newbies or secretaries. Because most of the answers will be placed in Wikis. When second approach is done properly other company departments would beg for KM platforms.

Judging KM effectivenes

When a KM system is introduced in a company, there are also some metrics connected with it. The most common ones are number of downloaded documents and number of people who participate. Is it enjavascript:void(0)
Publikuj postaough to determine that KM in our company works well? KMedge.org thinks it is not. In the linked article we get five tips how to create a sufficient metrics for the specified case and how to use them and interpret results to get the knowledge that will allow us to say - "Our KM is perfect" ;-)

Searching company site for information

Lately I have found an interesting tool sold by google.com and called Google Site Search. As you can expect by google.com it is a search engine, which you can place on your website. Starting from $100 a year and offering the best widely known search engine it can be quite an interesting offer for many big and complicated sites. This feature offers searching: synonyms, by date, documents no older or no newer than and many many more. Subscriber has access to statistics of what words are searched most often and can also weight documents by age - so newer can be weighted higher or lower - as demanded by owner of website. There are many other features and it is worth consideration if you compare low cost of this service with its huge usability and high cost and difficulty of writing such a service by own.

Nonsense of Knowledge Management

I was asking - during this course - myself some questions:how the beginning of KM looked like? Was it just so well developed technique as it is today? Were there any opportunists towards KM? And just today I found an answers to my questions - thanks to Prof. T.D. Wilson and his article published in 2002. It is quite old, but it shows, what was the main threads of KM and how it has evolved to the thing it is today. Great reading with tons of real-life examples.

Open source business inteligence

Witam,

I have recently red the article in Gartner (http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=648707&ref=g_sitelink) about open source Business Intelligence platforms.
I have not knew that such an open-source platform exists. It will be quite interesting option for small and medium business entities instead spending thousands or millions of $ for SAS, Business Objects, Cognos or Microstrategy products. In fact companies such as Pentaho or Actuate offers the full range of BI products from ETL to Dashboards and OLAP tools.
I need to download one and try in my current project for telco business marketing department.

WM

How much should IT specialists should earn

Witam,

I think all of us ask himself how much particular IT specialist should earn. Today I have found the site witch IT salaries by skills, industry and region in UK:

http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/JobSearch/SkillsAndSalaries.aspx

Have anyone found the similar webpage about the polish market?

WM

Blog questions - answers

Witam,

Now the hard part of answering the questions from day 2.

The Chaos of Content:
The three major sources of tention between IT and Business users are firstly that those two parties have difficulty when comminicating witch each others. The Business party wants the IT manage the information chaos they produce and not helping IT witch understanding those information. The second one is that offen IT is unable to react fast to beesness needs, so business "hire few students" to develope their own solution which is not integrate with other knowledge sources in company and make the Information Chaos bigger. The third is that there is now information management structure which will develope standards of managing information gatchering people from both IT and Business units.

Unlock the Value of Content to Maximize Online Business Performance:
· Like 4P (Product, Place, Price, Promotion) makes the Marketing Mix for products, the process of supply right content (information) fast is the crutial issue in information-driven nowadays society. The uptodate information can strengthen the customer loyalty if we present the relevant and positive information to them, (ie. I bought triple-play(Internet, IP fonr, TV) form Polish Telecom, 2 months later the call-center consultant phone me if I’am interested in buying the triple-play I’have already bought).

6 Content Management vs. Knowledge Management:
· Following terms describes KM: Capture, Route and Convert.
· Following terms describes CM: Create, Manage and Publish.
· The Content Management lays within the Knowledge Management. The Content is “structured” Knowledge.

8 Managing Email Overload: The Smart, Secure and Legal Way:
· There are 3 driver that shaped the email management solutions: the emails are the source of corporate records for regulatory issues, the number of emails sent grows and the emails are the source of information.
· There are 5 issues that are required for email management solutions: the emails should be retained due o polices and regulatory issues, the solution should be ease to scale up to hold fast growing emails quantity, should have searching capabilities, improve the system performance and be able to integrate email data with data from other company’s systems.
· The consequence of lack of email management system are that we are unable to comply with the regulatory issues, the issue of searching for particular email action is hard to perform. This all rises the cost of performing standard regulatory actions.

10 Today's Search: All The Power. No Pain:
· The criteria for evaluating an enterprise search solution are: the user interface, the installation process, the performance of indexing and searching and the relevance of search results.

11 The Emerging Role of SharePoint in ECM:
· I think that SharePoint might be a good choice to search the COLWeb forums. The reason for this is that COLWeb is designed in ASP .NET technology which can be easly integrated with SharePoint. The second reason is that the cost of SharePoint is much lower then ie. EMC Documentum solutions.

2 Top Five Reasons to Outsource Document Capture:
· The top 5 reasons to outsorce the document capture projects are: (if the document capture process is not yours company core business) focus on company core business processes, improvement of customers services and reduce costs (let the specialized company do this for you), the implementation process usually is faster and the probability of successful project implementation is higher, you can cut the cost by avoiding the appliance and staff investment and finally sign up the SLA would cause the faster disaster recovery process.

13 Will Your Next CMS Scale to Meet Your Demands?:
· Content management is primarly the strategy. That’s why in the first step is the content management plan (what information we need to manage, what source system we use – what technology). Then there is a need to choose the CM system. The CMS should be sclalable, customizable and has ability to manage all the information formats we need to manage from source system. So the content management is more something we do than we buy.

14 The Value of SharePoint-Based ECM Solutions:
· The key chunks of functionality that an enterprise content management system should have are document management (indexing, scanning, digitalization), web content management (indexing, forms management), email management, BPM, reports management.
15 How to Correct Your Organization’s Content Myopia:
What is the best approach to transforming these business areas with Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?
· Then best approach to transform following areas with ECM are:
o Accounts payable – set up the electronic invoice workflow: scanning, indexing, integration with ERP.
o Contract management – set up the common repository of documents, emails, images that everyone in the department can access it.
o Client engagement – set up the web based collaboration workspace which can be used by client to track the process milestones.
o Compliance – set up the environment which is capable to audit the use of enterprise data and manage the accessibility.
o New product development – set up the collaboration environment so the people can share the experience while working on the product. Create the templates.
o Enterprise marketing – set up workflow environment which can steer the campaign management.

16 Widgets, Wizzbangs and Whoozits:
· New functionality on your web site should be in alignment with business model .
· Not always the discussion forum on the web site is a good idea. When the company is selling popular product (cell phone, telephone tariffs) and the negative comments can turn new potential client to turned off.

17 Is On-Demand Content Management Right for You?
The choose of SaaS might be an appropriate alternative especially for the small and medium enterprises (SME). Creating CM solution on-site demands large initial investment in both hardware and software. When use the SaaS CM services the fees are paid annually or monthly.

Second thing is when we do not have appropriate IT staff which can manage the installation, configuration and maintenance of CM on-site solutions. The SaaS provider will asure the maintenance services.

Thirdly, the set up process of CM within the company involves the bunch of departments: IT, legal, systems integrators. It takes time. When the company wants to have service enabled within weeks the SaaS can be the good alternative.

Finally, the SaaS services can be a good choice when the company wants to have typical functionality within the branch. The SaaS can provide it, because the SaaS CM is adjust to satisfy broad range of companies needs to be useful.

WM

First mobile phone with projector

ChinaKing Company produced First mobile phone with projector. It is able to display 30 inches pictures with resolution 640 x 480 for over 2 hours. It is based on LCoS (Liquid crystal on silicon) technology. The light sources are LEDs.

Unfortunatly no more information is avaliable.

Seven ways to succeed with wikis and social software

According to the article Wikis and blogs are good opportunities for the informal interaction. It can be use also for creating documentation, clarifying information etc. But many of blogs and wikis are useless after short time. The article presents seven main steps which should be keep to successful deplyments. First of all is “make it open and easy to use”- the environment should be simple. It should fit to the work environment. Secondly “expose connection”- it allows users make the blog structure to their own idea. But to achieve it blog has to have rich profiles for every user, shared bookmarks and tags, engagement metrics. Third of all “link to e-mail”. Users should have possibility of using e-mail to exchange information. People like to connect via e-mail. Fourthly “identify the right context”- this point contains 4 main points: software development, e-learning, project management, posting general information, communities of practice and users group. Fifth point is “focus on people”. The blog should be prepared for different people . People from different departments use blog and it should connect them.

Sixth of all is providing initial structure. Blog should have clear structure and purpose and objectives and defines the main goals. Finally lead by example. The IT managers should be active users on the blog,

Microsoft and Google Jostle Over Cloud-Based E-Mail and Collaboration

The article is about two well recognized companies Google and Microsoft which have made a bige progress and presented new solution for communication. Google presented Google Application Team Edition and Sharepoint and Exchange from Microsoft. According to the author these application will be a battle for the ages. On the ring is also IBM with Bluehouse beta it is much more and richer social-software than competitors. Microsoft’s strategy was very simple, they wanted to be competitive to offered on Google Sites component Google Apps. But Google did not stop raising up. They have prepared a proposal with enterprise Gmail product. Both companies are in an beginning stage of these new products. No one wants to bid on one of the company. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Both are rich and leaders on the IT market. The results will be measurable after few years when specialists will talk about position on market.

Improving Competitive Advantage and Employee Impact

I have been reading the article about improving competitive advantage and employee impact. It shows how people , tools have impact on raising the business.

The article shows that investing in people and raising capabilities of their skilled let them work easily with different tasks and people. This situation started in 2004 and there is no signal that it is going to slow moreover it is still raising. To keep this level there appeared new research area. It has to measure conection between technology and business strategy. one of the most important business key for the economic success of the company is knowledge management. It helps to go up the processes and behawiours which will give a maximum revenue. The second important key is innovation. Author presents that company focus on the technology deciosion-makers. Finally the most important of high-performance workplace is enterprise content management. It is described as a dedicated approach to managing content and the technologies. It is created for workers who need it.

From My Way to High Way

The article is about, web services (web self-service). 

The main point is that te web services pioneers have something in common, they created something new. The created a demand and then, they created a supply.

Tricky ,is'nt it ? First you tell someone that he or she needs something then you sell it to him or her.

But this is what it is all about! Web market is still hot, so there is a lot of space to create ideas. Well dividing your categories in to smaller groups is the first way to find the market to act on. 

More can be foud in best_practices_web_self_service.pdf (day4)

Samsung’s Basic Instinct

Apple is planning to sell and distribute their new product , iPhone, with their new partner AT&T. Now Samsung Electrionics wants to follow their competitor and sell their own product in the same way, using Sprint Nextel. Most benefits of these ideas will take the customer who will have a possibility to choose the most suitable carrier and phone. Prices probably will be very competitive.

Instinct, because that’s the name of Samsung’s new product, has its debut three weeks before iPhone. Apple has the right to worry about because Instinct offers a hefty range of multimedia services and high-bandwidth connectivity packaged in a phone that is a bit slimmer and a bit less expensive than the iPhone. Samsung believes also that Sprint Nextel will give their product real marketplace boost. Sprint put so much energy to develop great phone that they even designed their own interface to Instinct. As the result customers get navigation of this touched-screen slim phone becomes so simple and quick as never before. The cheapest version of iPhone will cost about 200$, but the price of Instinct probably will not be higher than 150$.

The timing can be also disadvantage for Samsung. Customers will be able to do a trick suggested by some consultant: buy an Instinct under Sprint's 30-day return policy and then pick up the iPhone when it launches in July. People would have almost a month to test phone without any additional costs. Let’s hope that in Poland we will also have such a possibility.

Idea Marketplaces

Here

I read about having a place where you store your ideas, like blog or wiki.

The idea is simple if you know something just post it on for example company blog, to keep it for future (fast) use. Other concept is to threat it as a place where you can contribute new ideas for company. 

Somtime employees can develop simple but bright idea (as they are nearest to for ex. coding), we should encourage them to share it with others. Just not to lose it when staff will leave company.

But it shoould be define by some restrictions, just not to post to much unimportant information. And the other way, keep company away from analysing every detail of every idea, simply choosing the best ones.

This is the end...

Our summer course is already finished and I would like to briefly summarize the knowledge we gathered during the course.

We were able to get to know general structure and processes of modern enterprises. What is more we defined what those processes are and what they are used for. Moreover, we discussed basis of best practices connected with knowledge and content management, documents workflow, methodologies...
Due to our assignements we mensionned some more or less common problems companies are dealing with and our proposals to solve them. The course made me more consious about enterprise internal mechanism and I hope it encourage some of us to develop those new fields of knowledge. Remember IT is not in the vacum!

"New" FRCP regulations

Due to amendments to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure a lot of companies - especially big ones - become afraid of being suited.
Those regulations influenced strongly electronic discovery. Nowadays corporations and their lawyers need powerful tools to meet with the new requirements. While huge pharma or airline maintenance companies were always prepared to dealing with lawsuits the survey shows that a lot of firms is not prepared and not even aware of amendments. Some companies feel very misguided in new situation and don't know how to start to protect themselves from paying huge fees. The responsibility which was defined by companies is now constituted by government. The only way of defence is having good ESI plan. I'm glad we don't have such a problems in Poland and we have such a transparent law regulations ;)

(People get ready The "New" FRCP Will Change Your Life - KMWWP_02_03_c3.pdf)

Cloud-Based E-Mail and Collaboration

Microsoft and Google are trying to become major providers of cloud-based e-mail and collaboration services for enterprises. Companies interested in Saas e-mail and collaboration services should carefully estimate the costs of their current solutions because of great number of variables which have to be taken into consideration. There may turned out that costs of new services will be higher that particularly used ones. There is also some danger in switching to Microsoft's and Google's or other vendors services due to their short time on the market. They have not been well tested by enterprises in real environment yet. If you are interested in this topic you can read more here.

Novel openSUSE 11.0 avaliable

http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/27892

Whats new read:
http://w3.linux-magazine.com/issue/93/openSUSE_11.0_Review.pdf

U.S. Department of Defense - 1th Linux certification

U.S. Department of Defense gave as the first certificate to Novel as accepted Linux provider after SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 2 got special certificate for products being compatible with IPv6. Such a system will be compatible with present and future web standatrs.

http://newsroom.chip.pl/news_225463.html

Interesting page dedicated to IT news

http://it.dimigroup.info/

Enterprise Content Management - answers

Enterprise Content Management

2 The Chaos of Content

- IT staff tries to create new solutions while managers want to save money on new solutions.

- IT has imprinted into their DNA the primordial urge to “centralize,” “simplify” and “manage” information. Business owners are equally

prone to “leverage,” “access” and “empower” themselves with any and all content they can get their mitts on.

- When you see the business side get more savvy about IT, it’s because the IT group isn’t meeting the businessperson’s needs, and not

moving quickly enough. The business side recognizes that IT has a huge challenge, so they (the business owners) decide to go out and get it

done on their own. They then bring in their own things, and that just creates more chaos.



4 Unlock the Value of Content to Maximize Online Business Performance
Getting the right content, to the right person, is a popular KM phrase.
How can better content enable enterprises to optimize the customer experience?

-Strengthen customer loyalty.
-Achieve unified brands, messages and corporate image.
-Accelerate worldwide product launches and promotions
-Optimize customer process efficiencies
-Provide regulatory compliance and security



6 Content Management vs. Knowledge Management

- Capture - KM
- Create - CM
- Route - KM
- Manage - CM
- Convert - KM
- Publish - CM

Is CM or KM bigger in scope, i.e. does one belong under the other’s umbrella?

Yes it's bigger because it covers whole project while KM is focused on detailed parts.


8 Managing Email Overload: The Smart, Secure and Legal Way

Name 3 drivers that dictate what an email management solution must do.

- Email as a source of corporate records needed for regulatory compliance and legal discovery
- Email growth as an IT headache
- Email as a source of business-critical information

Name 5 requirements of any email management solution.

- Retain messages in compliance with regulations and corporate policies
- Provide a highly scalable repository able to keep pace with email volume growth and long retention periods to aggregate billions of email

messages
- Facilitate searching as required for legal discovery
- Improve system performance and reliability
- Integrate email with other corporate records and content

What are some consequences of not having an email management system?

Without one, you will: spend more on administration; overloaded servers will degrade the performance of your email system; and users will

be burdened with mailbox limits. Further, you will be subject to the risks of non-compliance and/or spend millions of dollars and countless

hours combing through voluminous files to produce messages required for legal discovery and regulatory requests.


10 Today's Search: All The Power. No Pain.
What are some criteria for evaluating an enterprise search solution?

based on ease of installation; time needed to learn how to build interfaces and put the server up; and the ability to easily manipulate the

user interface


11 The Emerging Role of SharePoint in ECM
Do you think SharePoint is a good choice for students to search a discussion forum on COLWeb? Why or why not?


It would be a good idea. It improves work since it provides excellent document management, forms management, Web content management and

email management services. Everything is in one place. And working with applications is more easier because there are all in one place.


12 Top Five Reasons to Outsource Document Capture
Name the “top five reasons to outsource your document capture project”.

- Focus on your organization’s core business processes;
- Improve service levels to clients and reduce transaction costs at the same time;
- Faster and more secure implementation of compliance and discovery initiatives;
- Providing near-term cost savings while avoiding technological obsolescence;
- Cost-effective disaster recovery.

13 Will Your Next CMS Scale to Meet Your Demands?
Is content management something you buy, or something you do? Explain.

Content management is more of a pursuit than a product. It’s something that you do rather than something that you build or buy. You know

your organization, its needs and its appetite, and propensity for change. Finding a flexible, scalable solution that best aligns with a

well-defined strategy is a logical goal.


14 The Value of SharePoint-Based ECM Solutions
What are the key chunks of functionality that an enterprise content management system should have?

Core ECM transactional content functionality such as document scanning and imaging, report management and enterprise-class business process

management (BPM)

15 How to Correct Your Organization’s Content Myopia
What is the best approach to transforming these business areas with Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?

o Accounts payable
To build a content-enabled solution for AP, start by scanning, classifying and indexing paper documents as well as capturing electronic

invoices. Using tools such as queue-based workflows and automatic notification. Integrate accounts payable information with enterprise

resource planning and other line-of-business systems to ensure it gains the widest possible currency.

o Contract management
(...)by leveraging collaborative workspaces to share documents, track deliverables and hold threaded discussions. Enable users to access

associated content—office documents, scanned images, email and more—from a common content repository. Develop electronic forms to

streamline contract requests.

o Client engagement
(..)Enables collaboration across projects and around the globe. Possibility to track milestones and resolve issues, give clients visibility

into processes from project launch to completion, and track key metrics across various projects.

o Compliance
Automating the entire content lifecycle to protect content from inappropriate use or disclosure while ensuring its accessibility. Mitigate

risk of non-compliance by automatically auditing content during any stage and enforcing policies for retention and, as appropriate,

disposal.

o New product development
Create flexible workspace templates to enforce best practices and track progress across multiple projects through enterprise database

rollups, dashboards and reporting tools.

o Enterprise marketing
You can streamline the marketing process and provide seamless access to marketing content. Coordinate campaigns, product launches and

ongoing branding and marketing communications. Keep projects on track, reduce overall costs and exert greater control over brand assets

using media repositories, creative workflows and virtual workspaces.

16 Widgets, Wizzbangs and Whoozits
New functionality on your web site should be in alignment with Your company’s business model.

Give an example of when a discussion forum might not be a good idea on a website.

Broker website could be an example. Stock market is unsure and risky and if potential clients will read entries with complaints it can

discourage them to invest with our firm.


17 s On-Demand Content Management Right for You?
In a few paragraphs, explain when SaaS would be an appropriate alternative for content management?

Business Rule Management Systems (BRMS)

Another article which I found on Gartner describing interesting systems and their architectures in business, at this time Business Rule Management Systems (BRMS).

What is a BRMS ? - Collection of technologies for processing rules, policies and executing scenarios.
Why BRMS ? - Similar to development of business process management (BPM) technologies, similar shift occurs in the rule market. Business rule engine (BRE) is currently evolving int BRMS by providing richer rule managament ecosystem and additional functionalities in relation to BRE.

Core components of BRMS


1. The Rule Execution Engine - execution and management of rules in efficient manner. Inference based rule execution based on the RETE algorithm (processing similar to Prolog like languages evaluation) which infers new facts. There are also some some solutions which does not support forward and backward chaining but select rules on use cases (event processing, BPM flow management decisions , data transformation rules or other heuristics).

2. Rule Repository - a database storing various business rules, often offers robust versioning to create different variants of rules according do different rule projects varying on levels of security. They provide administrative tools, search features, check-in/check-out mechanism, marking rule as final.

3. Rule Integrated Development Environment- graphical, model driven programming IDE for authoring, sequence test and debug rules. Rich role-based development environment. Often provides complex WYSIWYG to simplify the development.

4. Rule-Model Simulation - set of rule simulation tools providing what if analytics to analyze interrelated rule models. They could crate rule dependency relationships and simulate rule sets with runtime data or historical data.

5. Monitoring and Analysis - offers historical and runtime analytics, rule usage reports and complete audit trails showing how rule was executed in a particular transaction or decision. Reports provide information on who accessed a rule, what rules were executed to perform decision etc.

6. Rule Management and Administration- set of tools to deploy rules into environments, security management, promotion of new set of rules, tracking system health and performance.

7. Rule Templates - pre-built, abstract sets of rules to improve time to value ratio.

If you are interested - whole article discusses each component in much greater detail, it touches on distinction between BRE and BRMS and describe the evolution from BRE as adoption to the market.

Scrum, simple tool for great results.

In my earlier post I described basics of agile development, now it's time for me to tell you something about scrum.

Where did the name come from?

Just like it's took by hidden office camera, right?

Since it's agile, scrum is organized in iterations called 'sprint'. Each sprint begins with planning during which new functionalities called (backlog items) are being chosen to implement during it. It is developers choice to pick as many backlog items as they feel comfortable with and are sure they'll manage to implement and test in this sprint. Each sprint ends with release during which new version is put into production.

The team (from ~5 to 20 people) meets every morning possibly at the same hour to discuss their current status. Going around the table, each person is answering these 3 questions:

- What I've been doing since last meeting?
- What I'm going to do today?
- Is there any problem I stumbled across?

While manager may take participation in the scrum meeting the meeting itself is not really for him. Most of benefits are for programmers. They know what their colleagues do and are more engaged into a project as a whole.

In such team, there is no team leader who is responsible for current iteration or gets blamed if somebody from team blows it. It's unnecessary chain link. It may be hard to believe but most of programmers cares and wants to do cool stuff and be more effective without such control.

At this point people are asking: 'What if someone is doing nothing? Just being lazy all day? How do you deal with it? How do you know about it and who to report as in scrum there's no team leader?'

The answer is: it will come out itself.

It is just like web2.0 portals. Take YouTube, there's no need for admin who'd decide which movie sucks, people will do it. Same thing happens here cause people really cares for what they are doing.

Finally, there are many web based soft which helps you tracking developers and their tasks so you can always see that Janek was responsible for the task that didn't made on release so you may take him to your torture room for his reward.

There are still a lot of things I didn't tell since post shouldn't be too long. To end up, couple of usefull links:
- scrumalliance.org (one of biggest scrum sites)
- demo.bananascrum.com (Web tool for keeping track of projects lead in scrum)
- wikipedia site

Cheers!

Web self-service only for emergency situations

In file "best_practices_web_self_service.pdf" you can find an article "Dynamic Knowledge Management". Author mentions there that knowledge should be built in the context of customer and publishing manuals will not help users to solve their problems. I must say I do not agree with that.
Reading official documentation before deploying some product seems quite time-consuming and complex at the beginning, but when you know the basics of product, especially if it is some complex software, there is a chance that you'll never have to deal with tech-support.

This model works perfectly with Open Source products, for which there's no tech support. Users create official documentation, which aims to fully describe the whole product and contribute to other sources. Other sources of user-generated documentation like wiki pages, or user forums in exreme cases, where they deal with unusual situations, like bugs.

To summarize: Web self-service is used by companies to reduce costs of call centers and tech support, but providing good documentation, which covers most features of the product and making users actually read it will even reduce the need of using web-self service.

How to upgrade ERP system successfully ?

ERP systems enable enterprises to improve business productivity, increase cost savings and streamline business operations. That's why huge number of companies are interested in implementing and upgrading their existing ERP systems. Those activities are identified as one of the most important IT priorities. The most important practices during ERP upgrade which will help to make the project successful are:

• upgrade of ERP must be treated as a new project
• company shoud focus on selling instead of cost reduction
• the same team should be involved in planning and implementing the system
  
• business department is more absorbed then IT
• awarness of additional infrastructure costs
• customization issues
  
• preceise tests of new environment
  

(bp_example_erpII.pdf by Robert C. Beatty and Craig D. Williams)

More Collaboration - Collaborative Software Development Laboratory

In relation to previous post by Krzysiek Walo who discussed great solution for searching through code (watch the demos ! :] ), I thought about collaborative solutions for Software Development in general and found interesting web page of the institute which work focuses on collaborative software developement in general. If you like to develop software you can find there useful stuff like current research papers and projects, list of actively updated tools which are avaiable to the public, results of some experimetns and many publications.

Be aware of risk areas.

Here's key notes what to remember about when negotiating outsourcing contract.

It provides you with a list of todos of 'prepare before you go'. Main outline divided by risk areas looks like this:

• Negotiate Terms for Termination and Disentanglement
  (resources required, exit strategy)
• Negotiate Benchmarking
  (all related to benchmarking: how, when, what, how often?)
• Negotiate Performance-Based Metrics
  (what features MUST be done exactly?, which will be measured?)
• Negotiate Penalties and Incentives
• Negotiate Allocation of Resources(can we choose staff, reject people, point the work place for them?)
• Negotiate How Innovation Will Be Executed

This is just to show what's inside so go in to read the whole thing.

"Why am I supposed to use this ?" (Knowledge Managment Issues)

The article I have read is about Knowledge Managment.

By doing research people who had contact with managing Knowledge (and information)

found out that there are common issues, stated:

* "Being known as an expert"
* "Requisite knowledge too hard to capture and categorize"
* "Lack of adequate communication and action"
* "Forcing it"

As we spoke inclass about 1st one, noone want to be known as an expert. The second one is about categorizing thing, there should be no room for staff spending hours on categorizing their knowledge (as action) it supposed to be as claryfied as possible to save the time. Third one is, mainly, about tools - they are suppose to be accebted by the employees otherwise they will abondon the habit of deploying knowledge. And the last one, do not force it! If you try to force a habbit of deploying knowledge, to your staff, they will lose the point of doing it.

(I used the Desouza.KM Barriers why the technology imperative seldom works.pdf)

Searching code

Laurent Simoneau in his article "What Makes Search Great?" mentions few things of what good search tool should have ie. "Categorization and clustering for browsing results, exploring collections or doing queryless searches". It is hard to categorize content, like human language. There's no way machine would know what's the context of given phrese.

Things are different for programming laguages. You can easily get context for a piece of code, so if you want to find a sollution for a particular task, Krugle is there for you. When you are in advanced search screen, you can easily add context to your search prase, like programming language you want to search, or kinds of usage (class definition, function call).

I strongly recommend this search engine to anyone who writes code.

Real-Time Collaboration Architecture

I found an article on Gartner which describes the architecture for collaboration systems, here is the summary:

Information management employees often work in distributed environment across different locations. Quick access and communication are critical. With e-mail overload, Information Management was the way to provide real time interaction models. However, IM had some benefits like presence across multiple application, the possibilities of integration with new products and diverse vendors were limited and proprietary presence protocol further limits deeper integration of presence. What a organization need is a collaborative solution which extends beyond IM.

Many real time products have many points of access and common concept connecting them is presence which among vendors is tied directly. Due to directness of connection there is lack of context which is essential to real collaboration and without it what workers do stays unfocused and gets lost. In case when different communication and collaboration tools are linked in contextual way and the output generated by people is more valuable. For example collaborative discussion started with received email which through context leads to video conference based on the email. However it is important that each component of such system provides seamless interaction with other components.


The Layers of Abstraction

In the reference architecture for presence, dynamic links connect the layers. Architecture provides view at the presence as a core service, irrespective of the application where application layer does not play important role. Being able to manipulate presence and have interaction form any to any point is the key. It does not matter which application is being used but the ability to switch as directed presence to any collaboration context which suits the situation is crucial. The presentation layer manipulates interface between user and applications according to user needs. Visualization and manipulation could be used to create flow of data, interaction across the application and switching control. The best way to look at the concept is to look at it as unified architecture which includes every communication and collaboration channel. The good part about it is that vendors need to follow the architecture to stay on the market.

The key benefits

The architecture is helpful in developing collaboration infrastructure for:

• Less lock-in - separated layers imply that different vendors could be used.
• More flexibility - ease to integrate mobile and other devices since having detailed services separated from client which could be run by multiple client applications.
• Less redundancy - one presence engine service - many client applications.
• Better integration - less monolithic approach leads to easier integration of presence based services.
• Ideal fit for Service Oriented Architecture.
  

Ymail vs Gmail

Are you a fan of multiple mailboxes ? Or you maybe want to have the perfect one ? Well, starting from today Yahoo release the new free mail accounts : Ymail and rocketmail. While the first comments about Ymail are rather good, rocketmail is rather on a dead end. The name itself is to big and not useful in every day usage. Yahoo is still a leader in memberships (266 milions) but Gmail is closing fast (101 milions of users). Will the Ymail let the Yahoo remain the rank of lidership ? We will see…

The forgotten search solution ver.2

The second article I found also in “BestPracticesSearch.pdf” – named “The forgotten search solution”. Although someone else already summarize it I will try do it from my point of view. The article pay attention and describe the value of external search. In cases where companies spend lot of money and their effort to make the internal search more effective they often forget about the customers needs. The company website is often the first and only point of connection with the outside world. Nowadays, customers are very demanding and do not accept poor search results. They want everything fast and efficient. According to the article, majority of people after spending 1-2 minutes of searching what they looking for and do not find it will certainly leave the site and never go back. That’s why it’s so important to have it work properly and efficiently. Of course, there are some other features that good search technologies should include and they are upgraded very quickly..

What Makes Search Great?

The article I want to summarize is called “What Makes Search Great?” – posted in “BestPracticesSearch.pdf”. According to the author, great search solutions requires something more than great search engine. It must include additional features and technologies f.e. clustering, voice recognition, special vocabularies etc. What is more, we have to remember about friendly interface, flexible configuration, security, quick response time, scalability and many more. But having all mentioned above still doesn’t give us our perfect search solution. There is one more thing that makes search applications valuable – technical support. Without it, customers will be left alone and that will be a real disaster. CA company manage to include all features in their search solution. They make the software easy, simple and environmental friendly for users. Additionally, thanks to great technical support they store millions of document that are accessible for companies. If you are interested to learn more details about CA search solutions you have to read the whole article… enjoy ;)

Universal Data Models

Universal Data Models, LLC helps organizations substantially reduce the time and costs of data modeling and data warehousing efforts via its unique re-usable templates or Universal Data Models.

http://www.univdata.com/

cms blog questions aswers

http://venus.wsb-nlu.edu.pl/~mmleczynski/cms_blog_questions.doc

Heltcare data model - I should study this 2 yeaes ago ;-)

Witam,

Two years ago I created the system for Silesian Center for Hert Disise. The system support the National Heart Transplant Discovery & Analysis program. I spent over 2 month to gather the requirements and design and implement the data model describing personal, treatment, contact, medical examination(EKG, UKG, Spirometry end dozens others) entities. If I had studied the Logical Data Model described in "The Data Model Resource Book: A Library of Universal Data Models by Industry Types, Revised Edition, Volume 2" by Len Silverston (http://library.books24x7.com.ezproxy1.lib.depaul.edu/book/id_11287/viewer.asp?bookid=11287&chunkid=909290277 ) I would save a month for designing such a model from scratches and give more accurate entities fields. I would use generic psychical haracteristic, haracteristic type entities instead fixed characteristic haracteristic in one table.

Cheers,

WM

Your Customers Can Search, But Do They Find?

The main goal of this article is to show how complex the search industry can be. Your customers want to find the right answer not only the results with words they put into the search box. As an organization you should be able to provide the accurate answers as fast as possible. You can do it through dynamic knowledge management process. If you integrate maintenance process and proactive content creation you will not disappoint your customers.

If you are interested with this article please read: BestPracticesSearch.pdf posted on COLWeb.

Where's what?

Desktop search engines?
Really useful stuff! If you want to find anything on your computer FAST I recommend using it.

Example? type in a variable name and it will find you every occurence of it in code, or type your friends mail to search in documents for any occurance.

In Linux you have two choices Tracker and Beagle. These are mostly embeded tools (ex in Ubuntu) just pick up text box and it will find keyword you typed in every document (Word, PDF, ect.) stored in place you defined to be watched (indexed). Both tools are integrated with kernel, what makes them even more reliable and faster.

In Windows environment you can choose between Google Desktop Search and Copernic Software. In my humble opinion Google is not a match for Coperinc.
But those two are not a match for the Linux ones :) . And again, Copernic is useful but only the basic version is free.

This is just a brief information about search tehnique, if you really want it go for it by your self.

Few notes about agile development.

Throughout the class there was agile methodology mentioned. For those of you that never heard of it or are not sure what it is, here are few notes that describes agile in the nutshell.

Here it is, on one image:

OK, example. Suppose you are working on a large project, normally you would sign contract, shake hands with customer and promise that you will deliver ready product within, say, 6 months. Obviously, first couple of weeks will be relaxed and get hotter towards the deadline. Agile avoids this pressure by delivering functionalities one by one. So instead of 6 months you would say: "We'll get to this point within 2 weeks, and we would like to show you it's working then". It won't be the whole product but some part of it. It will be tested and working, ready to use part. This period during which chosen functionalities will be delivered is called an Iteration.

There are many approaches on how long an Iteration should be, suggested lengths are 2-4 weeks but it may be modified if it suits your team and your project well. Iteration length can be flexible but it's not recommended as it takes all the healthy pressure away. You'd say: 'Oh, there's no need for hurry, I just need to finish this task but there's no deadline for it, I just need to do it.'

Thanks to iterations your client sees his product being constructed just like you would see your house getting done in opposite to ordering flask of perfumes from some internet shop. Believe me, even if client gave you the most detailed specification you've ever seen his vision mismatches yours.

This is only an top of iceberg introduction to agile if you want some more go and see:
agilemanifesto.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development
..and you'll probably get going from there.

If I have some time I will post some more on scrum which is part of agile, I will also give you some more description of benefits that programmers get of it.

Cheers!

Fast Geek Squad

Interesting article I read was about 700 ‘geeks’ fixing computers in Geek Squad City near Louisville. Their task is: to get a laptop that is broken, fix it, write short note what was wrong with it, put, both paper and laptop in the box and send it back to its owner. What gives them advantage from any other repair shops is that they store laptop parts worth 7$ million dollars, just to be ready to repair virtually any kind of a notebook. On average they repair 3000 computers a day, and most of them are fixed same day, that they arrive. Moreover, the facility is located few miles away from UPS world distribution center, cutting delivery time to minimum.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-9971881-52.html?tag=nefd.lede

Ignoring Instant Messaging at Work Won't Make It Go Away

I have found quite interesting article on Gartner in High-Performance Workspace section(http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=644212&ref=g_sitelink).
The artice is about usage of Instant Messegnig software within organization. Most of organizations do not have the IM usage policy (as the majority of companies has e-mail usage policy) which can cause to liquage of sensitive data. Currently the most widely used method to control IM usage is simply block the port used by IM public software (but you can always use HTTP wersion of google talk ;-P. In article there was presented the conception of using corporate IM standard tool which is capable to log data send by the user. It is also needed that such corporate IM tool should have some kind of filter on the stick of corporate and public networks.

The article list few pluses of using IM services, the most interesting is that people within organizations use IM to overcome atachment limits of the mailbox while sending the files.

The article might be useful to everybody who use IM at work, especially the policy officers.

Cheers,

WM

What Makes Self-Service Really Work?

I found another interesting article. Author first showed statistics about online services how people they answer for questions and customer’s emails. We can find answers in this article why some companies are successful and some not in self-service. The best way to be successful is knowledge used by customers and agents. There is also something about websites that there should be good navigation, memory for each user, nice interface and also contact with customer by email voice etc. There are a lot of examples how to built useful self-service but the main point of this article is to show that knowledgebase is the core of a self-service experience. We can add some things like feedback, forums etc to develop our service. Customer loyalty is shaped by great service experiences.

It is worth to read this article because it will show you What Makes Self-Service Really Work?

Whither Enterprise Search?

It’s nice article about search technology. This is not only a simple website with text box where you can put words and you see list of documents. Gartner is trying to explain that people spend too much time searching for information and analyzing. People should find what they need in short time it can improve a high performance workplace. Google has very good algorithm but it is not useful if people put wrong words into search box that’s why scientists are straying to build technology that can show the best source and data. There is nice part about data visualization that data should be presented logically on the web page, it must be easy to see and interface must be nice. The high performance workplace is very important so that’s why scientists are trying to produce well developed applications.

It is worth to read this article because you will know how search engine can be important to improve high performance workplace.

Knowledge Management and Organization Learning

In this article we can see knowledge about Management and Organization Learning.

I think that in this article is very interesting diagram which can explain everything what is connected with this topic about knowledge management. Illustrate some processes for acquiring knowledge from external sources searching and organize knowledge. Model shows that the initiation of the cycle involves either the creation or the acquisition of knowledge by an organization. It will create new knowledge or replace existing. There is also something how to share knowledge and encourage people to see it. It must have influence on organization. There is also something about different organization learning like OL, KM. We can see how it is compared.

I recommend you to read this article because it is really useful.

Adaptability: The essence of BPM - best_practices_bpm.pdf

This article is about adaptive BPM. That BPM enables organizations to automate and manage processes while at the same time fostering adaptation. Adaptation falls into three major categories: 1. adapting to people and the continuous, ad hoc changes in their work patterns;
2. adapting to the ecosystem which includes front-office and back-office applications;
3. adapting to change itself.
To enable adaptive BPM, process artifacts need to be extracted, so they can be changed by business analysts and IT without recourse to coding. The goal is to empower business users to own more and more of these artifacts and free-up IT to focus on the core infrastructure, providing a balanced division of labor and responsibility that optimizes the skills of both roles. This concept is illustrated in the diagram:

The result of that kind of architecture is the reduction of the cost of process automation and the prolonged lifetime of automated processes that can adapt in a way that provides enduring value, avoids obsolescence and generates a long-term return-on-investment.
If You want to know something more about the Roles, Rules, and the rest of artifacts shown on the diagram plz, read the article.

Egronomic Enviorment

Working in ergonomic office improves productivity and reduces number of work related injuries. Guidelines on the page point several major aspects of work environment, that have to be measured and adjusted. It also indicate what to do with specific equipment, in ex. how to hold a mouse, or to what brightness set computer screen. These tips can be very helpful while setting up a new work environment, upgrading one, or even when changing ones behavior to make ones job more comfortable. Nonetheless, there is a section discussing employer-employee relationship importance in setting up such (ergonomic) environment. That section is dedicated for employers/managers, that want their workers to feel better at work – and be more productive this way.

If you feel that you can change something in your work environment try this page:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/ohs/ohs_manual/ergonomics/ergoguide.shtml

Top Five Reasons to Outsource Document Capture

There are five main reasons to outsource your document capture projects:

• Focus on your organization’s core

It is much easier to outsource the document capture to different company than to do it by yourself. Thanks to that you benefit from industry best practices that have been well tested by an outsourced capture provider.

• Improve service levels to clients and reduce transaction costs at the same time

It is possible to increase the efficiency and productivity of your business in a shorter period of time by capturing many different documents like: invoices, enrollment forms, claims, purchase orders, loan applications, etc.

• Faster and more secure implementation of compliance and discovery initiatives

Some managers are looking for more microfilm storage, electronic archives, Web-based access and seamless integration across all those different media types. This makes your document more accessible and better organized.

• Providing near-term cost savings while avoiding technological obsolescence

Thanks to outsourcing you don’t have to worry cutting costs and saving money on hardware and its maintenance – the outsourcer will do it for you.
 
• Cost-effective disaster recovery.

You can simply store safely the images of your documents on CD-ROM. In case of disaster you can move it to a remote office or secure location. It is also possible to have Web-based documents and data archive which you can access from anywhere.

Source: best_practices_content_management.pdf

Optimizing the Publishing Work Flow Integration of XML-aware CMS - best_practices_bpm.pdf

This article shows why integrating the CMS with XML is a good solution for publishing in general.
It improve information re-use:
- By making it possible to break XML documents into “chunks”.
- By providing built-in capabilities to manage a large number of chunks.
- By providing automatic assembly into multiple outputs.
- By formally tracking the links and relationships between chunks.
Also reduce publication cycle time and improve productivity:
- By allowing shared information to be authored and maintained in one place.
- By compressing the publication cycle into a single flow, rather than having a separate publication cycle for each output format.
- By providing built-in notifications, lifecycles, and review / approval workflows.
And it improve information quality:
- By making it much easier to perform quality reviews and approvals.

Enterprise Content Management

Answers

Web Application Firewalls - Introduction

Web application firewalls (WAF) are a new breed of information security technology designed to protect web sites from attack. WAF solutions are capable of preventing attacks at 7 Layer (the application layer) that network firewalls and intrusion detection systems can't, and they do not require modification of application source code. We distinguish two WAF architectures proxied and nonproxied which consist of six models (reverse-proxy, transparent reverse-proxy, out-of-band, layer 2 bridge, host mode, server-resist).

We can specify 3 generations of web application firewalls.The first generation of WAF's scans the web applications for any gaps and generates a set of rules that would protect from those gaps. The second generation of WAF's keeps track of all outgoing information. This technology can also be used to block leakage of information. The third generation maps web pages and creates a pattern which blocks every thing that can in some way be a hazard to you.

There is a common prognostication is that WAF will eventually become a component of traditional firewalls.

2008 U.S. Symposium ITxpo Emerging Trends Keynote

As the article says 2008 will be a watershed year, and IT leaders face a crucial decisions. Their future is very uncertain, because of the economic headwinds. How to be a leader and not become just bystander?

Today’s IT market is changing very fast. New trends give new opportunities, but also bring new surprises like general downturn. When it comes to new risk- “this is the moment when calculated risk and intelligent leadership will separate winners from losers.”

Key Findings

• Economic turbulence will make industry to change expectations and plan new strategies.
• IT leaders can face recession with deeper, wider innovation.
• Environmental issues and talent management- two recent focuses
• Six megatrends will yield the imperatives for action.
• Business experience and horizontal influencing skill-keys to the success of IT leaders.

Based on findings the article gives new recommendations to IT leaders:

• they should trim current-year costs and anticipate recession effects
• the recession is slow, but plan far ahead
• they should innovate business models proactively, not wait to be told.
• IT leaders should globalize their businesses, supporting emerging markets' growth.
• they should connect organizations for productivity
• socialize technology and organizations by fully exploiting Web 2.0.
• industrialize the enterprise technology platform via the cloud.
• advance the mission and capabilities of the IT department ( information management and operational technology integration)