Nexus is Coming!

The ImageSource NEXUS ECM conference is fast approaching.  NEXUS is a unique opportunity for you to discover:

• How companies lever ECM beyond traditional Account Payable Invoice processes
• Lean about Enterprise Content Management industry trends (Cloud, Mobile Technologies, Social Media, to name a few)
• Invaluable opportunities to meeting and collaborate with industry peers
• Attend certified educational seminars
• View current ECM related technologies
• Participate in one on one sessions with industry technical and business experts
• Hear about using ECM as a tactical advantage is solving today’s business issues

All this as well as the ability to earn industry accreditations:

1. Project Management Professionals (up to 20 PDU’s)
2. Certified Records Managers (10 ICRM CMP Credits)
3. Healthcare Professionals (16 AHIMA Credits)
4. Accounts Payable Processionals (IAPP Credits)
5. Business Analysts (IIBA Credits)
6. American Payroll Association (3.5 RCHs)

NEXUS is a conference you can’t afford to miss!

Hope to see you there.

 

NEXUS 2011
November 3 – 4, 2011
Meydenbauer Convention Center, Bellevue Washington
To learn more: www.nexusecm.com

 

David MacWatters
ImageSource, Inc

 

Work-Life Balance

I read an article today written by Dr. James T. Brown, SEBA® Solutions. I subscribe to his newsletter. It really made me reflect on some things in my career.

When I was just starting my career as a manager my mentor said to me “if you are spending day after day working long hours, you are doing it wrong”. Until I started working in my new role as a manager it really did not sink in what he was trying to tell me. At first I tried to “do it all”.

I finally awakened to the fact that I would soon burn out if I continued down that path.

The biggest thing I learned early on that helped with this balancing act was learning to delegate. Giving the people I worked with an opportunity to grow. Providing them with the tools and knowledge to be successful and at the same time allowing them to make mistakes. Some of the best lessons learned come from the times when we make mistakes. I have certainly had my share of learnings through that method. Mike’s comments in the article regarding delegation helped solidify my thoughts on the topic.

To see Dr. Brown’s article that sparked my thoughts today go to: “The Truth About Work-Life Balance” by Dr. James T. Brown

Dr. Brown will also be a keynote speaker at ImageSource Nexus ’11.

Regards,

Al Senzamici, PMP
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc.

  

Imation Acquires the Assets of ProStor Systems

For those of you who have been working with ProStor and the InfiniVauilt technology… on August 29, 2011, Imation Corp. announced that it has acquired the multi-tiered storage system assets of Boulder, Colo.-based ProStor Systems. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Many of you were able to meet with Richard Coons from ProStor at recent ImageSource Nexus events held in Bellevue, Washington. Richard Coons has extensive knowledge on the InfiniVault products and  is now Sales Western at Imation.

ProStor’s InfiniVault technology allows companies to manage fixed digital assets, including videos, images, documents and other types of large, static data files.

“Imation acquired the InfiniVault technology and product line because we recognize the need to add a compelling tiered storage architecture to our existing portfolio of backup and archiving products,” said Imation CEO Mark Lucas.

To see the full acquisition announcement go to  http://www.imation.com/en-us/About-Imation/News/# .

Al Senzamici, PMP
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc.

  

“The Leadership Challenge” by Kouzes & Posner

Leadership is everyone’s business. Leadership is not a position or a title that one holds. Everyone is accountable for leadership in an organization. Real leaders can be found at all levels in any organization. 

I just finished reading “The Leadership Challenge” by Kouzes & Posner over my Christmas holiday. This is probably the best book I have read on the principles of leadership and what is at the core of great leaders. This book is based on over 25 years of research and study on the topic. The great thing about the book is it tells the stories of great leadership from many aspects and levels of everyday leaders. It talks about how leaders can be developed and are not just “born” that way. It helps provide a recipe of what consitutes a great leader.

The book takes you through ” The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership” and the “Ten Commitments to Leadship”.

It is a great guide to leadership. Simply a great & must read for any leader! Which is everyone at some point in their life.

Al Senzamici, PMP
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc.

  

Part II – Evaluating ECM Projects

In Part I – ECM Project Costs and Benefits (April 12th 2010), I talked about the different types of costs and benefits – and which of those costs and benefits were applicable in evaluating an ECM project.  This is a continuation of that article – and hopefully the information provided will be of benefit when trying to get your ECM project funded.

When a company decides to undertake your ECM project, they’re consciously deciding not to fund some other project, not to offer their employee’s a larger raise, not to return the money to their shareholders or not to invest in a new business venture or launch a new marketing campaign.  Instead they’re trusting that the ECM project under your project management direction will provide more value to the company then these or other investment options.

Today – we’re going to talk about how an organization makes that choice and how they analyze various investment options and arrive at a decision on which projects to fund, which to reject, and which to defer.  To begin the conversation we need to understand the common types of evaluation measures such as NPV, ROI, IRR, payback period, etc.

Any elective project undertaken should provide greater benefits than the costs associated with implementing the project.  If such isn’t the case, then other factors are at play, such as the project is not elective, but required to meet legal requirements or new business needs.  In 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act provided a legal mandate for many companies to invest in content management solutions thus bypassing the cost-benefit scrutiny we’re discussing here.

There are a number of  underlying assumptions in play behind the various evaluation measures:

1. Companies are risk averse – and other things being equal will choose to fund a project viewed as ‘less’ risky.
2. The future is uncertain, and no one can accurately predict how new requirements or technology will affect today’s business.
3. Because of inflationary pressures and personal preferences- we will normally view having a dollar today as being better than having a dollar tomorrow.

There are strengths and weaknesses associated with each of the common measures of a projects value.  We’ll talk about some of those differences.   I like tools – and my wife is pretty much sure that I have every tool known to man (which isn’t the case).  When discussing a new tool purchase with her - she applies a fairly unique methodology that I call COG where she evaluates 3 criteria:

1. How much does the tool cost?
2. How long does it last?
3. How many days a year will I use the tool?

A few months ago I ‘needed’ a new pressure washer (cost $300, minimum lifespan of 3 years,  and a use rate of twice per year – as moss grows fast in Seattle).  The purchase was approved  easily because the daily use rate of the pressure washer of $50 was less than the corresponding COG (cost of golf) for that day.  Any tool purchase generally gets approved if the cost involved in using the tool stops me from spending the day on the golf course.   As an added non-measurable benefit – the driveway and sidewalks are now moss free.

Excluding the COG measure - normal measures of evaluating a project or purchase such as NPV, ROI, IRR, payback period, and discounted payback period will summarize the cash flows from your project into a single number.  The thought is that by comparing these numbers for various projects or investment alternatives - you can make a more informed decision on which projects to undertake.

Your ECM project will generate a set of cash flows. Typically for an ECM project  the cash will be flowing out (negative cash flow) as you invest in hardware, software, installation, configuration, etc.  At some point in time the cash flows will become positive as your project realizes benefits from your ECM implementation.  In Part I – we talked about these benefits, and which costs/benefits could be applied to our measure of choice.

Let’s now take a more in depth look at the measurements most in use.

Payback  Period

This is a pretty common way to value a project.  The simplest way is to lay out a timeline (generally by month), and total for each month the net benefits received in that month.  When you reach the month on the timeline where the sum of all the benefits exceeds the upfront costs – then you have found the payback period.  In times of uncertainty, most organizations might restrict projects to those with paybacks of less than 1 year.    Remember our assumptions about uncertainty and risk?  In general a project with a shorter payback period is assumed to be less risky.  Projects with longer payback periods are more likely to incur scope change, cost overruns, delays, etc.  One of the negatives in using payback period is there is no way to evaluate longer term – more strategic projects as the measure focuses your team on projects with quick paybacks.    I would hope that your company considers an ECM implementation to be a strategic project!  On a personal note – I’d like to hear from any organization that realized a payback of less than 1 year on an ECM implementation.

Discounted Payback Period

Remember our assumption that people prefer a dollar today over a dollor tomorrow?    With a discounted payback period, you make the same calculations as in the payback period, but the future  benefits of your project are discounted each period.  This rate of discount is sometimes called the hurdle rate.  This rate usually includes two components:

1) the return on  a non-risky investment option such as putting your  money into a savings account.  If you can get a 3% return on your money by leaving it in a savings account – then at a minimum you would want your ECM project to return 3%.  If your project doesn’t return 3% then you would  better off leaving your money in the bank.

2) some discount factor to accomodate risk/uncertainty.  This might be an additional 5-10%

If your company is focused on projects with a short payback period of a year - then the discounted payback period won’t be significantly different than the payback period value.

ROI – Return on Investment

If you invest $1 on your ECM project today, and end up with future benefits of $2.50 you will have a calculated return on investment of 150%.  ROI is simply the ratio of net benefits to costs (net benefits divided by costs or in our case $2.50 – $1.00 divided by $1.00) expressed as a percentage.    The higher the number the better the investment or the better the return on your ECM project.

In the real world  you will most likely have to discount your future benefits by some discount percentage for the same reasons we have previously discussed ($1 in the future isn’t worth as much as $1 today,  the future is uncertain, unknown risks might arise, etc.)

The other important question that will arise is how far in the future you can use to calculate benefits?  You could reasonably expect to see benefits from your ECM project many years into the future, but you may be restricted to only using 3-5 years in your ROI calculation.  Unfortunately this will undervalue the true benefits of your ECM project when compared to a project where 100% of the benefits are realized during the evaluation period.

NPV – Net Present Value

NPV measures a project and tells you how much that project is worth to you in today’s dollars.  The calculation restates all future benefits into today’s or ‘present’ value. Let’s look at a simple project:

Today: We spent $100 on the ECM project

Year 1:  Because of implementation timing we only saw benefits the latter part of the year, – let’s say $10

Year 2: rollout to remainder of organization at beginning of year 2 - let’s say benefits of $50 realized

Year 3,4,5  - full year of extended benefits  of $60 per year

We’re going to simplify the calculation by assuming that all benefits are realized at year-end – and not throughout the year as is really the case.  Also we’ll use a discount rate of 10%

NPV = Year 1 net benefits discounted by 10% + Year 2 benefits discounted by 10% compounded for 2 years + Year 3 benefits discounted by 10% compounded for 3 years, etc, or

NPV = -100 + 9.09 (year 1) + 41.32 (year 2) + 45.07 (year 3) + $40.98 (year 4) + 37.26 (year 5)

NPV = $73.72

Note how the exact same benefits in years 3,4 and 5 are worth corresponding less when expressed in present (today’s) value.  The nice thing about NPV is that it provides a way of measuring total impact to a company.  Two projects with exactly the same ROI might have vastly different NPVs.  One of the strenghts of NPV is that it gives an indication of the ‘size’ of the project’s value to an organization.

IRR – Internal Rate of Return

One of the things that I don’t like about most measures discussed above is that they utilize some ‘artificial’ discount or hurdle rate set by company policy.  The IRR eliminates this somewhat arbitrary number and instead provides the actual rate of return on  your project’s investment.   Essentially, the IRR is the interest rate that your project will return to your company if they invested in your ECM project.   Excel or most business calculators can make this calculation – simply providing you with what kind of return you would get if you invested $X today and received $Y in the future.  Since the IRR is essentially a return on your investment – you can easily compare this number against any other project or non-project investment options.  (On a side note, if you used the IRR as your discount rate in the NPV calculation – you would end up with a NPV equal to zero.)  The problems with using IRR is that  IRR doesn’t give any idea about how large an investment is being made, or of how quickly the payback is realized.

There is no perfect measure to use in evaluating or comparing your ECM project with other potential projects – but I hope that you now have the ability to use multiple measures, and to be able to understand the differences, strengths and weaknesses involved in each.  Good luck!

Steve Kissinger

ImageSource

Putting Together an ECM Project Team

Part 3 – The Project Team

In previous blogs on this same subject, we have discussed the role of Executive Management in the overall Project Team effort.  And what elements from the  internal organization would likely comprise an effective team.   In summary, vibrant and effective executive leadership is likely to be critical in solidifying the vision for the project.  The target of effort to achieve project acceptance and enthusiasm is cascading in that the focus of executive leadership is middle management.  The components of a project team may be different for each organization or type of organization – whatever best suites the particular organizational structure, and what special considerations there might be in the project (i.e. does it involve web content, collaboration, integration with ERP or SharePoint environments, etc.).

The Role of Line of Business Managers in the Project Team

As your project will likely either be addressing a limited requirement of a single department or two, or will be the start of an enterprise wide implementation of ECM, it is always recommended that it focus on a manageable quantity of work – normally one or two Departmental or workgroup solutions.  Enterprise wide ECM, ERM, and Business Process Management implementations usually start with one or two departments.   The Department(s) chosen for the Project are normally those where enthusiasm for improvements is high, cooperation is supportive, and where the business entity will benefit highly from the application of ECM technologies.

Starting with one or two areas that have been carefully selected based on their high potential for success and strong need for improvement, permits the rapid and clear demonstration of  ECM technology benefits – and that strong example can assist in the acceptance of the larger project to come across the enterprise.

Departmental management and supervisory involvement and strong support is crucial.  The organization’s line-of-business (LOB) managers understand the routine and cyclical “problems and challenges” of business operations.  They are operational experts within their areas of responsbilbity, know the character of the staff resources they have to work with, entity strengths and weaknesses, the potential to accept change, and what “change management” efforts should be implemented.   These LOB Managers and supervisors routinely “concentrate on organizational effectiveness through current processes” they will become the bridges that will carry the success of the ECM project forward into routine of daily work production.

The LOB Managers and other key supervisory or lead personnel need to be considered for the Project Team for either full involvement, or participation in the development of specific new process or workflow designs.

• They are most cognizent of what is done in their departments and why, what documents are received and how they are processed, the various sources of data (paper from internal and mail sources, voice mails, emails, internet provided input, etc.).
• They understand the decision criteria in the flow of work, the point where specific processes are needed, risks to successful processing, exception processing, and all the rest of the challenges that will need to be considered in a process design.
• They also know which other business areas need access to their documents and data.
• They usually have the only available insight into key details regarding operational systems, processes, and policies that support their organization’s mission.

When you apply ECM and BPM technology to an organization’s routine processes, you must have input and significant levels of planning participation from the managers and key personnel who are most familiar with operations so they can ensure that the new system will be successful in meeting objectives at all meaningful levels.  These people are needed to allow the project team to reach all objectives through consistent operational production.

From time to time this blog will continue with the subject of project team challenges, some considerations to remember, use of supporting vendor resources, and some recommended methods for implementation.

Neil W. Lindsey, ECMm, CDIA+

Project Manager / Senior Business Analyst
ImageSource, Inc.

Part I – ECM Project Costs and Benefits

 

ECM technology has been maturing for the past few years – and with this maturation comes a wider range of price points and expertise allowing for the benefits of ECM to be utilized by smaller companies and to truly encompass ever smaller business processes and departments within an enterprise.  Regardless of the size of the ECM project, each will be scrutinized by some type of cost/benefit analysis to determine whether to proceed with the project. 

Today, we’re going to talk specifically about costs and the flip side of the coin – benefits or cost reductions.  More specifically, I hope that the following information will increase your comfort level in dealing with ‘he/she who holds the purse strings’ – from RFP stage through negotiations that ensue regarding the trade-offs between scope, resources (costs)  and timeframe on your project.

The expectation of an ECM project manager is that he/she is knowledgeable about CM technology and can communicate with all levels of IT people.  Additionally we’re also now expected to be able to understand business processes within AP, AR, HR and effectively manage projects merging technology into business solutions and/or process improvements.  What we’re not doing and in most cases not expected to do – is to be able to communicate in finance speak with ‘he/she who holds the purse strings’.  Essentially this means that we lose control of our RFP or project change requests – and rely on others because we’re not expected to be able to talk dollars and cents.

Again, I hope the following will allow you to feel more comfortable in talking dollars and cents.

So what do the words variable, fixed, average, and marginal all have in common?   Perhaps you recognize these as a few of the myriad adjectives describing different types of costs.  Let’s wade into the types of costs that CFOs look at when they’re evaluating your project and determining whether the $1 of benefits you’ve promised really equates to 4 quarters to their bottom line.

Variable cost – there is an old saying in economics that all costs are fixed in the short-term and variable in the long term.  A good example of a variable cost would be postage.  There is a perfect relationship between how many documents you mail and how much postage you have to pay. A variable cost is any cost that varies directly with an activity. 

Fixed cost – these are costs that are fixed at least in the short term.  The key question here is how long is short term?  The answer will differ from company to company, and project to project.  Most likely you’ll need to meet with someone in the finance or accounting department to determine how projects are evaluated.  Let’s assume the CFO tells you that all projects must have a payback period of less than two years.  (In Part II – we’ll talk about different ways companies evaluate projects.)  So we can use this information to determine what costs are fixed/variable in the two year period.  Union labor contracts, real-estate leases, etc., lock in costs – making them fixed perhaps for the entire project payback period.   If you can’t break a lease or sublet freed storage space in the two year payback period – then it is unlikely the CFO will allow you to include any benefits from reducing storage costs.

Looking at many of the costs in your life – you recognize that many have both a fixed and a variable component.  For example if you budget for food costs – there is some minimal level that you can’t fall below without risk to your health or well being.  This fixed component will vary depending on whether you can maintain your happiness with Budweiser or require 20 year old scotch.   When you own a car there are fixed cost components such as insurance or your car payment, and variable components such as gasoline, tire wear, depreciation or even maintenance.   Just remember that in the short-term our ECM project can only provide savings that fall in the variable cost category.  

Average cost – You’re working on an ECM project for an AP department – and a typical question you would ask during discovery would be, ‘How much does it cost your company to process an invoice?’  The well-informed AP manager will proudly come back and give you a figure somewhere between $20 and  $50.  What you’ve just been given is an average cost.  The AP manager took all costs associated with the AP department including salaries, benefits, rent, postage,  AP’s portion of  utilities, janitorial costs, perhaps IT support, license costs for their payables system etc., and divided this number by the number of invoices processed.  By now you recognize that these costs include both fixed and variable components.  If your ECM project successfully eliminated all manual invoice costs – do you think the CFO believes that the benefits you’ve penciled in are true savings?  Of course not.

Marginal cost – Let’s go back to the AP department one more time to understand marginal costs, and ask the AP manager a slightly different question, “How much would it cost for you to process 1 more invoice today?”  The AP manager will most likely give you a blank look and repeat the same answer of $20-$50.   So, you sit down with the AP clerk and time them on how long it takes to process an invoice, you then add time/costs for invoice approval, for creating a payment document, and perhaps for postage, mailing, invoice retention – and for some reason your cost comes in at a fraction of the $20-$50.  What you’ve just done is determined the marginal cost of processing one more invoice or conversely the cost savings associated with the elimination of manual processing for one invoice.  Look carefully at the costs you’ve included – you should recognize these as the sum of all the variable cost components associated with invoice processing.

So if average cost is incorrect – is marginal cost the correct figure to use when calculating ECM benefits?  From the scenario above – does this mean marginal cost is the same as variable cost? The answer to both questions is no.  The reason is that we’re making an assumption if we extrapolate the savings/costs associated with one invoice to many invoices.  If an AP clerk can process 100 invoices per day then potentially we can reduce the salary costs associated with one AP clerk if we can eliminate manual processing for 100 invoices per day.    If we’re able to replace a number of AP clerks, perhaps next year when the AP manager retires – we can replace him/her with an AP supervisor.   If the number of AP users decline significantly – then next year we can negotiate a lower license cost with our AP software vendor.

What margin really means is that all costs are variable.  At some point in the AP process we run into constraints where fixed costs are impacted.  For example, if every single AP clerk is working as hard and efficiently as possible and working all the overtime allowed by the company – then adding one more invoice would force the company to hire one more AP clerk.  In such a case the marginal cost of that one invoice could be $2000 and not $2.  What if there wasn’t any room in the AP department for one more desk/person?  In such a case the AP department might be forced to add a new shift of workers.  Adding in the cost of a shift manager and other restructuring necessary – the marginal cost of that one invoice may now be in the $100,000 range.

The point is that over the life of your ECM projects benefit period – you can expect to convert some of the fixed costs to variable costs that can then be reduced or eliminated.  If any part of this benefit period fits within the payback period of your project then you could and should include those benefits as project benefits.

My final point in understanding these costs is credibility with your customer’s ultimate decision maker. 

As an ECM project manager, you’ve easily won over the IT department with your technical expertise in ECM hardware/software.   You’ve wowed the business users with a list of successful implementations.  What you don’t want to do is diminish your credibility with the CFO when they’re evaluating your project on a cost/benefit basis.   Spend time understanding your customer’s cost structure; how they evaluate projects – and present accurate numbers that truly depict realistic benefits.   If you do – you will have won over the most important person in the decision making process.

Part II in a few weeks will look at different financial methods that companies use to evaluate projects – and how to structure your project within those methodologies.

Steve Kissinger

ImageSource, Inc

  

Don’t Think That Certifications Make a Difference for Your Career or Success?

More Organizations are requiring PMP Certification for their employees.

Read the latest news on why the PMP^® is a leading certification companies are requiring their project managers to have.

Take a look at this Wall Street Journal journal article if you don’t think they make a difference.

Al Senzamici, PMP
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc.

  

Considerations for Architecture and Deployment of Global Capture Systems

 

The considerations for architecture and deployment of global capture systems are several fold. In our experience they include the traditional considerations and methodologies (software deployment models, conventional server models, fault tolerance considerations, human resource considerations, change management, etc.), however, in the global context there is another set of considerations that must be factored into the decision making processes. Regardless of the quality or nature of the software, there are myriad factors (independent of the software application) within any global corporation that can and will affect how that software is implemented and how it performs in any given region of the world. The ability to implement quickly and efficiently is tied directly to the organization’s communication structure, reporting structure, internal politics, policies and procedures, physical infrastructure, and the relationships that exist between the various IT support groups and the business. Any distributed applications performance can be impacted by the network, security configurations, load balancing systems, WAN Acceleration systems, and all of the rest of the traffic traversing those global backbone and regional networks. Many of these factors can and often are completely beyond the control of the customer’s project teams, and those that do control them often have completely different reporting structures within the organization.

Having a clear handle on the state and configuration of the existing environment combined with well managed Command and Change Control structure and a central hierarchy of authority that can be used for escalations is vital to the ability of ground teams to implement, troubleshoot, correct, adjust, optimize and complete rollouts in a predictable, consistent and timely manner.

Most of these factors are never fully known or understood until the teams are well into the planning stage of a given project. There are several ways that any global rollout can be approached from our perspective. Our preference is to work closely with your teams to understand the traditional factors as well as the lesser known and intangible ones so that together, we can arrive at the most effective, efficient and reliable ways to implement for each given region of the world. In our experience we have also found that being flexible as a combined team in our approach can help to ensure successful outcomes at the end of the day. We have to plan based on the information available at the time. As new information becomes available, we work together as necessary to modify the plan to achieve our stated goals and objectives for the implementation and to satisfy the needs of the users. At the end of the day, from a users perspective, it just has to work.

Gene Eckhart

Program Manager

ImageSource, Inc.

  

ECM Projects and Oracle I/PM 11g

 

Oracle recently announced the release of version 11g for their I/PM (Imaging and Process Management) software. With 11g, Oracle now provides a complete vision for image enabling the enterprise.

What does this mean from an ECM Project Management point of view?

First – I believe I/PM 11g will significantly reduce the complexity of an ECM project as you will be able to offer/manage a one-vendor, complete solution for imaging processing including capture, indexing, workflow, and application integration. This reduced complexity minimizes risk, and shortens the development, testing, and implementation phases of your ECM project.

Second – Since I/PM is a core component of Oracle’s ECM Suite (it can also be purchased separately) - you can leverage Oracle’s comprehensive ECM offering to provide the full gamut of ECM services including records management, library services, web publishing, etc., again with minimal additional project time.

Third – I/PM 11g includes many new features, but there are two that excite me from an ECM project point of view, and more importantly providing immediate value and benefit to your client.

• The first is pre-built workflows and workflow monitoring tools. Oracle included in I/PM 11g common workflows such as invoice and PO processing, and I hope they continue to expand their included pre-built workflows for other business processes. The pre-built workflows are customizable to manage exceptions or for specific company requirements. These workflow templates should provide an entry point in your project to discuss business process improvement. I would also hold hope that in the future I/PM users or user groups such as the OAUG (Oracle Application User Group) members will share their workflow templates.
• The second feature I liked , included in 11g was content-based recognition technology that allows extracting data from documents (without using templates). By including automated data extraction – a whole range of benefits and process improvements become available in your ECM project including reduced data entry time and entry errors, automated indexing,  and more ‘intelligent’ workflow driven processes.

Fourth – Oracle I/PM of course integrates seamlessly into Oracle applications , but just as importantly Oracle I/PM 11g provides the framework for their I/PM or ECM suite to integrate easily with non-Oracle applications across the enterprise. Most imaging or content management projects are designed to handle the particular needs of a department such as AP, or to automate a particular process within the organization. Without a doubt, Oracle (and their shareholders) hope that organizations will rethink such a departmental/process based strategy, and come to the realization that content management should be truly enterpise wide.

A few changes I would make managing an I/PM 11g project?

1. With Oracle ECM or I/PM 11g your project team should – even if the initial phase is departmental based – include an ‘enterprise’ sponsor. If you’re to provide an enterprise solution – don’t start the project with departmental management/oversight.
2. Lobby up front to have your ECM hardware and software infrastructure, support and development costs allocated on a corporate basis – similar to network services, database administration, etc. Since every department will get hit with these costs – two benefits will occur.
   • There won’t be new departmental CM solutions (and associated costs) appearing.
   • The organization is making a commitment to ECM – and announcing (explicity ideally) their expectation that every department should be prepared to review their existing processes for improvement in light of the new ECM infrastructure.
3. Automated workflow processes may be new to the organization. Be sure to include business analysts on your project team to insure all possible process improvements are realized.
4. Encourage your project sponsor/team to join a local or national Oracle User Group. The Oracle user community is huge – and there are significant benefits in leveraging the experience of other Oracle users – especially given the breadth and depth of Oracle’s product offerings.

For more information on Oracle I/PM 11g – stay tuned to this forum or visit Oracle’s website on I/PM

Steve Kissinger

ImageSource