More Confessions of a Salesaholic

 By Beth Schrader


In both our personal and professional lives, we all have pet peeves.  Sometimes, we find they duplicate themselves in each world, like when someone interrupts or leaves the toilet seat up.  Clearly, manners should be paramount in any environment.  Likewise, when someone uses a cliché – one that the listener rolls their eyes mid-sentence as it is being spit out in the form of an unintentional insult – the pet peeve list grows longer.  

“We’ll go from there” is a classic line that, if I’m being honest, both sides in a sales process utter way too frequently.  The client/prospect will say this to a Sales rep to get them off the phone or out of their office STAT; the Sales rep will say this to a client/prospect when they either don’t know what to do next or don’t want to put the time in to do it.  Why, when we know we are being blown off, do we allow it?  If we truly care, why can’t we call a “cliché foul” on the other person right then and there?

Typically, I find my prospects will try to tell me “we’ll go from there” because they do not want to be burdened by another project.  They do not have the time, energy, staff, or desire at that point in time to investigate an ECM, conversion, or backlog scanning initiative.  Not in any particular order, but here’s what comes to mind when I hear this:

1. Where exactly is “there?”
2. Why don’t you want to make your process easier and save money doing it?
3. You realize that I realize you’re blowing me off, but because I care and believe (actually know but immodesty is also a pet peeve of mine…as is hypocrisy) we can help, I will do whatever it is you have deemed “there” and remind you when it is done so that we can laugh about the cliché foul later.

The statement is really one of timing since the subtext of “we’ll go from there” is… I know I need this, I would like to look into it but can’t do it presently, and I would like to not feel badly about it so I need to be done talking to you now.  I have many customers that have in fact purchased an ECM after years (as in 10 – you know who you are) of waiting on the perfect time to “go from there.”  Resoundingly, the question after implementation is always, “Why in the world did we wait this long?  We can’t even remember how we used to do it.”

The problem is, much like when we try to map out the perfect time in our adult lives to have children, there isn’t one.  There will always be another project, another goal, another idea, another cliché.  Yet, as those are occurring, so is the creation of more content.  The same manual process is still occurring.  Company growth is (hopefully) still occurring. 

Instead of habitually using the “we’ll go from there” cliché the next time a Salesperson calls, I think it wise to remember what Confucius first said, “No matter where you go, there you are.”  It’s how you get from here to there that matters.  And we can help.

The Sheer Luxury of Paper

By Angela Childs

There’s nothing quite like the sweet fresh smell when you open a new ream of paper.   The white sheets of limitless possibility ready for ink and staples, file folders and cabinets.    How could we not want to print our emails and file them away in a drawer?  What kind of heartless monster could resist the allure of sharing a paper invoice?  Who doesn’t want to look important in a meeting when everyone has to wait while you run to your office to get a document?  The power is irresistible. 

Can you imagine an audit without the thrill of digging through boxes?  That exhilarating feeling you get from the danger of paper cuts.  Oh how you and the auditor share a laugh when documents are missing.  Good times.

Paper a little too exciting?  We get that and we can help.  Need to go cold turkey and have someone scan documents for you?  We can be with you every step of the way.  You don’t have to do it alone.

IOS partners with AllShred Services for Document Destruction

Columbia City, IN – Jan, 25, 2012 – Imaging Office Systems, Inc. (IOS), a leading provider of content management systems, scanning and data capture, systems integration, custom software development, and records management services,  announced today that it has partnered with Allshred Services of Maumee OH, to expand its Records Management Services division and begin offering secure document and data destruction services.
 
Allshred will manage and provide fulfillment services for both bulk and scheduled shredding services across IOS’s entire customer network.  IOS customers will receive full NAID (National Association of Information Destruction) certified services regardless of their location and each customer will receive a certified document destruction notice after each shredding event.

IOS hires Records Management Specialist

Columbia City, IN – Jan, 20, 2011 – Imaging Office Systems, Inc. (IOS), a leading provider of content management systems, scanning and data capture, systems integration, and custom software development, announced today that it has created a specialist program to promote Box Storage, Document Destruction, Scan on Demand, and Records Management Consulting Services.

Andrew Myers is IOS's new Records Management Specialist.  Andy will based in Indianapolis out of the Emco office and will support all central Indiana businesses.

Imaging Office Systems, Inc. 
Deriving 100% of its revenue from content management, IOS has installed over 600 imaging systems in the Midwest.  In addition to its records storage and destruction services, it provides document management solutions from its partners Hyland, PSIGen, Canon, FileBound, and Fujitsu, plus IOS has an in-house Professional Services Group that performs system integrations and conversion, workflow and custom programming. With its multiple facilities IOS is also one of the largest document conversion service bureaus in the United States converting more than 5 million pages a month.

Click here to learn more about IOS's Records Management services.

Using Tablets for Employee Onboarding

By Angela Childs

I love a good process improvement story and we recently had a customer approach us with a great idea for just that for their employee onboarding process.   This customer has stores across the US and their existing process was paper intensive, labor intensive, and error prone.  With all the technology options we have today they were sure they could do better and came up with a great concept.

For their onboarding process, when they hire a new employee for a store, they have the employee go to that store to fill out all their paperwork.  That paper is then sent to corporate where someone keys all the information into their HR system, follows up on anything that’s missing, and files the documents.  Their new idea – how about instead of filling out a bunch of paper forms, they’re handed a tablet PC.  The tablet then walks them through the process of reading and completing all their paperwork.   As long as it was developed with a super simple interface that guided the employee through each step, they could add technology without piling tech support and software trainer to their store managers work load. 

With this idea, in one step, your new employee is giving you all their data, electronically, ready for import into your HR and content management systems.   

• You eliminate multiple people touching the same documents.
• You eliminate paper shuffling and lost documents.
• You eliminate the delay between when the employee gives you information and when it’s ready to use.
• You add error proofing to your process. 
• You eliminate keying and filing tasks freeing your staff to focus on what’s really important.

This type of project is one of the main reasons Imaging Office Systems created their Professional Services Group, to take a customer’s idea and turn it into something real.  

In this case, we got to design a solution that could be molded to match different needs with automation like on the fly conversion of handwriting to text, pushing common data elements to all forms, and output to multiple systems. 

Have your own ideas?  Let us help you develop a solution.

Four IT Security Lessons to Learn from Anonymous' Stratfor Hack

By Kaitlin McCready, Hyland Software

On Christmas Eve, while most of us were immersed in the holiday spirit, others were immersed in the sensitive information of Stratfor Global Intelligence Service’s client list.

A group of hackers, associated with the collective known as Anonymous, breached Stratfor’s systems, obtaining the credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses of the company’s customers. The group has already used this stolen information to make donations to charities, such as the American Red Cross.

Breaches like this are happening so frequently (just follow the medical community for the evidence) that they’re becoming ho-hum. But that’s even more reason to question how they can happen in the first place. This is 2011, after all, and technology in organizations should, in almost every case, protect against something like this.

To help you ensure you don’t become the next Stratfor, here are four lessons in IT security that you can take to your organization.

1. To protect against data breaches, it’s not just the database that needs to be protected – it’s the documents.

The full picture of exactly what content was compromised from Stratfor is still unclear. But we do know that it went beyond the database to things like emails.

The reality is that sometimes, documents like PDFs and Word files have sensitive information like credit card numbers on them. To make sure they’re securely managed, an enterprise content management system should be able to provide granular levels of security down to the single document level, and can store them in an encrypted format.

2. An email might be a communication tool first. But when it contains sensitive information, it needs to be treated as a record.
We’re in a world where the amount of information is exploding, making it more complicated to determine which needs to be deemed necessary to manage within an organization’s content management system.

Hopefully, the Stratfor situation will put the focus back on the need to better manage sensitive emails and the way they’re archived, a piece of the IT security puzzle that’s often overlooked. Typically emails kept in Exchange or an email archive solution aren’t archived in an encrypted format. To create a complete solution, you should be able to configure an enterprise content management system to delete emails in the respective mail client once the email is archived in that system.

3. Encryption should be built into your software.

Storage and data archiving vendors, like EMC or IBM, provide a lot of security and data integrity controls in their systems. But you shouldn’t rely solely on your hardware to administer security on where your documents are residing.

ECM software should be able to encrypt documents and images at the physical storage level, protecting the data from unauthorized access to the physical drives. Documents that are archived in this way then can only be opened and viewed with ECM software interface, ensuring that the security controls imposed by the software are respected at all times, regardless of what happens to the hardware.

4. You can’t fully control your employees’ actions. But you can protect against it.

Every company has disgruntled employees, even a few willing to give up their login information to your enterprise systems - or more commonly, employees who mean well, but are fooled by hackers from time to time. Here’s how you can combat these situations (to a degree).

When it comes to documents, most ECM systems offer the capabilities to either automatically or on an ad-hoc basis do redactions on sensitive information that the majority of users in the organization don’t need to do their jobs. So, authorized users can still get access to the physical documents, but only certain people can see the actual information on the document, like a credit card number. This level of security is becoming more talked about with PCI compliance regulations.

The IT tools are out there to protect organizations. Hopefully this incident (and these tips) lights a fire under the IT departments who aren’t yet taking advantage.

Mobile ECM: Your Content In Your Pocket

By Glenn Gibson, Hyland Software

The world of computing has changed. Forever.

These days it seems archaic to have to wait until you get home or to the office just to check your email, because now your email is in your pocket. The idea of printing off maps before heading out on a journey seems crazy because GPS on our phone gives us turn-by-turn directions. Lively pop-culture debates over a pint are now a thing of the past, because we can look up the answers on the internet immediately.

Yes, mobile computing devices have changed the world and changed us.  We expect instant access to information from wherever we are. The iPhone and the iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7 and the Blackberry give us this access like never before.

So what does the explosion in mobile computing have to do with ECM?  Everything.

Think about it. What is one of the primary driving factors behind an organization developing an ECM strategy? The need to get critical business information into the hands of the right people at the right time. That’s what ECM is all about.

But what if the right people are in the wrong place at the wrong time? What I mean is, what if the people who are responsible for making important decisions, from approving a critical business expense to agreeing to hire the perfect candidate, can’t physically get access to the information and systems they need in order to execute business decisions, simply because they are traveling or not in the office?  

The reality is that these individuals spend a lot of time on the road and out of the office. This lack of real-time access causes bottlenecks in your processes as the decisions have to wait until they get back online. This causes on-the-fly workarounds with emails and phone calls to get someone, anyone, with authority to make the decision. And once that decision has finally been made, it is very difficult to track all the activity that supports it.

Yup, bottlenecks and workarounds caused when people who play a critical role in business decisions are out of the office have come to be expected as a normal part of business because, until recently, that’s just how it was. There was no other choice.

But, the world of computing has changed. If the ability to access email from anywhere in the world is not only a reality, but expected in today’s world, why is it any different when thinking about your other important business content and processes?

It shouldn’t be. And when you partner with an ECM vendor who understands this, it is not.

Today you can put your ECM content in your pocket. With mobile ECM applications you are able to not only able access your important content, but also participate in business processes, reviewing, approving and denying requests from wherever you are, directly from your mobile device.

Now it is likely, for many good reasons that you may not want to make ALL your business information available via mobile devices. If mobile access to your information is part of your requirements when you are choosing an ECM vendor, you should look for a vendor which allows you to control what type of content and processes to make available via these mobile devices. You should choose an ECM system that can truly deliver on the promise to get critical business information into the hands of the right people at the right time, wherever they happen to be.

For your business this is both simple and profound. No more waiting to get back to the office. No more driving to coffee shops just to get access to your system to approve a request. No more bottlenecks caused by business travel. No more un-documented workarounds. 

It is that simple. It is that revolutionary. Because now your content is right there in your pocket.