A report on a Wellington conference, "Automated Data Capture and Electronic Document Management ’97". The conference chairman Michael J. Steemson, Principal of The Caldeson Consultancy, writes to delegates about the two-day event. |
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A report on a Wellington conference, "Automated Data Capture and Electronic Document Management ’97". The conference chairman Michael J. Steemson, Principal of The Caldeson Consultancy, writes to delegates about the two-day event. |
Now You are Go! for Electronic Document Management
You had an exciting message to take away from your conference, a message to motivate yourself or to deliver confidently to your Chief Executive Officer. After what you’d seen and heard in those two days, the message was simple: "Now, we are Go! for Electronic Document Management." Now, you could tell the CEO you are ready, willing and able to take the project on and that …
 Russ James |
You are Go! for Principles.
You heard the organisational challenges you face neatly enumerated by Price Waterhouse Urwick principal consultant Russ James. The first step in the right direction, he said, is to recognise that not all information in an organisation has to be managed equally but "according to business need, according to risk!"
He dismissed the old tenet that information management is about providing the right information at the right place at the right time. It's an outdated fallacy, he told you, because it takes no account of the costs.
But he recommended that you think carefully before dismissing another old, well-used business cliché, offering this teasing conundrum: "Re-inventing the wheel should not be tolerated - if it has been done before!" Think about that one for a minute!
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"The cry is loud and clear - 'we want information and we want it now!'" |
You are Go! for Planning.
You heard Gill Pye, systems manager from an Australian pharmaceutical company, reduce the enormity of the task with a simple piece of advice: "Start from Day 1." Obvious, really … when you’ve heard it! You know to plan staff requirements. "The right bums on the right seats" was how Gill put it. I liked that expression. She had a warning, too: Be careful to plan for the company needs, not just what everyone says they want and beware of getting bogged down in planning - "analysis paralysis", she called it, another useful key-word phrase.
You know to plan your processes. Mark Wootton, IT Business Development Manager for Recall, cautioned you with the
story of those treasured mobile "apple box" files, and warned you
to cut through those "way it’s always done"
mentalities. He gave you the 80:20 rule for your project - 80% time
on planning, 20% on implementation. Peter Rowe, the deputy chief executive
officer of the Local Authorities Superannuation Board of
Victoria, told you how his staff had addressed the following problems:
The questions had not been considered in years, so staff made estimates then undertook random sampling to prove their accuracy.
 Dr Judith Johnston |
You know to plan your technologies. You know what you want for the current project, naturally, but now you will remember there could be future developments as your successful business project grows and displays possibilities for new activities. Ministry of Justice Chief Information Officer Dr Judith Johnston told you of her future expectations for delivering electronic information direct to MPs.
Waitemata Health’s IT manager Colin Thrush outlined how the crown health enterprise worked out a low-cost answer to the need for fast, simple communications for its schools dental service - automatic data capture from the dental nurses' telefaxed reports and intelligent voice recorders to register parental consent for children's treatment.
Consultant Steve Seaton warned you about the lack of EDM standards, but had hopes of a US group producing some soon. Lawyer Jeanette Watson, a senior associate at Wellington law firm Rudd Watts & Stones, gave you her icon-phrase: "Preparation, preparation, preparation."
You are Go! for a Pilot project
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"Proof-of-concept pilots are essential to convince potential users of what is possible and what is not." |
You know those learning curves will be steep as hell, but you will learn, like those newspaper librarians I told you about. You know you’ll make mistakes, and learn from them. Several of us speakers admitted ours.
Colin Thrush gave you a valuable tip: "You can prove your project concepts in a pilot." He said a pilot scheme could be useful, too, for convincing doubters about new technologies and processes. The health authority was trialing an exchange of information with general practitioners, a careful intermediate step towards fully-electronic transfers.
Judith Johnston called the Justice Ministry’s a "phased implementation". That’s a useful variation on the pilot theme.
Gill Pye gave you advice here, too: "If your consultant doesn’t shape up in the pilot, dump him." Don’t be distracted by the ‘it’s in the next software release’ platitudes. Start afresh, if necessary.
She advised:
Pilot schemes also help convert staff suspicious of the value and friendliness of a new system. Gill joked: "The pilot users threatened us with our lives if we took the software of their machines!"
You are Go! for Problems.
Imaging Solutions’ Kevin Tomsett and Steve van Wonderen of Moore Business Forms and Systems Ltd told you of the unplanned, huge work overload in the first week of the New Zealand Superannuation Referendum count which they battled through to resounding success. You heard from me of the unexpected need for new codes, algorithms, to help journalists with spelling problems and guide them when they didn’t know what they wanted from the image archive.
Judith Johnston revealed one of the Justice Department project’s headaches - multiple technology means multiple problems. Colin Thrush advised you not to expect 100 per cent solutions. They were usually unnecessary and often unattainable. Russ James underlined another simple truth that can get overlooked in the enthusiasm for a new process: the rich functionality of electronic document management can cause confusion amongst infrequent users.
 Jeanette Watson |
Jeanette Watson highlighted the possibility of challenges to the admissibility of your electronic documents as legal evidence. She warned you: "Courts will not rely on information in computer-based systems unless they can be satisfied that evidence ... is indeed a true record or true copy." But she was also re-assuring. Judges and lawyers are pragmatic, she said. They don’t have difficulty with imaged documents.You should not to be balked by the law’s uncertainties on the subject. She pointed you towards legislation to keep in mind for records retention rules - the Companies Act, the Privacy Act, the Tax Administration Act, the Health and Safety in Employment Act, the Buildings Act, and so on.
You heard Peter Rowe explain why the Victorian superannuation board had to back-file the whole of its old, hard copy, but other speakers found this "everything" approach unnecessary. Now, you will be able to make up your own mind about your organisation’s needs.
You are Go! for Business Needs
Gill Pye had another lovely catch phrase, warning against the "have I got a great system for you !" vendors. Russ James put it another way: "Don’t let the system drive the project."
And he gave you the tips on identifying you organisation's core business information. In a legal firm, for instance, core information is in its client and legal files, in an engineering company it's in client and maintenance data but a human resources organisation, a company or a department, needed an information core of policy and procedures, vacancy notices, payroll records and client files.
The system must be consistent, flexible, scaleable, controllable, secure and responsive. Peter Rowe made it simple … it must manage the data. The Justice Ministry had another requirement. Its system had to integrate all the Ministry’s information sources, and Dr Johnston listed around a dozen.
Will you need automatic data capture in your system? Mark Wootton showed you the latest software packages to take the heat and the horrific cost out of mass data input. Karlyn Griggs, a senior account manager with Imaging Solutions gave you a number of ideas how to make the Internet work for you, too. Steve Seaton gave you the one liner: "Use technology as a means to an end, not …"
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"One of the real threats to any new computer system is the fact that no matter how good it may be, if the staff don't support it, they can make sure it doesn't work"." |
You are Go! for People
Almost every speaker warned about and pressed home the vital need to keep staff informed about the project, its status, strengths and weaknesses in order to engender "ownership" of the project. Get your staff to "buy in" to the system was the way Colin Thrush put it. Judith Johnston had asked her staff for "a commitment to excellence, sponsorship and a clear, shared vision" of the value and efficacy of the Justice Ministry project. Gill Pye held tea parties so her project staff could chat about their system or get grievances off their chests in informal surroundings.
Peter Rowe told you there had been enough excitement and anticipation in the Victoria Superannuation Board to ensure that most of the staff wanted the project to work. He hadn't have to deal with the difficulty himself, but he told you that one of the real threats to any new computer system, no matter how good it may be, is that if staff don't support it, they can make sure it doesn't work.
From me, you heard a real example of this, of the terrible consequences of not getting staff backing and co-operation over a two million Pound Sterling imaging system that was switched off after six months because apathetic staff could not and would not use it correctly. Again, Gill Pye gave you the catch phrase: "Communicate, communicate, communicate.!"
You are Go! for Service
Peter Rowe told you what impressed his superannuation board’s 80,000 members most when any of them telephoned about their pension plans - his staff’s complete knowledge of each members’ details, made possible through swift, on-line retrieval of personal files. You know that this near-instant service is beginning to be expected, now. Businesses unable to perform at this level will be at a distinct disadvantage.
Dr Johnston made another point: it’s not just the customers who need the service. The staff members who work with the system need good service, too. They need fast, accurate responses to get on with their jobs.
You are Go! for Intranets
Every organisation should consider intranets was Russ James' recommendation. He believes that they are the big business tools of the future, good for anything from selling cars to instant maintenance demonstrations for linesmen in the back blocks trying to fix a reluctant transformer, or on-line training programmes for new staff.
These private networks, using the techniques and technology of the Internet, can provide easy access to corporate information and solve the problem of providing a single, up-to-date copy of a document allowing staff all the dance to the same information tune.
Judith Johnston told you that an intranet is the front end of the Justice Ministry's information resources, patching in its variety of information sources, including the Internet, and defending if behind electronic firewalls.
You are Go! for Gold
Now you know that, properly planned and managed, electronic document management can save time … lots of it! Remember Peter Rowe telling us of his horror at finding it took one whole day to get a file from the superannuation board’s archive? He reduced that to 20 seconds with EDM, and laughingly complained that even that seemed slow to staff, nowadays. He is going to get it even faster.
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"There's gold in them thar gigabytes!" |
EDM can save money. Colin Thrush told you about Waitemata Health’s regular "customer" satisfaction survey results that are now captured entirely automatically by the equipment used for the dental therapy reports, saving the Crown Health Enterprise $27,000 a year in wages it used to pay for manual in-put.
EDM can create new business opportunities. I gave you one example, my old newspaper group, where Library staff are now part of the front-end production organisation after decades of working in a back room. In the ordinary course of preparing Press photographs for use by the titles, Library staff are creating a picture archive that will be saleable to other publishers. My half-joke to Library staff that "one day the Library will own the paper", for which I later got some grief from my boss, is beginning to look more and more true.
EDM can give better service for customers, and increase your own staff efficiency by delivering work and information to the right desk and the right time. You have seen that there really is gold in them thar gigabytes.
Yes, you’ve got the message. Good luck! Now you can …
Go for it!
To go to the Home Page, click HERE.
 Michael Steemson |
 The conference was organised by A.I.C. Conferences Ltd, P. O. Box 5321, Wellesley Street, Auckland, and held at the Plaza International Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand, on December 2 and 3, 1997. |