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Millennia Group Newsletter – April 2009
Welcome to our second newsletter of the year. As promised, we intend to keep these short, while providing you with useful information on topics relevant to the content and document management industry. We have provided three articles in this issue: 1. Enterprise Content Management – Information Overload or Competitive Advantage? 2. M & A – Getting Prepared in a Down Market Before It’s Too Late 3. Outsourcing – It Really Makes Sense Thank you, Michael Cipriano President Millennia Group provides comprehensive document imaging and management services to help companies better utilize their documents and data. We offer a suite of cost-effective solutions designed to work alone or together to meet your specific needs: Managed Imaging Services, Hosted Document Applications and Consulting Services. We have the experience, technology and flexibility to meet your specific needs, working on-site or off-site, with your staff or ours. And we convert your documents into secure, digital formats that integrate with a choice of document management applications, including our own intuitive FileStar Image Warehouse.
Have a suggestion on a topic or feature? info@mgdocs.com Make sure to mark your calendar and visit us at Realcomm on June 23-24 http://www.realcomm.com/chicago.htm 
Enterprise Content Management – Information Overload or Competitive Advantage? People nowadays are logging into the Net, not only to surf or browse, but to also donate or share a piece of information. The Internet is becoming a constant presence in our lives, whether we are at home, work, or even out for a walk. We can now stay connected 24 hours a day 365 days of the year and, depending on our individual information tolerance, we may either thrive on the constant communication or feel overwhelmed. One definition of Information overload refers to an excess amount of information being provided, making processing and absorbing tasks very difficult, because we cannot always see the validity behind the information. This is even more relevant when running a company, because there are employees, locations and business processes to track. In today’s real-time business world, it's not enough to simply save and file content (e.g. emails, documents, pictures, drawings, videos, audio files and so on). You must manage the entire lifecycle of your content to help you achieve important business goals (e.g. integrating an acquired company, designing and launching a new product, buying or selling a property, branding, FASB reporting, data back-up etc.) Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is fundamental to the success of your company because it allows you to properly manage the complete lifecycle of your content from birth to death. This allows you to better control essential functions of your daily operation: Compliance, Collaboration, Continuity, and Cost Management. ECM is an ongoing and evolving strategy that provides many benefits to today’s businesses. With better management of intellectual and operational information, employees are able to improve services despite heterogeneous computing environments, multiple content repositories and shrinking pools of resources. ECM allows you to gain a competitive advantage, while other companies are spinning cycles searching for useful documentation. Keep in mind, while the deployment of ECM technology will help you streamline your content management, the underlying strategy must come first. This article link provides some useful steps when considering ECM as part of your Business/IT Strategy: http://www.bitpipe.com/data/web/bp/contmgmt/content_tutorial.jsp There are a number of established ECM Software Companies that cover the full spectrum of functions, features and budgets to meet your Business and IT Strategy requirements. Millennia Group has relationships either directly with the following companies or with talented integrators of these applications, and we would be glad to make introductions. Give us a call if you are interested in learning more about these popular ECM options: EMC Documentum http://www.emc.com/products/category/subcategory/documentum-platform.htm Microsoft SharePoint http://www.microsoft.com/Sharepoint/default.mspx OpenText http://www.opentext.com/ Oracle http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/content-management/enterprise-content-management.html HP TRIM http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/software/im/governance_ediscovery/trim/index.html Hyland Onbase http://www.hyland.com/english/index.aspx IBM Filenet Content Manager http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/content-management/filenet-content-manager/ Alfresco (open source) http://www.alfresco.com/ M & A - Getting Prepared in a Down Market Before It’s Too Late Real estate represents one of the largest expenses on the average company’s books. How it is handled prior to, during, and after a transaction can be critical to the success of the overall deal. One of the keys to a successful business deal is to carefully evaluate the entire real estate portfolio as early as possible and ensure that the necessary resources are in place prior to a transaction. It is critical to take the initiative early to create and take advantage of tools and technology that allow your team to effectively manage the transaction. You would be amazed by the number of companies that fail to keep good real estate records (i.e. leases, financials, third party reports and surveys). Oftentimes, the real estate data itself is limited, fragmented and inconsistent. It is also important to bring in partners or align your company with partners early in the process before the transaction takes place. When companies wait until the last minute to bring in real estate advisors, consultants, project managers, etc., it can lead to mistakes and extra costs. By bringing them in early, they get the time they need to provide you with reliable data, tools and advice prior to the transaction. You will find that your transactions will run more efficiently, there will be fewer surprises, and most importantly, you will consistently improve the profitability of your transactions through proactive management. Top-tier real estate companies have brought Millennia Group in as a partner on some of the largest and most complex real estate acquisitions and dispositions in the country. We have provided essential document management services including audits, imaging, and consulting and have even developed secure, web-based war rooms to help facilitate the disposition of large and small real estate portfolios. Millennia Group has been involved with two recent noteworthy acquisition transactions: Blackstone Group’s acquisition of Equity Office Properties and Supervalu’s acquisition of Albertson’s. We have also been brought in as a partner to help audit the legal documents and provide document management services on the disposition end for many large national transactions. Outsourcing – It Really Makes Sense If Arnold Palmer is advocating outsourcing (Administaff), it must be good, right? But is it right for your organization in today’s economic environment? There seems to be a general view that outsourcing makes sense when the company can lower costs or improve the quality of its products or services. Other companies believe they can create a competitive advantage by outsourcing more strategic departments like IT and HR. However, most companies have shied away from outsourcing core functions considered to be vital to their business. One recent improvement in technology has allowed companies to take advantage of low-cost, low stress methods of outsourcing for their essential business functions. SaaS (Software as a Service) is in essence a new term for ASP (Application Service Provider) — with the exception that SaaS often pays extra attention to the client for additional services. In a SaaS model, the customer typically rents a web-based application that is hosted by the vendor. The vendor does all the time-consuming backups and most likely participates in data loads, upgrades, and even security management. The SaaS model can be used for accounting, HR, CRM, EDM, virtually any type of business application. In commercial real estate it is quite common to outsource lease abstraction. In banking it is common to outsource the lock box operations. In healthcare it is common to outsource claims management. These are certainly core areas that are critical to the business, which is why it is so important to be as educated as possible about the latest outsourcing options. We have provided below the names of two organizations that are available to help with outsourcing strategy, risks, rewards, contract issues and much more. International Association of Outsourcing Professionals - http://www.outsourcingprofessional.org/ The Outsourcing Institute - http://www.outsourcing.com/ Millennia Group provides outsourced imaging services to our clients, both large and small. We refer to these services as Managed Imaging Services, because we become true partners, providing our expertise to manage the process on behalf of the client. As a result, we have saved our clients time and money, and improved the quality of their data. If you wish to learn more about the outsourcing services we provide, contact us today. | ||||||||||||||||||
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