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Millennia Group Newsletter - Spring 2010
Now that summer is on its way, second quarter is winding down. For most businesses, the pressure to operate more efficiently is higher than ever. There is no better time to review ineffective paper document processes. Millennia Group has the experience and technological know-how to convert inconvenient paper backlogs into accessible, digital databases. Further, we can help you advance your Electronic Content Management (ECM) to the next level with new e-signature functionality. Third quarter is on its way. Make it productive by improving your document management. Topics
 http://scansquad.blogspot.com http://www.facebook.com/pages/Millennia-Group/264249002308 http://twitter.com/millenniagroupHere is a great article on the state of the imaging outsourcing industry: "Business Leader Opinion - Outsourced Document Service Providers" from Boss News Apr 2010. http://www.documentboss.com/blog/business-leader-opinion-outsourced-document-service-providers 
Client take-on process made easier by e-signaturesNew clients are the lifeblood of most companies, and yet, some companies are still relying on paper and pen to close the deal to start a business relationship. Business is getting more competitive every day with an assortment of shifting challenges. Rightsizing, technology and rising costs are all forcing companies to seek new efficiencies, while trying to provide better client service than their competition. Electronic Content Management (ECM) is doing its part to address these challenges with e-forms, workflow and e-signatures that can streamline the client take-on process. At the same time, these tools capture the rich client information and meta data that can influence daily decisionmaking. E-signatures, in particular, are becoming a more acceptable way across business for endorsing and closing transactions. The days of a client representative going to the forms file and stacking documents for a wet signature, or even downloading PDFs from a company portal, printing them out, signing them, and returning them in the mail is disappearing. ECM solutions that offer forms processing, workflow logic, electronic signatures and e-mail management are quickly injecting real productivity gains to the workforce, while also ensuring compliance. Let's look at different scenarios to see how ECM is improving client take-ons: A financial institution with regional offices may prefer to get wet signatures on new client documents. However, once the signatures are secured, ECM can enhance the process. Lightweight scanners with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) can validate the information, apply business rules on the content, trigger workflows verifying internal datasets, and route information to the appropriate personnel for confirmation and approval. The documents can be immediately stored in the ECM repository. In addition, the financial systems can be updated with the meta data, and marketing can be made aware of new clients for upcoming sales campaigns. Franchisors have particularly difficult processes for on-boarding new clients. This is mostly due to different state jurisdictions, multiple document types, and renewal processes. When Millennia Group was recently engaged to help a franchisor streamline the on-board process, we provided a secure, closed-loop process integrating hosted e-forms and electronic signatures. We also provided a project portal with a real time dashboard to track upcoming renewal agreements and to initiate workflow processes on the documents. With this process, franchisees are notified by e-mail and then directed to the portal to review and electronically sign documents. This process has created an 80% reduction in personnel time and cost. The Internet is accelerating e-signature based commerce, providing tangible benefits to the bottom line for various departments. Here are some of the advantages departments are receiving.
The new buzz word and technology in ECM = CMIS The new buzz word and technology in ECM is CMIS, Content Management Interoperability Service. OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, defines CMIS as a service that "provides an interface for an application to access a Repository."¹ You may have heard it called "See-miss" or "C-M-I-S." Either way, it is a powerful technology that is improving the way applications integrate with repositories. Most content management applications provide API (Application Program Interface) access methods to their content that are similar to each other, but there has been no standard. This has caused higher development costs by businesses that want to integrate their CRM, ERP or other systems with their repositories. By using CMIS as a technology neutral standard, the costs for clients to rewrite an interface for a connection to one or many repositories will be minimized. At its core, CMIS allows for 3 basic standardized functions:
CMIS took years to develop. It is the result of an impressive collaboration of 20 industry vendors who wanted to standardize common sets of tasks among their different systems. CMIS has led to an SQL equivalent "ah-ha" moment, because it allows multiple repositories to be accessed through a standard set data model. With foresight, the vendor group took its work and turned it over to OASIS, the open standards organization. OASIS approved version 1.0 of CMIS in early May of 2010. CMIS is sometimes referred to as a federated system of repositories placed into the open source community. We are excited about what CMIS is going to do for our industry. In fact, Millennia Group is moving ahead and integrating CMIS into FileStar. This work will make it easier for many of our FileStar customers who plan to implement ERP, CRM or other software, like Microsoft SharePoint. When your software vendors develop their applications to be CMIS-compliant, we will be ready. For more information about how you can improve your document imaging and management processes, call Mike Cipriano at 630-279-0577 x 122 or Donato Mallano at 212-631-0490 x23 or visit our website at mgdocs.com. ¹ OASIS CMIS Version 1.0 Committee Specification 01 |
On June 9th, Michael Cipriano will be in Las Vegas as part of a panel of experts at Realcomm. Mike will be discussing "Developing a Comprehensive Document/Content Management Strategy." Check out this video for more information on Realcomm 2010. Come on out to Vegas! 
Millennia's John Schaffer and Donato Mallano, AIIM NYC Board members and in collaboration with the local ARMA NYC Chapter, organized a lively luncheon panel discussion with representatives from Sitrof Technology, Nuxeo ECM and Alfresco, on "Open Source ECM, Hip Not Hype." This event was attended by 50 local members at the NY Life Building on May 3rd.
FileStar for Sharepoint is coming together and should be ready for beta third quarter of this year.
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