Millennia Group Blog

It seems simple to envision the tools required by a mobile worker.  The basics quickly jump to mind including a phone, a laptop, chargers of course and a Starbucks or Panera card.  Then you need a location, which could include a home office, an office suites membership or the aforementioned coffee shop.

The real tools of the trade are more software oriented.  It’s critical to have a fully cloud based infrastructure or a VPN that provides access to your CRM, accounting system/ERP, messaging app, email and of course documents.  The emergence of technology and the disappearance of ledger books, the Rolodex and filing cabinets resulted in amazing efficiency gains.  Now that these tools are also available to mobile users, has efficiency peaked?

Okay, maybe security shaming is not the proper way to describe security awareness training.  No matter how its labeled, it’s working.  We don’t receive emails with employee or patient lists attached.  We aren’t given access to a Box account where we can see all company information instead of only the one folder we should see.

More and more we recognize the need to share information in a secure manner.  Nobody wants to be the one who accidently released a million names and social security numbers.  Security awareness training, a standard ritual now at most companies, is effective at helping to prevent accidental releases, but ensuring that information is securely shared could be a lot easier.

We serve clients in many different industries; commercial real estate, manufacturing, insurance, telecommunications, non-profit, education, etc.  Each one of these industries has some critical information that drives the company or certainly a significant department within the company. 

Most of the time that critical information is data that is pulled from or supported by documents.  Lease agreements and other contracts contain the terms and conditions that feed the accounting system.  Customer orders contain the all-important customer information that goes into the ERP.  Unorganized, mis-filed, inaccessible documents result in inaccurate data.

There are many examples of human endeavors that would not have ended well without training.  Moon shots, marathon running, heart surgery and triple axles (not 100% sure what that is) are just a few that come to mind.  But don’t just think of training as necessary only to achieve super human feats. 

Training is one concrete way to maximize the value of your software investments, a more mundane but very worthwhile goal.  It doesn’t matter what type of software it is, if users don’t use it (out of fear) or use it incorrectly, the investment will not pay off – aka, Failure.  That failure can be avoided with well thought out training.

At some point in our working careers most of us have planted our initials on some form or memo to signify our approval.  Yes, I agree that purchasing this $1mm piece of equipment is a good idea – MC.  It’s not a legal issue such as when a contract requires a full signature, but it does indicate that we take responsibility for or acknowledge the contents of a document.  There is a justified need for the initials.

The legitimacy of digital signatures for legal documents has been debated in the Supreme Court and every major country in the world.  Software solutions exist and thrive providing secure digital signatures that comply with the law.  This is all positive for our economy as it makes business processes more efficient.  Here is a little hint – there’s a lot of bang for the buck replacing ink on internal forms with digital initials.

There is no denying that many businesses absolutely need automation in order to get to that next level of efficiency.  Unfortunately, large companies with large budgets drove the development of most automation solutions and therefore, those solutions are very complex.

This legacy complexity creates an actual and perceived barrier to implementation.  Small to medium businesses (“SMB”) don’t have the training and support resources, nor the cash runway to implement and achieve the promised benefits from automation.  But SMBs, don’t be deterred, there are automation solutions that will fit your budget, workforce and customer needs.

For over 20 years our company has been providing services and solutions to the commercial real estate industry.  It’s a very large industry.  Depending on which stats you read, the U.S. commercial real estate industry is valued at over $15 Trillion dollars and growing by almost $70 Billion a year.  That is the size of the U.S. stock market. 

The commercial real estate industry is also very complicated.  It consists of developers, investors, advisors, managers, brokers and lenders.  These parties form partnerships, joint ventures, REITs, TICs and dozens of ownership structures.  And all these interested parties can be involved in a single property and they all have one thing in common - they have a copy of the same lease document.  At least it should be the same document.

If it’s a common refrain in your company that nobody can find anything on the file server or in the document management system, you are not alone.  In many cases a company believes this is because they have a digital document organization problem or possibly the lack of a document czar. 

Just because a company is not staffed entirely with former librarians doesn’t mean that a lack of organization is the only problem.  There may be other factors at play, like for instance, rapid growth or a string of acquisitions.  However, what’s really missing might be a document collection strategy.

It’s no surprise that no two businesses are exactly alike and certainly no two employees are either.  Our differences, along with the options provided by technology and changing circumstances, create a tremendous number of possible outcomes as it relates to information creation.  This is especially true of information in the form of documents.

Every day in every business, employees are creating documents, searching for documents, receiving new documents and sharing documents with others.  It’s imperative that the information makes sense, otherwise errors are made and time is wasted.  But since we are all different, don’t be surprised at how someone else defines what a document is and in what form it’s delivered. 

At some point every business probably feels a bit undervalued or unappreciated by customers or maybe by the markets.  This may or may not be justified, but we’ve all been there.  Over the years we have gained a deep understanding and appreciation for one group of businesses in particular that might feel this way – manufacturers. 

There is tremendous complexity in the manufacturing business model of sourcing parts, labor and materials, making something out of that and then selling and servicing that product.  Then there are also government regulations and customer compliance requirements to factor in.  There are highly complex software applications that help keep the cost of that seemingly simple widget at $2.00.  It’s really not so simple.