Millennia Group Blog

The first thing that comes to mind when you hear about workflow is most likely order and process.  There is validity in that thought.  Workflow is intended to deliver efficiency and cost saving by using defined order and automated process. 

Defining what the process should be is the tricky but necessary part and it’s the fun part.  Yes, fun.  When you dig in and people realize how many time wasting tasks can be eliminated, you can feel the joy.  So how do you re-connect the dots to create an effective digital workflow and really make work flow?  Put on your technology goggles and look at the process.

Bitcoin continues to make news and inroads into the world of finance.  Two of the basic technologies that drive Bitcoin include blockchain and peer to peer computing.  These two concepts are relatively understandable.  Blockchain uses a distributed ledger, which is essentially a list that is shared across many computers (peer to peer).  Because many computers contain a time-stamped replica of the data, it is very difficult, and expensive to hack or change the data in a fraudulent way – and its encrypted.

These concepts are moving into other areas such as smart contracts.  However, these contracts are not documents as that term is generally understood.  The smart contract is essentially a perfectly known set of conditions and data, that when met, results in a payment or action.  The contract is essentially data points; house address, meter number and usage, bank account or Bitcoin account, electricity rate, dates.  All immutable data that can be kept in a ledger. 

For the past 15 years or so the standard process for transaction due diligence is to upload information and documentation into cloud based digital war rooms.  These secure, online document management systems have been beneficial to buyers and sellers and especially lawyers and financial analysts.  Reduced travel and less time spent in windowless rooms reviewing and copying documents by the thousands are just two of the many benefits.

The information that is uploaded is driven to satisfy the seller’s requirement of disclosure but not optimized for the buyers post deal operations.  If the buyer leaves the information in the native structure, there will always be user frustration when searching.  Multiply one dis-organized silo by many transactions and now you have a whole lot of user frustration.  Here are some suggestions for tackling the transition so that operations is able to perform at peak levels.

Based on my observation the world consists of two types of people, purge people and non-purge people.  We all know which category we fall into, but as a reminder:  Purge people frequently empty out desk drawers, closets and the garage of useless documents, old clothes and stuff. Non-Purge people don’t.  And yet, we all co-exist.

There is a business practice that you may be familiar with called Legal Hold.  If a company is aware of or suspects litigation, that company should place all records and information related to the litigation on legal hold – don’t let the purge people get to it.  Of course, nobody is happy when there is litigation, but how is it possible to lock down (or not over accumulate [non-purge people]) information in this day and age?

The security of the information that our clients have entrusted us to host in our document management system is paramount.  Clients demand that their information remain private and confidential and we absolutely understand and abide by that.  The SEC, auditors and sound business practices demand it too.

Our clients concern certainly includes stopping bad actors, but it also includes the people that they set up as valid users – they should only see and share what they are allowed to see and share.  However, as far as sharing goes, some flexibility is needed so that users can be productive.  Here are some thoughts on why wiggle room is needed and how sharing information can be protected.

One of the core principles that Millennia Group advocates and adheres to is that the official copy of a digital document should be a singular unit.  What this means is that the digital version, a PDF in most cases, should contain only one document.  What our users encounter, and sometimes want, is a different story.

A user may receive a single PDF from an external party that contains many documents.  The other situation is where the user receives multiple PDFs that together comprise a single document.  In one case the file needs to be split and in the other case, the files need to be merged.  Here are some examples of why this principle of a singular unit makes sense when your PDFs are dazed and confused.    

The good thing about this blog is that I don’t really need to have answers.  That is especially good since I am re-visiting the discussion about working documents versus final documents.  It comes up in most every discussion about effective document management – how do I have one system that provides the functionality that I need for both working documents and final documents.

Recall from our earlier post about how creators of working documents tend to like fast and simple – a system where the user can create any collection of folders and subfolders to suit their needs and drag and drop files at will.  A user of final documents requires structure and certainty because having quick access to the right documents gets the job done.  However, at some point the documents in that web of active folders become the source of final documents.  So, is the method of transition from one status to the other the answer, are document police the answer or should there just be two systems?

I participated in a webinar recently sponsored by Realcomm, an organization devoted to the advancement of technology for the commercial real estate industry.  It was about the future and hype verses reality.  My contribution was squarely on the reality side as I described how our real estate clients gain efficiency by using workflow to automate document oriented business processes. 

You might think, “do we still have documents?”  The answer in my world and the foreseeable world of our Fortune 5000 clients is, Yes.  Documents may not be in paper form any longer, but documents of some type (spreadsheet, PDF contract, etc.), are the support for data and todays decisions.  But to see the future, the next big thing, you need to believe in the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR).

Recently we helped a client convert a small amount of paper documents related to a one time transaction into PDFs.  The PDFs would simply be in a folder and viewed or emailed as needed.  To keep it simple the files could be named in a structured format, ie. “ABCCo-Contract-060116-Brazil-Engine-D-JF.pdf”.  Most of that short hand is clear except the "D" is for diesel engines and that the Sales Rep was John Franklin?  Seemed simple enough and so we proceeded based on the clients requirements. 

In this case, the volume of documents was small, but the documents had a significant amount of descriptive information that could be captured. Each piece of information could be captured in a document management system database and ready for user searches. For example, find all contracts for Brazil or all diesel engine contracts.  So here is the issue – do you capture all of the rich information when converting the documents or do you keep it simple because sometimes simple is better?

Records retention and records management are very important principles in dealing with corporate information.  Records management being the overall guide book for employees on to how to store and classify information.  It is also about proper management of that information including legal holds (don’t destroy if litigation is in process), access to information and records retention.

Records retention is basically an information destruction plan based on business or legal requirements.  A business doesn’t necessarily want the burden of securing confidential, but outdated information for ever – ie. former patient records.  Creating a records management policy and records retention schedule requires a lot of effort and yet the actual deletion of records is a very difficult step to take. Here are some thoughts on how to feel better about pulling the trigger.