Millennia Group Blog

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.

The existence of duplicate documents and files is commonplace in companies of all sizes.  There is the email with a document attachment that was sent to five people, each of whom downloaded the file.  There is a file on someone’s desktop that they copied from the network.  There is a copy in the cloud.  You get the picture and you probably live this picture daily.

What can prevent this from happening?  Does it really even matter?  Companies seem to be surviving just fine, so what would be the cost benefit for an actual solution?  Unless your company is a company of one, you will likely not find a perfect solution, but a combination of tactics will lower the frustration.  And yes, it does matter and it will be worth it.

These words, Better, Faster, Cheaper, are heard often during many corporate sales efforts – “our product will help you do that Better, Faster and Cheaper.”  Everyone especially likes to purchase software that makes a process, Better, Faster and Cheaper.  The key to achieving that promised success is know what the process is – really know and understand it.

There are plenty of examples where very complex software solutions were created that replicated an existing paper or manual process.  The problem was that the process wasn’t fully understood and not very efficient in the first place so you have an application that may not be Faster, Better or Cheaper.  You need to change the way you think when designing a workflow.

The past five or so years have been filled with plenty of talk about and some success in the area of collaboration.  Collaboration being defined as multiple people fully engaged and involved in a single work effort.  The end goal of any collaboration is that the combined effort produces superior results, ie. a better decision, a better product, a better presentation.

Much of the success in the field of collaboration has come in the area of communication, such as messaging applications like Slack or AIM.  These applications improve the communication and are instant and flexible including group chats.  Other areas of collaboration, like co-creating documents, such as a live spreadsheet or text document, have not been adopted as quickly.  But this form of collaboration has historically been linear, passing from person to person.  So can the non-linear form of collaboration (live group editing) be a better approach for working with documents?