Millennia Group Blog

Having clean data is important for running any business.  Clean data being defined as accurate, suitable for its use, organized and complete.  Clean data means revenue is maximized, the IRS stays at bay and your strategy sessions are effective.  However, what once seemed clean can end up looking very dirty when that data is exposed through a different lens. 

What worked as good data in the old accounting system may fall short in a new system.  A well-organized network drive full of supporting files can look like a spaghetti bowl when trying to migrate the files into a document management system.  No big deal if the data isn’t perfectly clean, it’s worked so far.  That may be true, but what are you missing out on?

Companies, large and small, have procedures or rules that employees are supposed to follow to complete certain tasks.  Each company determines the most efficient methods or methods that meet regulatory or compliance requirements.  These rules can be written in a manual, part of a checklist or built into software applications.

Rules incorporated into the code of software applications are relatively easy to build and highly effective.  One of the most difficult procedures to successfully implement, however, is document archiving.  When is a document the final final version and where should it be archived?  Making this decision and process easy should be every companies goal, but where to begin?

Do you ever marvel at the number of choices available in the bottled water aisle at any grocery store or online market? There are dozens of options to choose from.  How about barbeque sauces, bourbon, pizza or crackers?  There are far too many choices and it gets frustrating and time consuming to make any kind of decision.

This has some similarities to the frustration many people experience when they are searching for a file at work.  They may find a copy of the file duplicated in multiple places.  Determining which copy is the final version is both time consuming and frustrating.  The process of de-duplicating is not an easy task, but reducing our choices has obvious benefits and it can be done.

How will artificial intelligence (“AI”) impact our world?  There are knowledgeable people talking up the potential positive uses of AI and there are knowledgeable people voicing concern over the potential problems.  On the positive side are articles generally oriented towards business efficiency gains, of which IBM’s Watson is a widely seen example. 

Many companies are looking for a better way to help manage the explosive growth files and documents and they are hoping that AI and Watson can benefit them.  The rate of growth is exponential and that is creating increased user search times and poor results accuracy - inefficient.  AI might help users find the information that they are looking for, but Watson is going to have to get to know each user and know each user very well first.

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.

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?

A technology issue that companies deal with on a regular basis is using one application for managing active or working documents and a separate application for the archived or final documents. Active being defined as documents in the creation or working stage and final being final or executed.

This situation exists because of how and why these documents are created, accessed and shared. Certain employees are document Creators and others are document Users and their needs are very different. The Holy Grail is one application to manage both. The reality is you need two applications. Let us explain why that is not a bad thing.

Documents used to be shared by photocopying and FedEx. That progressed to PDF and email, which has been replaced by free file sharing websites. There are also highly secure deal sites available for Wall Street transactions. The reality is that all of these methods are in use because each one meets somebody's unique need for security, simplicity or both.

In today's world of massive amounts of information being available and demanded, many times the need is to share hundreds or thousands of documents. To share that quantity of documents is not practical with email or FedEx. Some type of organized, online access is required. But how do you make it both simple and secure?

Put another way - Quelle 弱形 normalization and Поче is it महत्वपूर्ण?  Think for a minute about trying to read your email but every email is in a different language?  What happens if you don't know the language or the coworker you forwarded it to doesn't know that language?  Then it becomes a real problem and very inefficient.  If you could always funnel those emails through a translator before they hit your inbox, the problem disappears. 

There seems to be a growing number of transactions happening in the business world. Heinz to buy Kraft, Sears to spin off properties to a REIT, Walgreens merges with Boots Alliance. These transactions all have consultants, investment bankers, appraisers, lawyers and many other people working to get the transaction completed. Two additional groups involved in these transactions are also very important, the internal IT department and their vendors.

There was a time not too long ago when the only electronic information transferred was the accounting system. That was challenging enough what with potentially different systems, formats or chart of accounts. Now include the ERP, CRM, ECM, DM and of course the file servers or cloud storage. Yes, the IT department is very busy when transactions occur and that in turn means their vendors are busy too.