Impact of the Web

Allison Consultancy White Paper

The Impact of Web Technology on EDM

Electronic Document Management (EDM) technology is now mature and is recognised as a vital tool for organisations in the management of ever-increasing volumes of documentation. It has proven it is an aid to efficiency, cost effectiveness, regulatory compliance and litigation support. With the advent of Workflow, which enables the in-house system administrator to modify the structure with ease, it is increasingly being used to manage the processes within organisations as well as the creation and retrieval of documents and the capture of information originating externally.

The parallel development of the technologies that make the World Wide Web possible and widely accepted has impinged on the current generation of EDM systems with noticeable benefit. Suppliers are rapidly developing systems with Web capabilities, and these should now be seen as an essential when considering the purchase of such a system, irrespective of current intent to view via a browser interface.

A natural corollary of the move to EDM with Web capability is the widening of the view. A technology which originally made its impact as a tool to enable dispersed individual members of groups to collaborate more effectively is now able to look to a future where collaboration, communication and information across the entire organisation, accessing the corporate knowledge base, is becoming a reality. Thus increasingly, suppliers are dubbing their products ‘enterprise-wide’ solutions.

Application of EDM Features

EDM systems originally developed to meet a business need, and thus different suppliers have traditionally had different strengths and have tended to specialise in defined areas of the market place. Over time it has become possible to categorise the application areas to make vendor selection simpler. We identified five office types in 1993 (Allison & Mital, ‘Document Imaging in the Process Industries’, CMI) as General Office, Library, Back Office, Drawing Office and Publisher.

With the growing sophistication of systems and the advent of different ‘flavours’ of Workflow, these categories of application have evolved. They are now presented in association with iTx Marketing Services Ltd. as differentiators in the Catalogue presented to delegates attending the Document Management Roadshows as General Administration, Archiving, Case Processing, Document Publishing, Project Management, Reference Services and Transaction Processing.

These distinctions are now becoming less evident as suppliers introduce Web and messaging capabilities and writers of operating systems begin, increasingly, to incorporate imaging and document management functionality in their products.

Changing Cultures

As the transition to being able to scan and view documents electronically (DIP) produced a culture change, so the new age is producing a further change. There is a growing acceptance that if the information can be viewed, it should be able to be re-used. This means that it is no longer sufficient to be able to capture, retrieve and view documents. There is an implied need to be able to recombine the contents in different contexts.

This raises issues about legal admissibility, and as it is now widely accepted that it is possible to manipulate previously published information, those applications that rely absolutely on the integrity of the original data must comply with standards, such as BSI PD0008, which explicitly prevent this manipulation. This has been the subject of much debate and is not dealt with here.

The ability to change and recombine existing information has enabled users to think differently about the usefulness of their organisation’s corporate information store. Static filing in cabinets either required multiple filing or limited simple searches to the original filing context. EDM has made searching across departments, in different contexts – possibly unforeseen at the time of original filing – rapid, commonplace and a powerful tool for leveraging the information within the organisation.

The development of Web technologies has enabled users to think beyond the boundaries of the local information repository. Traditional filing methods and early DIP systems allowed a user only to search for what they knew should be there in the same structured way as it had been stored.

Newer systems with powerful searching tools enable users to conduct a wide-ranging search in hope rather than expectation and to find information they had no way of knowing was there and would not have found in any other way. Through the Internet it is possible to search unimaginable resources for information on any topic. Through Intranet technology it is possible to publish the organisation’s corporate store of knowledge securely to everyone within it, however widely dispersed they may be geographically. Extranet technology has enabled this concept of secure publication and distribution to be expanded to include collaborative partners, suppliers and customers (‘trading partners’).

Still newer possibilities are presented by ‘push’ technologies, which enable a user to register an interest profile and be alerted when anything is added to the information repository that matches this profile. As technology progresses, so the corporate memory stored and managed by the EDM system becomes the source of project histories and the results of research and experience. The organisation becomes less dependent on individual memory and anecdotal evidence.

The significant fact about Web enabling EDM is that at the same time, it enables the thinking of the users to be less constrained by physical boundaries and the culture to change to one where the information is important and its location is not. While making corporate knowledge widely accessible, it has also made the owners and keepers of that knowledge and information more accountable.

As the electronic capabilities of systems become so much more versatile, it is important to ensure that the people working with them do not get left behind. There can be a perception that information sharing is an excellent thing as long as it implies having access to someone else’s information rather than sharing one’s own. The widening of horizons through awareness training and incentives, rather than a blame culture where this capability is used to check up and scrutinise is essential.

E-mail made the proliferation of communication around organisations simple. It has been very widely accepted and used. The advent of the Web has made it equally simple from the user’s viewpoint to communicate with others in different locations and different organisations. Standards have been established which make communication possible between different systems. Entire files can easily be sent externally across the Web via e-mail. Recent developments in Workflow technology include the ability to include steps that utilise communication across the Web.

A lesson to be learned from the commonplace use of e-mail is that people habitually create personal storage areas if permitted to do so. When they leave an organisation or change name, these areas are routinely wiped in most organisations and the information in them is lost. It is vital to create a culture and practice where storing in the shared domain is the norm for anything of significance.

This in itself is simply a manifestation of the need to introduce standards and guidelines for good practice at the beginning of an implementation rather than wait until it is in chaos from unregulated use.

Potential EDM system users can be expected to have the concept of electronic communication which spans physical boundaries, so the move to the use of Web-enabled EDM and Workflow will be an expansion of this culture rather than something totally new. For those with some experience of using the Internet or e-mail, it is seen as a tool rather than an end in itself, which is how it needs to be to enable maximum benefit to be gained at corporate level.

EDM in Practice

Document management systems provide functionality for storing, locating, and retrieving information throughout the document’s life cycle from creation to archiving and ultimate destruction. They provide a repository and the means to search for and find documents stored in it.

Typically, a user creates a document using a standard software package such as Word, Excel etc. and selects ‘Save As’. The standard menu is replaced by one generated by the EDM system, often using the ODMA standard. The user enters information about the document (metadata), e.g. title, subject, etc. Author, date created, version number, and the document’s physical location is automatically entered by the EDM system. This metadata is usually stored in a database. Documents may be added to the system in other ways, typically through optical character recognition (OCR) performed on scanned documents. This is standard in most EDM systems. Full text retrieval is commonly provided as one of the searching tools. The content of text documents is automatically indexed, and the resulting index file is stored in an appropriate database. It is also often possible to make use of pre-built toolkits to allow the user’s chosen software packages to be integrated into their EDM system.

System suppliers have realised the potential of Web technology and powerful searching tools to enable storing and maintaining business-critical information in repositories that span the organisation. The technology now exists to manage security both in respect of users’ access permissions and the separation of information on Intranets from the public domain. Templates can be provided to all users to maintain corporate identity and de-skill some processes.

DIP did not concern itself with the content of the documents displayed. EDM made possible the manipulation of text documents initially. Increasingly systems can manage other data types, including fax, photographs, spreadsheets, sound, video, CAD drawings etc. and can provide a full audit trail of actions and accesses. As a result, in many contexts EDM has replaced DIP.

The ability to view all these elements via the same Web browser interface makes training the user much simpler. Transmission of the information via Web technology expands the previously conceived boundaries of groupware still further.

The Emergence of Web Based Systems

Traditional EDM systems have used a client/server approach. The central server delivers information at the request of software running on the users’ PCs (‘clients’). The size of the software that needs to be installed on each PC has led to the term ‘fat client’.

Modern EDM systems make use of intranet/internet technology, which shifts the majority of the computing power to the server, thus allowing the use of standard ‘browsers’ on the users’ PCs. This simpler approach on the clients’ PCs is called ‘thin client’. It has the advantage of greatly reducing the need to set up and support large number of users’ PCs with complex software, as in fat client. The ‘three-tier architecture’ used by more modern systems also improves the resilience of systems by removing the need for permanent network connections.

Some systems, such as OpenText are based purely on the thin client model. Others offer both fat and thin client models. This latter leads to more complex systems, but the migration path is smoother.

The strength of vendors’ thin client offerings differs widely. Some only offer simple retrieval tools. Retrieved documents are downloaded to the client’s PC where they are viewed using PC software. The more sophisticated systems allow all functions, including version control and workflow to be performed using a browser. Examples of these latter systems are PC-DOCS, i-Manage and new versions of the Documentum and Altris systems.

Another differentiator amongst systems is whether they treat documents as simple objects or whether they allow compound and/or virtual documents. Compound documents allow separate management of sections of a document. Each section may be completely separate in terms of software used to handle it (e.g. Word, Excel, Acrobat etc) and in terms of version control and updating.

Virtual documents are browser pages (in HTML) that are built ‘on the fly’ from database records or from documents in other formats (e.g. Word etc.).

About Allison Consultancy

Allison Consultancy is an independent organisation, which specialises in all aspects of EDM strategy, implementation and training and maintains links with all the suppliers in the EDM market. Through a network of experienced associates, we offer clients the skills of a consultant familiar with implementing EDM in similar situations to their own. We are pleased to work with clients at all stages from an initial feasibility study through building the business case, needs analysis and definition, procurement and implementation support and post project review.

Please call Dik or Joy Allison for further information: Tel 01777 871506 or e-mail info@allicon.com.