System Integration

I have had a number of questions about how the e-Business software we have been discussing can be integrated in with the existing line of business and legacy applications you are already running.
This is something that is of the utmost importance when implementing e-business solutions; however it is difficult for me to give you generic benefits and guidance without knowing what other applications you are running, if you drop me a line with any specific configurations questions I will attempt to find an answer.
In one of the seminar mail we discussed how we can use electronic forms as an interface to SAP applications, because SAP is quite expensive and difficult to use without training it is not advisable for all users to input data directly.  What we showed was an e-form used by the user, the data entered into the form would then directly update SAP.
This same principle can be used for other back office applications.
It has also been found that by using e-forms in this way can actually increase the life of these back office applications.  With many of them it can be difficult to change the user interface, especially access to the internet.  Because we are now using e-forms as the user interface the application becomes a data repository, which is what it is good at.
I find it useful to think of the e-business software as an integration tool.  It then becomes very powerful indeed.  Imagine the e-form picking up data and information from one of your core applications, moving this data around your organisation and then transferring this data, with all the relevant approvals and security, to another application.  These two applications can be of very different architectures and technologies.

How Workflow Software can be used to integrate back office system

This diagram represents a typical sales cycle.
1.    The process begins with an enquiry from the web site which could be built using .net.

2.    The next step is to update the product database which is on an IBM system.
3.    At any point the transaction can be viewed by a user who is sent an e-form which contains information from both the .net and IBM systems to a user.
4.    After being viewed the process has to wait for an event from another system, maybe a Customer Relationship Management System.  This event could be additional data that is required from an external source, credit check or payment confirmation for example.
5.    The process can then be sent trough an approval loop where users, regardless of location can view the transaction from a standard web browser.
6.    The process can also be integrated with hardware items, credit card readers, scanners, security devices etc.
7.    At the end of the process an e-mail is automatically sent to the customer to confirm the transaction is complete.
I hope this gives you an idea of what is possible when we integrate the e-business solution with other systems. 

Change Management.

One of the questions that came from an attendees of this seminar recently was “One of our Directors does not want to move to e-business as he prefers to physically sign each piece of paper”.
This particular question may be of interest to you as it introduces a topic that that will certainly affect you when you decide to implement any new concept to your company including e-business and that is change management
What is really behind this question is that the director mentioned does not want to change the way he works.  I am positive you will experience similar reluctance from your staff when you come to implement e-business.
It has been defined that people experience different feelings as they go through the process of change, these are;
1.    Denial
2.    Anger
3.    Sadness
4.    Fear
5.    Trading
6.    Readjustment
7.    Acceptance
8.    Commitment

These different phases were first developed when dealing with grief counselling.  I am not saying that implementing an e-business is as traumatic as loosing a loved one so these feelings will not be as strong but now that you know about them you will see your staff go through each phase.  How you deal with this will depend upon each situation, the people involved and your management style.
Because these symptoms can be quite subtle you can expect these types of statement at each phase.
1.    “Our company cannot benefit from e-business” (Denial)
2.    “The last time we tried this type of thing it was a disaster.” (Anger)
3.    “I am too old to learn new systems” (Sadness)
4.    “Will this result in me losing my job?” (Fear)
Then they will start to be more positive and we start seeing these types of statement
5.    “If we use the electronic forms can I have a new PC?” (Trading)
6.    “e-business will resulting my expenses being paid faster” (Readjustment)
7.    “I know of other lines of business that can be automated” (Acceptance)
8.    “e-Business has improved my working life” (Commitment)
The faster you can move your staff through these phases the greater the commitment at the end.
But back to our problem director who we discovered he was in the Fear phase.  What we discovered was that he was suffering from “Change Fatigue”. He had to cope with a lot of change in his personal and business life recently and he did not want any more.  What we did was look at these areas of change with the objective of presenting signing and approving documents as part of an existing changing process, this made it more acceptable than being “something else new”. The obvious area was mobile phones.  Here constant change is an acceptable part of owning a mobile phone, new features and services and with regular replacement handsets are the norm.  It was presented to him that he uses electronic forms on his mobile phone, to help move to the “Trading” phase he was offered a new handset with a larger display to make using e-forms easier.

What is a Process?

Any workflow process is composed of many tasks, the flexibility of the management of these tasks can seriously effect the benefit of the business Process Management solution.
A process is an activity or series of activities that converts an input to an output by doing work.

A Business Process

Hierarchy of Process levels:
Processes can be described at different levels. A typical four level hierarchy is:
1) High Level: A top level description of a major business activity, e.g. “New product development”.

The High Level Business Process

2) Key Process: A key process is an expansion or a “break-out” of one of the process steps described at high level. A key process should still be described in relatively general terms.
For example, the key process of “Launch new Product” could be:

The Key Process within the Business Process

3) Activity: This is the next expansion of each step in the key processes. For example, the activity of “Prepare Sales Literature” could be:

The Activity Within the Business Process

4) Task: A task level process relates to each step in the activity level process. For example, the tasks involved in “Design Brochure” could be:

The Task within the Business Process

10 point plan

We have covered a lot of information over the last few weeks and I would like to take this opportunity to summarise some of the main points discussed.  For this I have drawn up the 10 point plan to successful e-business.
1.    Start at the beginning of the process.  Despite the temptations, do not begin by looking at the paper already archived. Find the beginning of the process, this could be inside or outside of your organisation.
2.    Find the source of the information and particularly the paper.  Although you may receive paper documents from many different places, it is guaranteed that this paper was once in electronic form, this includes reports, documents and even reference material such as magazines and newspapers.  Find the electronic copy and bring it into your business in its original electronic format.
3.    Electronic forms (e-forms) will be THE most useful tool for you to deliver e-business.  Remember electronic forms can be delivered through many devices, internet, users desktop, mobile phones.  E-Forms can be very powerful and contain many rules as well as information from many sources, making them replace every thing from the local Holiday Request Form to a complex case folder.
4.    Remember that e-forms will have to be used by ALL members of staff, from the Chief Executive to the labours.  The system implemented will have to be flexible and cost effective.

5.    Select the security strategy that will give you the required protection without interfering with the operations and working practices.
6.    Much of the information will have a defined life cycle and will have to be available for many years.  Knowing the rules relating to each document type will ensure that information that your staff is using is always using the correct versions.
7.    Your staff will have very different working patterns, some people will use a computer in order to carry out their duties other peoples jobs will be to use the computer.  When looking at Workflow solutions there is enough emphasis placed on the “work” part and not just the “flow” part.
8.    Much of the work in an office is repetitive, look at automating these tasks, leaving your staff free to use the skills they are paid for.  Provide your users with “in-context” help and instructions.
9.    Make all the information needed by your staff to do their job easy to find.  Make everything accessible from a single transaction or search.
10.    When removing the old and existing paper from your organisation consider alternatives to batch scanning.  Often “scanning on demand” can be much more beneficial.

Turning Paper into Electronic Documents

I would like to offer three different strategies for managing the process of scanning the existing documents, these are:
Back File Scanning
A Hybrid System, part electronic part paper
Scanning on demand
Back File Scanning
The first of these options is often used as the first step in a strategy to remove paper from the office.  I have said this before and I will repeat it again, it is unlikely that you will get any benefit from this until you have stopped the flow of paper into your organisation.  Even after you have adopted all the ideas we have discussed in the previous sections it is dubious that you will still get any benefit.  If I explain the process you will see where the problems lie.  The first step is to obtain scanners large enough to accommodate the volumes needed, remember that while a file is being scanned it is out of use to your business, how long can this be before there is an impact?  The cost of scanners increases exponentially as they grow in size, there are some very low cost personal use scanners around now and departmental scanners are reasonably priced, but the large scanners with the high volume feeders are very expensive.  Some of this cost can be reduced by using a bureau service however using a bureau will only make some of the other disadvantages worse. Using a bureau system often means the documents have to leave your office, increasing the amount of time they are unavailable as well as increasing the risk of a breach of security, lost file etc.
To see if back file conversion is suitable for your archives you will need to understand the process.  First the folders are opened, all clips and staples removed and the documents fed into the scanner.  This job is normally performed by semiskilled labour, therefore they will not be able to understand the importance and significance of each piece of paper, so everything will be pushed through the scanner, this will include duplicates, misfiled papers and irrelevant papers.  In order to make this process beneficial a senior employee of your organisation must over see this operation and filter out and sort each sheet, do you think this would be possible in your company? If not all that will result is that the mess that was contained in each of the files will now become an electronic mess.  The original objective of making paper information easy to find has not been achieved as sifting through digital images can be harder than looking through a pile of papers.
Often the only time bulk scanning can be beneficial is when all the papers are of the same type, census forms for example.  If you look at your customer files and find that all your contracts are in one file and correspondents in another then you are OK, if you keep a folder for each customer that contains an assortment of contracts letters etc. the back file scanning option is most likely not for you.

Hybrid System

It is possible and quite common for a company to run a hybrid system, that is have a combination of electronic and paper documents.  Common policy is that all documents before the cut off date are retained on paper and all documents created after this date is electronic.  This is a very cost effective solution for situations where a case has a definite close time.  This option can be difficult for the users if they are working on a case that has both paper and electronic.

Scan on Demand

In the majority of cases this option will deliver the best return on investment and the cost of the hardware will be lower, it also has the benefit that the documents will be sorted and cases cleaned up over time.  The process is simple and probably similar to those you already have in place.  It brings together some of the principles we have already discussed.
It has to be assumed that you have already implemented at least some of the concepts already covered in this guide and you now have the majority of new information in electronic form.  Because most document management systems can manage both electronic and paper based documents the user would search for a document and then attempt to check it out to work on it.  If the document already exists in electronic form then the check out process will continue as described as in the previous sections of this guide.  However if the document is still stored on paper the user will be presented with a “Document Request Form” (an e-form of course), the form will ask them for the specifics of the information needed and urgency etc.  This form will then be sent to the archive or registry staff and appear in their electronic Inbox.  The Archivist will take the document from the archive, scan it into the Document Management system and return a message to the originator who can then carry on working on the case.  Now that the document is in electronic form any subsequent retrievals will call up the electronic document.
As you can see, over time all the active documents will be converted leaving all dead and unwanted files behind.

Reducing the cost of scanning

The costs associated with document scanning are generally found in two areas, the first is the hardware, ie scanners, PC’s network etc.  this cost will be very specific to your own project. The remaining cost is in the amount of man hours required to complete the project.
There are four phases to the project;

Document Preparation
Document Scanning
Document Indexing
Document Re-Filing/destruction
For this the calculation of the cost is fairly easy.  It is usual to use agency or temporary staff, first find their hourly rate,  then you need to find the time it takes for each task.
For document preparation you should have access to example folders, if your staff cost you £10 per hour and they can prepare a file for scanning in 10 mins, then the cost to you is £1 per file. Then for 180,000 files the cost to you will be £180,000.
The same calculation can then be made for scanning, (here the time taken will depend upon scanner speed.) and Indexing ( here the time will mainly be the speed the system can display the image and indexing window.)
Here a few ideas on how you can reduce your costs;
Add indexing information at the document preparation time.  Most scanning software can detect a barcode, if you pre-prepare stickers containing the company name and registration number, these can be added a blank page at the front of the pile of papers that make up that company file.
Use an existing system.  Can you integrate to an existing system after the scanning, if you did it before you can use the information to reduce the amount of manual indexing.  For example if the existing system contains the customer address then you can pull this information automatically into your imaging system.
When digitising A3 paper it is probable that a traditional Document Scanner will be very inefficient.  A Document Scanner is only effective when working with high volumes of A4 paper.  For mixed paper types a Horizontally mounted Digital Camera will deliver an effective and low cost Document Capture Device. The camera will be connected to a Networked PC that has access to the Document Management System.  To capture a document the operator will spread the document between guide lines on the table below the camera.  A foot switch will operate the camera, the quality of the image can be checked on the PC.

Extracting Information from Paper

Although we have been able to reduce the amount of paper and the burden of scanning, there will still be instances where paper is still best.  When a piece of paper is scanned the contents of the document cannot be read by the system, as far as the document management systems is concerned the scanned version of a contract is the same as a scanned version of a piece of customer correspondence. So when we scan a document we also need to tell the Document Management System some information so that it can be retrieved.  This is known as indexing, the usual method is for a computer user to be presented with an image of the paper on their screen, they then read the text and key in the indexing information into an electronic form, Document type = “invoice” Customer name = “Smith” etc.
To automate this process these are a few technologies available and I want to just summaries some of these and discuss if they are relevant.

Bar Coding

We have all seen barcodes in the supermarket and know that this is a very cheap and accurate way for a computer system to recognise information.  If there are documents that you send out from your company, then make sure they have a barcode on them, then when returned the scanner can easily read the information and know where to store this document.  Take your customer contract as an example, remember we discussed how the e-form could be printed for signature, if the e-form contains a barcode the form can be posted out, then when it returns matched up with the original e-form.

Optical Character Recognition.

This is the mechanism for reading type written text from documents.  Nowadays because we no longer use typewriters but word processors so instead of using OCR you should be looking at capturing the documents in its original format as we discussed at the beginning of the guide.

Intelligent Character Recognition

This term ICR has changed it’s meaning over time but it is now generally used to describe the recognition of hand writing.  This is a very expensive and inaccurate technology and cannot be justified in the majority of applications.  ICR cannot be used for general hand written letters but for text that has been written inside pre-printed boxes, although suppliers of this software may claim “up to 90% accuracy” this is often per character, so if are reading a name with 10 letters, the chances are one will be wrong.  It also does not take into account human nature, let me give you an example.  If I send out a form and say, “Fill out this form for the chance to win a new Mercedes car, but if you write outside the boxes your entry will become invalid”.  You will see some very neat handwriting, however lets look at another extreme. “Fill out this form so that I can collect your taxes, if you write outside the boxes it will make it harder for me to collect this money” then compare the neatness.  I think you get the message.
If your office is in Central London or Manhattan where staff and office costs are extreme you may be able to justify this technology, if not and particularly where there is high unemployment then it is probably best to use manual indexing.

Electronic Forms and Documents

Your users will want to be able to easily and quickly find the relevant information for their work and there a several ways they will do this. Many method are similar to those they would deploy if they were still working with paper.  Often your staff will be working on a project and will want to open an existing document; we will call this document retrieval.   Often your staff will work as a team on a project and will work on a single or multiple documents collaboratively. And the third way is that they are part of a process within your organisation and will have documents sent to them.  We will address these three methods separately.

Document Retrieval

The first document management systems where introduced back in the ‘80s and they were developed primarily for the storage of scanned paper, they went under such names as Document Image Processing and Electronic Document Management.  In those days special technology had to be built to handle files that were considered very large.  Technology has  moved on very quickly and what was considered large then is now considered quite small.  A rough calculation was that a single page scanned would take up about 50k bytes of storage.  Today that is nothing, only slightly larger than this e-mail you are reading and about an eighth of the size of a single page of a typical PowerPoint presentation.  So if you see a document management system whose primary purpose is to store scanned images, avoid it.  It is probably 20 years old and way passed its sell by date.  Another feature of these old systems was to have a filing system based on the way paper was stored, i.e. Cabinet, Drawer, Folder.  This is because these systems were developed before Microsoft released Windows 95.  With Windows 95 came Explorer.  The explorer filing system was more flexible in that it gave you infinite levels of folders, and like a lot of Microsoft releases quickly became the industry standard.  So, as you are transitioning your users from paper to electronic it may appear to make sense to use a filing system they are used to (Cabinet, Drawer, Folder).  But all you are doing is making it harder for users who are already used to Windows and harder for your users to use other more modern systems.  So for simple retrieval of electronic documents look for a system that has an Explorer like filing system (nested folders that can have any name) and a system that was designed from inception to manage all document types.

Searching

We are all human and forget where we put things, we need various ways to find what we are looking for.    For the first of these I want you to think about three of the features we have discussed previously.
The system should know your role and the department you work in.
All actions are recorded and logged by the system
In the life cycle of a document there are periods of activity and sharing.
Imagine a typical scenario in your office, you are working on a project that requires a report to be completed and so you have a word document that needs to be worked on.  You have completed your section, your assistant has added their part and it is currently with your technical expert to add their section.  Mid way through you have to leave the office for a series of meetings.  You return to the project two days later and cannot remember where it is.  Because of the features above it is now possible to have a list that shows all the documents that have been worked on by you and your department over the last week or month and have them prioritised by the level of activity (called the click count).  It is also possible to set up “Favourites”, the documents you use often and be able to subscribe to documents where you are informed when there is any activity on a particular document.
It is also possible to perform a general search for information, there are two sorts, the first is the fastest and this is to search within the Meta Data.  The Meta Data is information that is added to a document by the system or user and includes information such as key words, expiry date, owner etc.  So it is easy to ask the system, “find me all the customer contracts that expire this year” or “find me all the documents relating to customer Acme Co.”
The second sort of searching is called “content search” (used to be called “words in text” in the old days).  This is a technology that has gone through a revolution over the last few years, due mainly to Google.  Older system will have a proprietary search engine that only will search the document management system.  Today you should be looking to employ an enterprise search engine that will search your managed documents as well as any other information you have in your organisation.

Workflow

The term workflow is one of the most abused terms in the industry, with products that will simply move a document from one person to another being called workflow.  These products cover the “flow” part of the title but do not address the “work” part.  This is why many suppliers with true workflow are now tending to use the term Business Process Management (BPM).
Most BPM products only address one type of working environment, most will fall into one of the following categories;
Production Workflow, the high volume, high transaction rate products.
Administrative Workflow, used for office and low volume processes, expense claims, holiday requests etc.
Collaborative and Ad-hoc Workflow, the products that will a varied set of business rules often changed by the end user.
Case Working, when the actual contents of the item being managed by the workflow (Work Item) are varied and often have different rules applied to different sections, (a bit like that manila folder you have to manage your customer records.)
What this means is that if you want to implement workflow across your entire enterprise you would have to use several very different products.
But now FINALLY there are SINGLE products available that can be configured for ALL these types of work.
What I want to discuss next is how these different categories relate to the way you staff currently work with paper and how they will work in your new less paper office.
Most systems have an electronic Inbox to replicate the paper in tray they are currently using.  The Inbox will list all the work they need to perform and the user will easily be able to see what work is outstanding, the priority and any work that is overdue.  As many people work in a team, a piece of work may appear in all the inbox’s of staff with the same Role.  Then when one of the users picks up one of these items it will be removed from the inbox of all other users. For more information see the section on Information Portal
The document in their inbox will normally be attached an electronic form, the form will contain the information to help the employee work on the document, it will also provide the “positive action” required for authorisation as we discussed in the security section.  This action would be tick a box marked “approved” or “rejected.  Most of the time the employee will complete their work and send the document and form off to the next step in the process.  However life is rarely that simple, and often they may need help completing the task or to ask advice from another member of staff.    If the work is urgent the first step may me to discover who is available today.  So the user would look at all the users who are online, see if their department and role meets the criteria of the question.  The sender can attach notes and additional documents if necessary.  Because you do not want to have that difficult case being bounced around the office, the number of times the work can be referred is limited.