Managing Content for Business Success

In 2011, I wrote an article entitled, "Effective Management of Enterprise Content." In the article, I stated: "Most content management vendors are chosen for their software's ability to solve the toughest business challenges, and not because the technology can do everything well." I emphasized the need for organizations to identify current and future content management requirements, and then select the best mission- or business-specific content management solution(s) to quickly address and resolve them. As a recap, the majority of business-specific content management solutions fall under one of these categories:

1.  Infrastructure content management—the management, storage and archiving of all enterprise documents, email, corporate records, etc., to ensure corporate and regulatory compliance—a repository of record;

2.  Transaction-based content management—the management of structured content produced by applications, such as bank transactions;

3.  Business content management—the management of business content and workflows to instantly deliver information to employees who need to make operational or strategic decisions;

4.  Web content management—the management of content associated with websites and the websites themselves; and

5.  Social/online channel content management—the management of instant communications such as text messages (Web or phone), RSS feeds, blog postings, chat rooms and content posted to social networks.

What is a "business-specific content management solution," and how can one help you achieve business success? To answer this question, let's review two common business-specific content management challenges applicable to many organizations.

Accounts Payable Automation

All organizations receive and pay invoices for delivered products and services rendered. The type and size of organizations typically dictates the number of invoices processed on a daily basis. Organizations with 500 or more employees have accounts payable (AP) departments that need to reduce invoice processing costs, decrease invoice cycle times, increase payment status visibility and improve cash-flow management without increasing head count. The challenge is that many AP departments process paper and scanned invoices manually—hand-keying the data from the paper or image into the AP system(s) and verifying them against purchase orders (POs). For those invoices without POs, additional steps may involve routing the invoice for review, coding, approvals and payment processing. The cycle time to manually process an invoice requires an average of 10-20 business days, which creates backlogs of invoices to be processed. This can be further exacerbated by imaging solutions that don't take advantage of optical character recognition (OCR) to extract data from the invoice image to facilitate straight-through processing for PO-based items, eliminating keystrokes for non PO-based items, as well as workflow for routing non PO-based items and PO exceptions.

Determining which invoice is to be paid when, tracking invoices through the approval process, determining optimum payment types, identifying errors early and managing the complete process to reduce the cost-per-invoice and to improve cash-flow can become overwhelming. After an invoice is processed, finding it and its associated content in a filing cabinet or locating the electronic version (after it has been converted and saved on a storage device—perhaps without proper indexing for ease of search) only magnifies the complexity. By automating the AP process, reducing the use of paper-based processes, standardizing invoice receipt/workflow processes, and integrating electronically payable solutions with a business-specific content management solution focused on AP automation, AP departments can reduce the cost-per-invoice by up to 90%.

When considering a business-specific content management solution for AP automation, evaluate solutions that have the ability to render invoices for approval via a Web portal (reduce software licensing costs), integrate with popular accounting packages and ERP solutions (automate debit or credit creation), as well as link to an archive repository to store content associated with the invoice. Specifically, the solution needs to be able to:

• Scan paper invoices and capture electronic invoices to be routed, tracked, indexed and securely archived in a repository;
• Ensure all scanned images corresponding to a particular invoice/document type are unalterable, maintaining the integrity of the original invoice;
• Provide simultaneous, secure access to all electronic documents to approved employees and vendors;
• Allow invoices associated with workflow processes to be automatically assigned to the appropriate party, i.e., line-of-business managers, accounts payable clerks, customer service representatives, for authorization, investigation and dispute resolution;
• Render invoices and associated documentation in Web-based work queues for review. Once a reviewer's investigation is complete with work notes, he or she can approve or reject the creation of a debit or credit;
• Track all invoices and ad hoc adjustments to the workflow processes;
• Provide audit and balancing controls to verify accuracy and correct errors prior to invoice processing; and
• Enter credit memo or payment transactions into the accounting or ERP system.

Electronic Records Management

To meet corporate policies, ensure regulatory compliance and mitigate risk associated with audits and litigation, organizations need to acquire, classify, retain and dispose of enterprise content, including millions of electronic records. These electronic records are frequently—and automatically—created by high-volume enterprise systems (distributed and/or mainframe) running business applications. The content that these systems produce includes customer statements, bills, checks, invoices, high-volume reports, etc.

For most organizations, properly classifying, retaining, and then retrieving this information across multiple systems, business units and offices can be challenging and time-consuming—electronic records are easy to create, but difficult to manage. In a nightly batch job, a billing or payroll system can generate thousands of records that need to be captured, classified, retained and scheduled for disposal. Organizations also need to integrate the management of these electronic records with other record types created across the organization, including scanned paper documents, XML, HTML, PCL, AFP, DJDE/Metacode, PDF, PostScript, rich media formats, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and email.

Organizations that attempt to apply manual and human-centric records management processes find that these traditional methods become extremely expensive and impractical for several reasons. Unlike paper documents that clutter a file cabinet or storage room, electronic records reside in mainframe or distributed systems—or both—out of sight and often out of mind. The explosion of content creates content chaos, which leads to content being siloed in application systems and not managed properly. Content that isn't managed enables employees, customers, suppliers—even hackers—to view, copy, disseminate and destroy thousands of records in an instant.

The challenge for most organizations is to develop a records retention policy and plan for all electronic records, identify where the records are being produced and manage the daily volume of electronic records being created. It's a formidable task to associate electronic records with supporting content regardless of the type of system on which the content resides (distributed and/or mainframe), and to determine how the content is structured (utility bills, ATM receipts, system reports) or unstructured (text documents, still images, video files). A high-quality, business-specific content management solution for electronic records management will:

• Treat all content equally;
• Work within a hybrid environment (distributed and/or mainframe);
• Automatically manage records in-place—no migration of records required;
• Provide a single user interface to view records in multiple repositories;
• Identify and associate related and/or supporting content;
• Store and/or index content in a repository of record;
• Immediately classify records and assign retention policies; and
• Make records available to anyone with the appropriate security permissions—throughout the enterprise.

The end result should be a business-specific content management solution for electronic records management that can automatically capture native content from line-of business applications, dynamically create records and easily manage petabytes of electronic information. Organizations will then be able to use current systems in-place and eliminate any need for manual records declaration and maintenance. Furthermore, corporate policies can be maintained, regulatory compliance assured, and risk associated with audit and litigation mitigated.

Integrate Content Into the Business Solution

Many organizations already have business-specific solutions generating and managing a wide variety of electronic content. The content could be located in one content repository—think "big data"—but this is rare. And a company that wants to move all of its content into one repository is also concerned with processing a wide variety of content types produced by ever-growing number of systems and applications—possibly on multiple operating platforms. It is much more common for an enterprise to have multiple content repositories scattered throughout an organization associated with various business applications. I often refer to this as a "spaghetti mess," because IT departments are always trying to maintain large number of integration points for business users to access content and business users are always asking for more custom integration connections that can break with a software update.