Do You Have All the Information To Make An Informed Decision?

In today’s world is it enough to base your decisions just on the data and information stored in your corporate database?

But what could possibly be missing that is important to my roles and decisions, you ask?

The short answer first, consider the following items that flow through your office, that are missing from a traditional corporate database:

• E-mail correspondence,
• Internal notes stored on a local computer,
• Incoming / Outgoing postal mail,
• Industry related material,
• Etc.

These types of correspondence represent a huge repository of information that is not contained in your corporate database. Looking at the total information view, your corporate database could house 30% or less of the total view.

Corporate databases such as SQL, Oracle or other DBMS tools are excellent at storing transactional data and information that nicely line up into consistent rows and columns. They have not been built to work with Open Text Material.

Documents though, are the lifeblood and connectivity of a business organization, no matter what the size. From product blueprints, to marketing material, to invoices, to employee and customer records, to government forms, these documents define and propel the process of doing business and then allow us to understand how it was done.

Clearly defined, Document or Content Management (DM) enables an organization

to capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver content and documents related to the organization's processes.

One of the perceived pitfalls of DM is that there is no benefit until all of the existing paper is incorporated. You must consider a different mentality though, that being to start capturing documents into your DM system now. Once this phase is running smoothly, then you can consider the benefits and needs of converting the historical paper into a DM system.

Common problems with a paper based filing system:

• The physical storage taken up,
• The availability of only one copy,
• Locate, work with and re-file the document,
• Several people wanting the document at the same time,

Benefits of a DM based system:

• Immediate access to documents and information,
• Searching and locating a document is now done from your desktop PC,
• The same document is now available to as many people who need it, either internally or over the Internet,
• Off-site document storage is now possible for purposes of disaster recovery,
• The physical storage requirements are greatly reduced.

One last point to ponder, based on industry studies, it takes six minutes to retrieve or re-file a document in an efficiently run office. In your office how many documents are handled on a daily basis?

Volume: June 2005
The disclaimer…
These articles are intended as starting points and do not thoroughly cover the topic.
For further help, information, requests, questions or comments, please contact me at…

Regc@QEDSoftwareSolutions.com

Reg Cawston
QED Software Solutions Ltd.
Suite 2010, 7445 - 132nd Street
Surrey, British Columbia
V3W 1J8

Office: (604)501.1474
Fax: (604)501.2454