Imaging & Document Solutions - Bright Ideas: 3 Steps to a Strong Workflow; Making Sense of a Changing World

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3 Steps to a Strong Workflow

by Michael B. Rossetti

Building strong workflow is critical to implementing a content management system, however questions need to be answered and responsibilities assigned to ensure effective workflow design. Follow these steps.

1. Define your products. Many companies select technology first, but it's not until content products have been defined and workflow diagramed that you know which technology is needed. Identify the product line your content management system will support and which procedures will be used to make the content.

2. Design your content workflow to support the products. Diagram the workflow best suited to the creation, management and delivery of content in concrete, orderly steps. Answer the questions below for each step in the process, and you will have an outline for a strong workflow.

Who is responsible for the content at each step in the process? At any given point in the workflow you should be able to point to a specific person or group.
What are the tasks that need to be performed at each step in the process? Detail the steps. In some cases you may skip steps or follow an abbreviated list, but keep a master list of all complex tasks.
When is the step complete? All steps must end; you need to pinpoint when.
Who will be responsible for the content once it is passed along?

3. Select your technology. Select the technology or content management system that best fits the requirements established above.

Michael B. Rossetti is media relations manager for Deepbridge Content Solutions, New York, www.deepbridge.com.

Making Sense of a Changing World

by Arthur Gingrande

Tech Convergence: Document Management & E-Commerce

In the past, vendors divided the business software market into different application segments, ostensibly developed to serve different business functions. Electronic imaging, workflow, groupware, document management and Internet software all embodied a different application feature set rooted in its own technology, each with its own group of rival vendors. That model is changing - fast. Today, software developers are taking applications and technologies that were once separate and disconnected by their functionality and merging them into a common package. Applications like workflow, groupware, imaging and document management are merging under the corporate intranet umbrella...to the point where it is nearly impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends. The result has been a wholesale redefinition of the business applications marketplace into one holistic market.

1. Determine which technologies are compatible. Logic, in addition to the availability of a common digital platform, drives convergence. Imaging, forms processing and document capture are logically unified applications.... Workflow merges logically with electronic forms, because business processes and workflow graphical user interfaces are both forms-driven. The convergence of workflow with groupware is inevitable, because workflow is destined to become part of the operating system of network software. Undoubtedly, document management will meet the same fate.

2. Recognize today's opportunities. While the application structure of document management is changing, so is its communications infrastructure. In the early days of the Internet, application development was limited by the speed of the modem and the bandwidth afforded by conventional telephone lines. Not anymore. Today's high-speed fiber optics and DSL lines provide the speed and bandwidth necessary to drive industrial strength workflow, imaging and multimedia applications.

3. Become a pioneer. Technology convergence plus broad bandwidth...and other cutting-edge technologies open possibilities in document management, content delivery, multimedia entertainment and electronic commerce that were, until recently, only dreamed of. [The] world is being permanently changed by digital innovation in ways few can fully comprehend or envision. For...the document management industry, it is like landing on a new planet: To survive, it is imperative that we explore the landscape.

This article was excerpted from the book "Technology Convergence, E-Commerce and Document Management," written by Arthur Gingrande, partner, Imerge Consulting, and published by AIIM International (www.aiim.org).