Laurel Sanders asked:


Managing business content is as important to an organization’s viability as managing one’s food supply is to human sustenance. In both cases, ignoring the basics can have dire consequences.

Maslow showed us that basic human needs must be met before we can concentrate on fulfilling our individual potential. To thrive and grow, we need reliable access to quality food that is safe. We won’t tolerate spoilage, broken product seals, or foods with expired dates. Stores with frustratingly empty shelves or hard-to-find goods lose our business.

Shouldn’t we demand the same standards for our business-critical documents, since they are the foundation of our business knowledge and relationships? Documents must be readable, accurate, and tamperproof. Employees must be able to find information pertinent to assigned tasks quickly, without wading through irrelevant material.

The exponential growth of digital business content ? including email1 ? makes centralization and organization vital. If you’re searching for an electronic document management (EDM) solution, it must be built on a solid foundation. Whether you’re implementing for the first time or entertaining replacement, compromising on the fundamentals can lead to exasperating implementations and disappointing results. Make sure your system addresses:

1.Ease of use – Even the best options can fail if they’re challenging to use. Employees – especially workers who haven’t fully embraced digital document management – benefit from systems that guide them through each step of capturing, indexing, accessing, and managing information. To ensure ease of adoption, ask:

Does the software have a user friendly interface with customizable work spaces that maximize individual productivity? Is the software browser-based so employees can access work and information securely over the Internet, remotely? Is there single sign-on for all functionality so users don’t have to keep logging on or remembering multiple passwords? Are there easy-to-understand tool tips and help functions to guide users every step of the way as they scan, index, search, and work with digital files? Are online user guides accessible to help minimize technical support? Are web services integration tools available to add behind-the-scenes functionality to the software applications employees use daily? Does the vendor offer appropriate end-user training?

2.Security – Security risks related to changing regulations, poor or inconsistently communicated policies, and at-risk employees are minimized with EDM. Configurable software lets you update permissions as regulations or policies change, knowing they will be enforced immediately. Assigning new job roles or responsibilities can trigger amended authorizations for individuals requesting to search for, access, view, annotate, edit, approve, sign, or otherwise interact with files.

EDM eliminates the risk of compromised security at communal printers, meeting rooms and off-site meetings. It also protects companies from workers who don’t differentiate between public and confidential information. From the moment documents are scanned (or imported from legacy or line-of-business software), permission-based access ensures they are available only to authorized personnel.

3.Searchable content

2008 statistics show organizations lose 7.5% of their documents; an additional 3% are misfiled.1 As electronic documentation grows the risk continues unabated, since digital documents are twice as likely to be unmanaged as paper records.2 Yet with EDM, the loss figure can and should be a zero percent loss. Scanning or importing files into EDM at the point of receipt or creation, and indexing documents thoroughly using classification criteria your users understand, dramatically simplifies search.

Successful search depends on logical, thorough, and consistent indexing:

Are there customizable drop-down menus to make indexing easy and consistent? Are customizable search templates available to standardize search methodology within our organization and make it easier to find documents in a flash? Are full-text and/or enterprise search options included to maximize performance?

Talk with potential vendors’ clients. If the EDM software performs well, customers should verify excellent performance in locating information quickly. Digital documents are only an improvement when they can be found by authorized persons quickly, whenever they’re needed. Occasional file loss is not acceptable.

4.Scalability for current and future needs – Your needs today may look different in a year or two. Organizations that convert to digital document management are increasingly trying to bridge gaps in data content between multiple business areas.3 Maybe your greatest need today is in accounts receivable or human resources, but the greatest long-term ROI emerges when you can leverage EDM and the information stored within it across your enterprise, wherever it’s useful. Ask yourself:

Which types of information are replicated in multiple systems across our enterprise? Which information can be reused? How much will we grow in 3 years? 5? 10? Will the EDM system be sufficient for our needs? What are the vendor’s integration capabilities? Are professional services available, or must we struggle alone?

5.Document retention / records management needs – When regulations require files to be kept but they’re no longer needed for daily business, they should be stored separately. Risk increases if required documentation can’t be located on demand and also when sensitive files aren’t destroyed on schedule. Typically kept in less accessible storage areas, retrieving archived paper documents is cumbersome and costly. By using retention information about each document type, EDM can schedule appropriate migration, purging, or destruction of files. Enabling desktop access to long-term files that are still subject to recall and eliminating irrelevant documents from current storage makes searching easier and more cost efficient. Make sure your retention needs are addressed.

6.Email storage

An extensive 2009 study indicates companies are focusing increasingly on email management.4 It also reveals current business practices are pretty risky. Only 19% of companies surveyed capture important emails to a content management or email management system; nearly half store emails in non-shared personal Outlook folders.

Insufficient email management severely impedes productivity when employees leave and vital information is trapped in personal Outlook folders. Business-critical information buried in messages and attachments that can’t be located on demand compounds corporate risk, especially since electronically stored data (ESI) is now legally discoverable as evidence. Make sure your solution includes an email management component that sufficiently indexes, archives, and searches messages and attachments. Considering the amount of business conducted via email, it’s crucial.

7.Ease of administration and support

Migrating to electronic records is a major undertaking for IT staff. It’s not just a once-and-done project:

Hierarchies change; employees come and go. File access rules must be adjusted. New and amended regulations require system updates so rules are enforced. Integrations of EDM with line-of-business and legacy software require support. New functionality may be added as your organization grows; it must be managed.

Have you considered:

Centralized administration of EDM simplifies management significantly for system administrators? Rather than requiring multiple updates every time changes are made, each update is effective for all components of a suite. This allows quicker project rollouts and upgrades, simplifies changes, and accelerates ROI. Whether the software is user friendly? Tool tips and helpful online guidelines reduce costs by enabling self-serve support. Browser-based EDM that lets your administrator access your system and provide support remotely as it’s needed? Avoid costly waits and downtime.

Quality, timely content, every time

As you search for an EDM system to satisfy daily business needs, don’t settle for anything that could jeopardize the integrity and usability of your information. Make sure your workers have instant and appropriate access to secure, accurate, searchable, and manageable content and a system that is easy to administer over the long haul. You’ll be poised to rise above your daily challenges, ready to focus on reaching your potential.

1 Digital Landfill: 10 Fast Facts About Document Management, www.aiim.typepad.com.

2 2009 AIIM Industry Watch, Electronic Records Management: Still Playing Catch-up with Paper, www.aiim.org/Management-of-Electronic-Records-not-Taken-Seriously.aspx

3 Mark Brousseau, More Growth Ahead for Document Management Technology, September/October 2009 issue of TAWPI’s today ® magazine

4 Email Management, ©AIIM 2009, www.aiim.org.



Mitchell Fishing Rods

Cristina Sanders asked:


My kids all wear sunsuits. They wear sun hats, their sunglasses in the car and I have a big tub of sunscreen by the back door. Here’s why.

I spent Summers of the 1970s in a crocheted white string bikini. In the hottest part of the day we rubbed olive oil into our skin and lay down on beach towels to bake in the sun. Sometimes we used mirrors to amplify the sun and bounce the rays around. We did this all through the summer holidays, every year. Our aim was to get as tanned as possible. We burnt, we peeled; stripping layers of skin down like old paint to expose pink raw skin underneath. We played sport in the sun; midday on the pitch blinking into the glare, stripes of zinc swiped across the cheeks like war paint; pale whiskers on a burnt face at the end of the day. We went on holiday to hot places with the ambition to return to school a darker shade than our friends. Sunsuits? Never heard of them.

Skin cancer is most commonly diagnosed in the 50-60 age group. All those growing up in the 1970s are now doing the math. Skin cancer is racing towards my generation of sun worshippers like a death train. Malignant melanoma incidence rates in Britain have more than quadrupled since the 1970s. Over the last twenty-five years, rates of malignant melanoma in Britain have risen faster than any other common cancer.

A number of the sunbathing friends of my childhood have had bits cut away from them, and yes, two have died of melanoma.

Parents of the new millennium know far more than my parents knew about cause and effect of sun damage. The research has been done, results published and government campaigns have rolled out for years. It is an accepted fact that sun exposure is the main cause of malignant melanoma and that sunburn in a child vastly increases the chance of skin cancer in later life. Every parent in the western world must be familiar with the caution: “Slip, Slop, Slap”.

Would I encourage my children to smother themselves in olive oil and put them out to roast like bit of meat on a barbeque? Of course not.

But here’s the dilemma. I still love the sun. I love beach holidays with my kids, we’re the first in the surf and the last out. I dream of a house with a pool. I like water; boating, body surfing, a hose fight in the back garden on a hot day. Water and sun are a magic combination; they lift my spirits like nothing else.

I first saw sunsuits on a bunch of Australian kids in Fiji. It was late afternoon, but the sun still had potential to burn. My kids had been swimming, reluctantly smothered in the recommended two handfuls of sunscreen, sand sticking to them and sunscreen reapplied in bucketfuls every time they towelled off. Meanwhile I had been lectured by a surfer about chemical damage of sunscreen to the coral reefs. I did point out to him it was organic sunscreen, but took his point. The Australian kids in their sunsuits were first in and last out of the water and their mother looked very relaxed.

Sunsuits are made of UV protective swimwear fabric, usually fast drying nylon/lycra and traditionally cover from the elbows to neck to knees, with a zip up front or back, wetsuit style. You can get longer ones but they appear quite hot; the shorter ones cover the hard to get areas like shoulders and back and kids can apply sunscreen on lower arms and legs easily. A good one will carry the UPF50+ rating.

All the kids I’ve seen at the beach seem to enjoy their sunsuits, and my own kids take them for granted now. A good suit is lightweight with low moisture retention so they are comfortable and fast drying. The one piece style means they don’t ride up or slip off and they offer a bit of modesty as well as sun protection.

I’m glad my kids wear sunsuits rather than olive oil. It may be too late for my generation, but we can do our best to derail the skin cancer train before it hits our kids.



Rheem Gas Furnace