Why You Need to Care About DoD 5015.2

It’s said that the wonderful thing about standards is that there’s so many of them. But when it comes to records management, one in particular stands out: Department of Defense 5015.2 (DoD 5015.2).

Formally known as Design Criteria Standard for Electronic Records Management Software Applications (you can see why most people call it 5015.2), the standard is recognized not only in government, but also in the private sector, writes David Roe in CMSwire. “By being certified, records management solutions can assist corporations to achieve compliance and reduce risk by enabling them to control how and for how long enterprise content is retained. It also ensures destruction of that content when this time has elapsed.”

DoD 5015.2 Background

DoD 5015.2 came about in the early 1990s following Congress’s investigation into the Gulf War Syndrome, a debilitating illness affecting many soldiers who fought in the war, according to the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) Records Management Application (RMA) website. This mean DoD officials had to produce millions of records from Operation Desert Storm. “Congress concluded that the Defense Department did not do a good job of managing the records and as a result, many of the needed records had been destroyed or lost,” JITC notes.

Congress ordered the Defense Department to improve its records management capabilities, so the DoD created a task force in 1993, including representatives from several military branches and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The task force published its report, specifying functional requirements and data elements for an electronic RMA, in 1995, and later developed into a testable and measurable design criteria standard by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

In 1998, NARA endorsed DoD 5015.2, which meant that federal agencies other than the DoD could adopt it as a baseline standard for records management. NARA noted, though, that this was not an exclusive endorsement—meaning it could endorse other protocols as well—and that more was required than just the standard itself. “DoD 5015.2-STD defines only a baseline set of requirements for automated records keeping,” cautioned John W. Carlin, then Archivist of the United States. “There are a number of additional questions that must be resolved in order to satisfy all the established requirements for managing federal records. Each agency must address some of these questions to fit their own environment.”

What is the purpose of DoD 5015.2?

The purpose of having DoD 5015.2 is so users have some assurance that products support records management in a standardized way as they work toward compliance with the 2012 NARA/OMB Managing Government Records Directive, OMB 12-18. That mandates that all permanent records be managed in digital format by 2019, as well as calling for management of email in electronic format by 2016.

Electronic records management software enforces organization-wide records policies and reduces the cost of regulatory compliance. Records management systems let organizations centrally, securely and electronically manage their records. This kind of software lets records managers track and store records in a variety of formats, including:
·         Imaged documents
·         Electronic documents generated by programs (e.g., Microsoft Office)
·         PDFs
·         Scanned and digital photographs
·         Audio and video files
·         Output from legacy systems
·         Physical records stored offsite

Other incentives for improving electronic records management include a 2010 requirement that U.S. agencies move to the cloud when possible, other initiatives to streamline business processes and prepare for audits, and concerns about security. Having all federal agencies supporting DoD 5015.2 makes it easier to perform such overarching tasks as populating metadata in records.

“DoD 5015.02-STD marked the beginning of the transition from paper-based systems to electronic-based systems to manage records,” writes JITC. “DoD 5015.02-STD made it possible to transfer records management responsibility from the file room to the front office, from the hands of a few, to the hands of virtually all employees.”

Now on Version 3, DoD 5015.2 includes features such as establishing requirements for managing classified records, as well as requirements to support the Freedom of Information Act, Privacy Act, and interoperability. In particular, Version 3 was endorsed by NARA as meeting the agency’s criteria for transferring permanent electronic records to it.

Vendors certify their products against DoD 5015.2 through JITC’s software testing program for the standard. After they pass, their products are put onto a list. DoD organizations can purchase only the records management products that are on this list.

Other opportunities for record management

All that said, DoD 5015.2 isn’t a panacea. It has been criticized by some as being overly complex and unwieldy (well, it is a government standard) and outdated.

“Why is it assumed that what may be required and workable for Defense will also be viable for the civilian federal government?” writes Ron Layel, a records management contractor for NASA, noting there are several examples where the 170+ functional requirements in 5015.2 are either irrelevant or over-engineered, particularly for civilian agencies.

But as we also know, the wheels of government standard development tend to grind pretty slowly, so chances are we’ll have DoD 5015.2 Version 3 with us for some time to come. And knowing a DoD-certified system has been tested against the DoD’s rigorous standards provides reassurance to records managers at thousands of organizations across a wide variety of industries.

Unless you work for the State Government of Victoria, Australia, or the United States Department of Defense or one of its components, you are not required to select a records management system that meets the specifications of either standard. However, the downside of not complying with recordkeeping requirements on organizational reputation and value highlights the importance of investing in a records management system that helps ensure an organization’s information assets are safe and well-managed.
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Researchers Use AI for Bible Interpretation

One of the first applications for any new technology is the Bible.  Gutenberg published a Bible around 1454 as what is thought to be the first major book printed using mass-produced movable type.  Movies about the Bible were produced as long ago as 1897. Publishers used a Univac computer to produce a concordance—a kind of index for all the words used—for a new Bible in 1955, which they said cut 23 years off the process.

Now, researchers are using image analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) to help determine when the first books of the Old Testament were written. They are using what some describe as the ancient equivalent of Post-Its.  And techniques developed through such handwriting analysis could end up being useful in identifying contributors to other older documents, even if it’s just through scribbled notes in the margin.

First, some history.  The first books of the Old Testament are the five books of Moses, also known as the Pentateuch, as well as the books of Deuteronomy to II Kings. It was traditionally thought that they were written after the Babylonian Exile of Israel in the 6th century BCE, writes Isabel Kershner in the New York Times. In fact, it was thought that it might not be until around 200 BCE, when archeologists again start finding inscriptions, that there were enough literate people around to write down all the material, she adds.

However, that’s all predicated on the belief that the Old Testament couldn’t have been written any earlier than the Babylonian Exile because literacy rates were low—and this new research has demonstrated that that belief could be wrong.

Research Background

The research worked like this. Applied mathematicians and archeologists got together to study messages scribbled on pieces of broken pottery, called ostraca, from the Kingdom of Judah (including and south of present-day Jerusalem) around 600 BCE. In the same way that one of us might grab a Post-It to jot down a note, military people in the Judahite army would grab an ostracon to write down an order to send to another person. While parchment was around, pottery was cheaper, especially for this sort of ephemeral note. And, particularly advantageous for the researchers, pottery lasts a long time.

First, researchers used image analysis to clarify the letters that the various people were writing, similar to the sorts of techniques researchers are using to more clearly identify letters in handwritten documents ranging from the Declaration of Independence to Einstein.

Next, they used AI to analyze the handwriting of the people writing the notes on the pottery. “The letters from pairs of texts were jumbled up and the algorithm separated them based on handwriting,” Kershner writes. “If the algorithm split the letters into two clear groups, the texts were counted as having been written by two authors. When the algorithm did not distinguish between the letters and left them together in one group, no position was taken; they may have been written by the same hand, or possibly by two people with similar styles.”

Research Results

This study determined not only how many people might have written the notes, but, using the information in the notes, where they fit into the social hierarchy. “Based on a statistical analysis of the results, and taking into account the content of the texts that were chosen for the sample, the researchers concluded that at least six different hands had written the 18 missives at around the same time,” Kershner writes. “Even soldiers in the lower ranks of the Judahite army, it appears, could read and write.”

“The commander down to the lowest water master could all communicate in writing,” Arie Shaus, a mathematician at Tel Aviv University, tells Maddie Stone in Gizmodo. “This was an extremely surprising result.”

The notes were also written well, without spelling or grammatical errors. “There is something psychological beyond the statistics,” Prof. Israel Finkelstein of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University, one of the leaders of the project, tells Kershner. “There is an understanding of the power of literacy. And they wrote well, with hardly any mistakes.”

Obviously, if even the water boy is literate, there was a lot more literacy in that time period before the Babylonian Exile than just among scholars and priests.  What it means, then, is that the Old Testament could have been written hundreds of years before it was originally thought to be, the researchers say.

Ironically, the result makes the researchers’ original goal—determining who wrote the Old Testament—that much harder. After all, if even the water boy knew how to write, just about anyone could have made a first draft of what became what is arguably the most successful book in the history of the world.

“It would imply that it wasn’t just an elite class of teachers and scholars who could have created the books of the Bible,” writes Dan Seitz in Uproxx. “It could have been, quite literally, some dude hauling water who thought it was a good idea to write this religion stuff down.”

So next time you’re writing a Post-It note, be sure to write it carefully. You never know what conclusions future historians might be making of it.

 For more information on how to gather information from your content, download our ebook: The Ultimate Guide to Intelligent Content Capture.

Time to Take Another Look at BPM Benefits

It may have been around since the turn of the century—this century—but there’s still plenty of mileage in business process management (BPM), and there’s still plenty of BPM benefits, according to a recent report.

“BPM may not get the same level of recognition that many other business practices do, but having a robust BPM practice in place is vital for many organizations for achieving optimal business process performance, efficiency, effectiveness, and agility,” writes Jorge García, principal analyst for Technology Evaluations Centers in the recent report Selecting a Business Process Management (BPM) Solution for the Modern Business. This is particularly true for organizations in industries such as software, information technology, and services, he adds.

What makes BPM so important today is it’s been able to incorporate up-to-date technologies such as mobile, cloud, analytics, and increased automation, García writes. “The end result is the acceleration of business processes, encouraging agile and adaptive ways for handling changing and complex business conditions,” he writes. “Another benefit is increased data centricity, and the potential for analytics to not only improve business process monitoring and efficiency, but also increase automated decision making in business processes.”

Moreover, BPM is a methodology that can grow as an organization grows, including working with companies outside the organization, García writes. “Every organization needs to set up a series of processes to address its current operations: Processing a customer request, authorizing a budget, monitoring client requests, etc.” he writes. “As a business grows in complexity, these processes will need to be designed, executed, and controlled with the assistance of a specialized tool.”

It’s not surprising, then, that market research firm MarketsandMarkets predicts that the BPM market size will grow from $6.96 billion in 2016 to $13.52 billion by 2021, for a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.2 percent.

Improving Processes

What is a process? According to García, it is a set of connected activities to achieve the optimal execution of a business transaction. Consequently, it needs to be measurable, controllable, and adaptable so that it can be improved, he writes. But many organizations still rely on inadequate tools such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel to manage their business processes, writes Dennis McCafferty in CIO Insight.

BPM is particularly helpful in three process components, García writes:

  • Business complexity, so companies can continuously review, modify, and improve constantly changing business processes
  • Collaboration, which is increasing inside and outside organizations and makes efficient processes more important
  • Process interaction, because efforts such as just-in-time manufacturing and Agile development require constantly improving efficiency

No doubt you’ve heard of a “vicious cycle,” where things just keep getting worse and worse. Set up properly, BPM means your organization can instead have a process of continuous improvement by making changes in a business process, measuring how well they work, and then continuing to monitor the business process—including implementing new technology—to look for other changes that could be made, García writes.

This means there are three basic BPM benefits, García writes:

  • Efficiency by reducing waste
  • Effectiveness by making better decisions
  • Agility by being able to implement changes more quickly

Incorporating New Technologies

The advantage of new technologies is that they can help jumpstart business processes. For example, mobile and cloud mean that users can perform business processes without being tied to their desks while reducing companies’ investments in IT hardware and software resources, García writes. Social media provides new avenues for requesting and obtaining information. Automation means that software can perform routine tasks without human intervention, leaving the humans to deal with the more complex cases, while analytics makes it easier for the company to see how changes improve a process and where the bottlenecks are, he adds.

Think that BPM benefits only big companies? Think again. TEC also surveyed 250 users of BPM software and found that well over a third of them worked for companies with fewer than 50 employees and earned annual revenues of less than $10 million.

The biggest barriers to improving BPM efforts? Not surprisingly, they’re the standard ones: Money, time, and resources, McCafferty writes.

Getting prepared for BPM

If you’re not already using BPM, what should you do? García offers four suggestions:

  • Have a clear business case, including the cost of the inefficiencies your company’s business processes already have, and a proposal for changing and improving them
  • Get buy-in from senior executives, including from outside IT and perhaps even outside the company
  • Realize that to work effectively, BPM is a continuous process, not a time-limited project
  • Develop a roadmap for the various steps of the initiative, including making sure participants can respond quickly

It takes work and commitment to realize BPM benefits, writes Alyssa Huntley in FierceCIO. “Having a BPM plan is more than just deciding to have one,” she warns. “It takes a good deal of initial preparation and monitoring down the road.”

Download the ebook: The Process Automation Buyer's Guide.

The Beginner’s Guide to Document Management Software

Why Should My Organization Care about Document Management Software?

Streamlining business processes and increasing efficiency are fundamental concerns for any organization, regardless of its size or industry. By implementing document management software, business leaders can improve organizational efficiency.

Document management software transforms the management of business-sensitive information, making it possible to:
  • Manage the storage, search, and retrieval of millions of documents, allowing users to access files in seconds.
  • Share documents with colleagues while protecting confidential information.
  • Automate time-consuming manual processes like filling in metadata and document naming.
  • Access documents on your smartphone or tablet.
  • Back up files and records as a part of your organization’s business continuity plan.

What Does the Best Document Management Software Do?

Document management systems capture paper documents and a variety of electronic files while managing the storage, retrieval, security and archiving of these documents.

The document management process begins with the conversion of paper documents, forms and records to electronic files. This is considered Phase 1 of the Digital Transformation journey.

Conversion eliminates many of the obstacles created by paper: labor-intensive duplication procedures, slow distribution, misplaced originals and the inconvenience of retrieving files from off-site storage.

Document management systems have five basic components:
  • Capture tools to bring information into the system.
  • Desktop, web and mobile apps that make documents easy to locate and edit.
  • Folder structures to organize, store and archive documents.
  • Workflow functionality that automates tedious manual processes like filing and approval.
  • Security functionality to protect documents from unauthorized access or modification.

Learn more about the basics of document management here.

How Can Enterprise Document Management Software Save Time?

A recent PwC study reports that the average worker spends 40% of their time managing non-essential documents. In addition, IDC estimates that employees spend 20% of their day looking for information in hardcopy documents and that, 50% of the time, they can’t find what they need.

The best document management software can help you save time by:
  • Answering information requests from clients, citizens and auditors immediately.
  • Cutting time spent copying and distributing documents to staff, branch offices and outside contacts by digitizing file sharing.
  • Eliminating lost documents that must be recreated and refiled — and spending less time filing them once they’re found.
  • Establishing a secure, customizable digital repository for business-critical information, making it simple to search and modify files.

By implementing a document management solution, employees can stop spending time handling paper to start spending more time doing the work that matters: serving clients, citizens and students at maximum efficiency.

How Can Document Management Software Help Improve Efficiency?

Every organization relies on repetitive tasks to accomplish business goals. When it comes to  standard, document-based processes like hiring and invoice processing, there are many ways a document management system can help your organization work faster and more effectively.

Enterprise document management software can help your organization increase efficiency with business process automation tools that:
  • Eliminate manual data entry, document naming and document filing.
  • Provide staff with information they need to quickly make decisions.
  • Alerts managers about employee action and inaction.
  • Make unstructured data (e.g. documents, emails, photographs, etc.) accessible, searchable, available and relevant.
  • Enable employees to share documents quickly and securely with clients.

Get more information about how document management software can help your organization optimize business processes and increase efficiency here.

What is the Biggest ROI in Enterprise Document Management Software?

Your organization generates large amounts of paper and electronic documents. Traditional methods of storing paper and electronic records require a great deal of effort to manage, distribute and find those documents. As your business grows, so do files, and so does the time and effort required to manage them.

Document management software simplifies business processes by allowing instant access to information, greater collaboration within and among departments and offices and enhanced security for files and records.

For an overview of how document management can help your organization streamline operations, watch our webinar, ECM 101: An Introduction to Document Management Features.

Learn how document management software can help your organization recapture lost hours, reduce overhead expenses and increase profitability—download The Document Management Buyer’s Guide today!

5 Ways Document Management Systems Can Improve the Bottom Line

How much will a document management system actually benefit my organization’s bottom line?

That’s a common, reasonable question every organization should ask before investing in new technology. But like any other tool, the impact of a document management system (DMS) on the bottom line rests entirely on how you use it.

While ROI isn’t necessarily a hard, universal number, here are some ways other organizations have improved their bottom line with document management systems.

Reduce Mailing Costs

This is likely the most immediate impact on your bottom line. Before using a document management system, you will have mailing costs. After implementation, you will have none, or very few. This is exactly what happened to the Canadian Seed Growers Association (CSGA).

CSGA previously had to mail paper forms to seed inspectors across Canada, racking up hefty postage bills. Using electronic forms to streamline these back-and-forth exchanges, CSGA significantly decreased postage costs.

In fact, CSGA completely eliminated the need to mail anything—and the three weeks’ worth of transit and processing time per application—saving approximately $10,000 in postage, not to mention 300 man hours in labor.
Canadian Seed Growers Association shows off physical ROI of a paperless office.
Doug Miller, CSGA Operations Manager, showing the 56,000 staples representing the employee effort required to process applications before Laserfiche.

Enable Staff to Work More Efficiently

Can you measure efficiency in dollars? Steinhafels’ HR department thinks so.

The department was on the verge of hiring more departmental staff to manage the company’s increasing employee count. However, using a DMS, Steinhafels’ HR department was able to automate tasks like posting jobs on third-party career sites, data entry and filing. By automating these manual tasks, Steinhafels’ HR department was able to hold off on hiring new team members.

“To continue to generate paper and analyze the data on the paper, I would have had to increase my staff,” says Lynda Malmberg, Senior HR Manager. “Ultimately, the decision was driven by economics and the need to be more efficient.” The decision saved Steinhafels an annual savings of at least $80,000 per year in salary and benefits.

Reclaim Misspent Time

Time is money, and a high-value DMS system can reduce the amount of time it takes to complete repeatable tasks.

For years, the College of the Desert struggled to provide information and timely service to its on-campus and online students—with some documents taking up to eight weeks to process.

Some departments, such as Admissions and Records, scanned and stored documents in an electronic repository that lacked search and indexing capabilities. This meant that staff members had to search multiple locations to find a student file.

The college replaced its legacy electronic repository with a more robust and powerful DMS that enabled online form submissions, automated information processing and allowed for comprehensive search and retrieval of archived information. The end result was a 40% reduction in the amount of time it took to process applications.

“We decreased the amount of manual work involved with document processing by 90%,” says Annebelle Nery, Executive Dean of Institutional Effectiveness, Educational Services & Planning.

Minimize the Risk of Recordkeeping Fines

A quality DMS does more than just help you go paperless. Beyond eliminating the need for employees to take time manually filing records, it can also help you comply with recordkeeping requirements.

Financial firms like Hanson McClain need to be vigilant about following recordkeeping rules. “The SEC and FINRA require that firms use a certain type of document management technology, such as unalterable database software,” says Barry Chapman, Hanson McClain’s Director of IT.

Improve Customer Service

CIRCOR Pibiviesse is a parts manufacturer that builds custom valves for the energy, aerospace and defense industries. Each valve that is delivered also needs an accompanying databook, which contains hundreds of pages of materials certifications, product drawings, internal procedures and more. Without a completed databook, Pibiviesse’s valves cannot pass industry inspections and be activated at a plant.

“We used to have documentation on-time delivery rates in the range of 30-40%,” says Ivan Fantin, Continuous Improvement Manager at CIRCOR Pibiviesse. Since implementing document management software, Pibiviesse was able to greatly improve its on-time delivery of databooks. “We are proud to say that we now have reached a 100% on-time delivery rate,” says Fantin.

This improved process actually allowed Pibiviesse to deliver databooks to its customers even before the arrival of the valves, which has dramatically improved customer satisfaction.

To better understand how a document management system can benefit your bottom line, create a cost-benefit analysis with this easy guide.

How Laserfiche ECM Helps Financial Advisors Compete with Robo-Advisors

Today, financial advisors operate in a far more competitive landscape than in years past. Robo-advisors and other technology-driven changes are impacting the traditional practices of advisors, creating urgency to adopt the latest industry innovations.

Here are three factors that are contributing to the industry’s shifting landscape and how enterprise content management (ECM) systems helps financial advisors adapt to them.

Robo-advisors

The term, “robo-advisor” refers to algorithmic technology that is helping investors—particularly beginning investors with smaller portfolios—cost-effectively make more informed financial decisions.

One of the ways traditional advisors can compete with robo-advisors is through software integration. When they integrate primary applications like a customer relationship management (CRM) and ECM system, advisors can quickly collect business-critical data and gain insight into their organization’s processes. In fact, a previous InvestmentNews study found that firms with integrated primary applications had higher revenues, profits and assets under management than those with limited technology investments.

As robo-advisors enter the wealth management space, advisors must re-think their approach to technology in order to increase productivity and remain competitive.

RIA Growth Curve

The number of registered investment advisors (RIAs) has grown steadily in recent years and is expected to reach 28% of market share by 2018. This figure has grown from just 11.9% in 2013. In fact, research group Cerulli Associates recently identified RIAs as the fastest growing segment of the financial advisor market.

With many new practices entering the industry, it is crucial for advisors to focus on establishing competitive differentiators. ECM systems gives advisors a comparative advantage by streamlining business processes that can take their competitors longer to complete. For example, some ECM systems can:

  • Auto-populate electronic forms, reducing the processing time and errors of manual data entry
  • Automate compliance review and approval processes, allowing advisors to quickly book new trades
  • Email electronic forms to account holders for e-signatures, saving significant document turnaround time

Compliance

With a renewed focus on compliance from regulators, advisors can expect more frequent and in-depth audits than ever before. Top advisors are using ECM systems to prepare their firms for strict compliance regulations.

When advisors automate business processes like new account opening, blotter submissions and trade approvals, some ECM systems record an audit history of every action that takes place. This allows RIAs to easily discover documents requested during an audit.

Advisors can also use ECM systems to manage client records by automatically assigning retention and destruction dates based on their records management requirements. Girard Securities—a San Diego-based RIA—uses Laserfiche ECM to improve productivity and compliance around its blotter process:

http://laserfiche1.wistia.com/medias/xe2l9pv7sr?embedType=api&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=600

The combination of robo-advisors, new competitors and stricter compliance makes for a tipping point in the wealth management industry. The advisors that come out on top will be defined by how they streamline their operations with technology.

For more information on how to provide quick, efficient investment services using an ECM system, watch this recorded webinar Automation: The Final Frontier for Broker-Dealers.

Learn more about how you can optimize your workflows for the new world of work with our industry brief: Accelerating Digital Transformation: How to Realize Digital Innovation Fast in a Post-Pandemic World.

Accelerate Digital Transformation Post-Pandemic

Implementing Electronic Records Management? Here Are 4 Things to Consider

A records management strategy is vital to the life cycle of your organization’s information. At an organizational level, a records management strategy governs how information is created, stored, shared, tracked and protected.

Electronic records management (ERM) software simplifies the application of this strategy, helping to manage the life cycle of business records without interfering with your line of business. A records management application supports the automatic enforcement of consistent, organization-wide records policies, simplifying compliance with federal, state and industry regulations.

What are some best practices for managing electronic records?

Once you’ve decided to make the switch to an ERM system, there are four important points to consider.
1. Develop an information governance strategy

Before switching to electronic records, it is essential to design a comprehensive information governance strategy. An information governance strategy explores the breadth of content an organization manages, how content is organized and who should have access to it.

A good governance structure:
  • Enables staff to work in the most efficient and effective way possible by giving them access to information when they need it.
  • Outlines which user groups have access to which record types, simplifying the actual application of appropriate security within the ERM system.
  • Takes into account any state or regulatory requirements for record access or retention.

“Records management is a critical component in information governance, and organizations need information professionals who can incorporate records retention and management principles into all storage media architectures, automated systems and emerging technologies,” says Allen Podraza, Director of Records Management & Archives for the American Medical Association.
2. Evaluate certified records management systems

When switching to an ERM system, you may want to look at systems that are certified, particularly those certified to meet a set of requirements outlined in the Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2 standard. The Department of Defense has rigorous requirements for ensuring that records are properly organized and managed. The DoD 5015.2 standard outlines requirements for managing classified records and includes requirements to support the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Privacy Act and interoperability.

Unless an organization provides services to the United States Department of Defense or one of its components, it is not typically required to meet the DoD 5015.2 certification. However, an ERM system that has been certified to meet stringent requirements for organizing file structures — and reliably preserving data — likely offers some of of the best tools available for properly maintaining records.
3. Ensure the electronic document can be legally presented as an official record

Before you switch to an electronic system, you must ensure that the electronic document can be legally presented as the official record. To meet state regulations, it is often important that the ERM software is compatible with a wide range of hardware components, such as optical, tape and magnetic-based WORM (write once, read many) storage.

Depending on where you live, the requirements may differ. For example, state agencies in California are required to maintain records “created or stored as an official record” using a trusted system.

A trusted system must:
  • Utilize both hardware and media storage methodologies to prevent unauthorized additions, modifications or deletions during the approved life cycle of the stored information.
  • Be verifiable through independent audit processes ensuring that there is no plausible way for electronically stored information to be modified, altered, or deleted during the approved information life cycle.
  • Write at least one copy of the electronic document or record into electronic media that does not permit unauthorized additions, deletions, or changes to the original document and that is to be stored and maintained in a safe and separate location.
4. Track the actions taken on the document

To form a complete record of organization-wide activity, the ERM system should track every action taken on each document throughout its life cycle, including what information was added and deleted. These reports should not only track each action, but also when and by whom it was performed.

These reports can be run regularly or on an as-needed basis. This whole process can also be automated and reports emailed to the appropriate people on a schedule.
A log of actions performed on a record.
An ERM system can generate system-wide reports on user logins, audit activity, document modifications and more.

Continue Your Journey

Fast track your digital transformation with the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace

Looking to make Laserfiche your records management solution? Customers can get started streamlining regulatory processes, such as building permit applications and inspections, quicker than ever with the pre-built workflows offered through the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace.

Compare top enterprise content management (ECM) vendors on G2

Laserfiche offers records management features as part of a robust enterprise content management (ECM) system. Check out the G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and compare top vendors on the market.
G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems

Get the ultimate records management guide

Learn more about selecting an electronic records management system for your organization by downloading the Ultimate Guide to Records Management.
Download the eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Records Management.

What is Enterprise Content Management?

What does ECM mean and why is it important?

An Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system enables organizations to securely manage content and information throughout its lifecycle. It enables unstructured information — such as Word documents, PDFs, emails and scanned images — to be securely stored and made accessible to authorized users.

From commercial supply chains to contract management, HR processes to government administration, the driving force behind implementing an ECM solution is to do business more efficiently. By eliminating dependence on paper documents and organizing unstructured information according to business needs, organizations can simplify and streamline work.

Top 5 Elements of ECM

Listening to our customers over the years, we’ve found consistent goals for implementing ECM. Customers commonly rely on ECM to:
  • Decrease dependence on paper and streamline business processes.
  • Drive better customer service and increase productivity.
  • Reduce organizational risk.

Leading ECM solutions, including Laserfiche, accomplish these goals and more. Here are 5 key elements of an ECM solution:
The five key elements of ECM: Capture documents digitally; store documents in a digital repository; retrieve documents regardless of device or location; automate document driven processes; secure documents and reduce organizational risk.

1. Capture documents digitally

Managing an organization’s content begins with the capture and importing of information into a secure digital repository. This can be any kind of document that is created, captured, stored, shared or archived, including:
  • Invoices from vendors.
  • Resumes from job applicants.
  • Contracts.
  • Correspondence.
  • Research reports.

A few methods of capturing these documents include:
  • Using electronic forms to make documents digital from the point of creation.
  • Scanning paper documents to be filed in a digital repository.
  • Managing natively digital content, including Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, photos and videos.
  • Automatically filing and categorizing documents from servers, shared devices and network drives.

Traditional methods of capturing documents require a great deal of effort and expense. Capturing documents in a digital repository eliminates many of the obstacles created by paper: labor-intensive duplication, slow distribution, misplaced originals and the inconvenience of retrieving files from offsite storage.

2. Store documents in a digital repository

With robust ECM systems, organizations can easily store any business-critical document in a digital repository, allowing users to:
  • Decide who can view, edit and create documents.
  • Classify and search for documents based on metadata
  • Organize documents within a flexible folder structure.

The benefits of enterprise content management go far beyond document storage. An ECM system also reduces the time, cost and complexity associated with managing documents that require retention schedules, throughout their life cycle, assisting in efforts to bolster regulatory compliance.

3. Retrieve documents, regardless of device or location

Once an organization’s records have been securely stored, you can:
  • Find any document using full-text search.
  • Identify specific words or phrases within document text, metadata, annotations and entry names.
  • Use preset search options to search by document creation date, the names of users who checked out documents and other metadata.

Enterprise content management software helps eliminate time spent searching for information, enabling employees to answer information requests from clients, citizens and auditors immediately. More than that, staff have instant access to the information required to make better decisions about issues that can your organization’s bottom line.

4. Automate document-driven processes

Automation helps organizations eliminate manual tasks — such as photocopying or even drag-and-dropping digital documents — to achieve greater results with fewer resources. Some ECM systems have digital automation features that can:
  • Automatically route documents to the right people at the right time.
  • Alert staff members when documents require their attention.
  • Recognize errors before they cause delays or make staff redo work.

Every day, businesses need purchase orders signed, records archived and employee vacation requests approved or denied. Automation moves these critical documents through the necessary steps of review and approval, in the order specified. The end result is processes that are more cost-efficient, streamlined and error-free.

5. Secure documents and reduce organizational risk

With strengthening compliance restrictions in a wide range of industries, organizations are increasingly using ECM systems to optimize records management practices and protect against risk. An enterprise content management system must provide customizable security settings to allow organizations to protect information from unauthorized access or modification. These settings should allow you to:
  • Restrict access to folders, documents, fields, annotations and other granular document properties as needed.
  • Monitor system login and logout, document creation and destruction, password changes and more.
  • Protect sensitive metadata by controlling access to information within individual folders, templates and fields.

Leading ECM solutions enable line of business departments to manage user access independently — which means sensitive HR information stays within the HR department, while private financial information stays within the finance department, even if the information is stored in the same repository.

What are some use cases for ECM?

An ECM can assist your organization in a variety of ways. Below are a few examples:
  • Accounts payable: Capture information from invoices and purchaser orders (POs), automate invoice matching and flag mismatches between invoices and POs.
  • Customer and client services: Provide secure, anytime access to documents customers and clients need with online portals hosting digital documents.
  • Remote and off-site work: Give those working from home or in the field the tools, content and services they need to do their jobs effectively.
  • Staffing and recruiting: Streamline approvals, paperwork, and everything else involved in bringing in new talent to your organization.
  • Information governance: Bolster your efforts to keep information secure and in compliance with a set of powerful records management tools.

Customer Spotlight: Learning Arts

Learn how Learning Arts, a company dedicated to the care of children with autism, leveraged ECM to share data about patients with their parents and behavior specialists in real-time to enhance care and programming.

Browse customer reviews of Laserfiche on G2

Get insights from real customers on why Laserfiche is a top choice for organizations looking to further their digital transformation with ECM.
Read more laserfiche reviews

Continue your journey

As you can see, an ECM can help streamline a wide variety of processes. Below are some resources to help you continue exploring solutions to your business challenges.

Schedule a personalized Laserfiche demo

Most ECM platforms include a few of these 5 key elements, but category leaders — like Laserfiche — provide a complete ECM solution, helping your organization dramatically improve business processes. See first hand how Laserfiche can be your solution and schedule a demo.

Discover powerful solutions on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace

Some of the more robust ECM systems, including Laserfiche, offer marketplaces for process templates you can use to jumpstart digital transformation initiatives. To learn more about the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, watch the video below:

 

Explore Laserfiche’s 4 Steps to Innovation

Also be sure to check out the below infographic “Laserfiche 4 Steps to Innovation” to see how Laserfiche users can not only deploy solutions quickly, but get involved with a larger community of innovators.Infographic showing the Laserfiche's four steps to innovation: asking what needs to be automated, seeing how others use Laserfiche, downloading and using solutions and sharing with others.

Evaluate and shop for software more effectively with our buyer’s guide

To learn more about what enterprise content management is and how it works, download the ECM Software Buyer’s guide.
The ECM Software Buyer's Guide - Learn what enterprise content management is, why organizations need it and how to procure the right software for your workplace.

Check out the G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Comparing ECM systems? Compare the top vendors in the space with the G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM):
G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems

3 Top Records Management Challenges (and How to Solve Them)

Records management involves more than safely filing documents. Here are three top records management challenges organizations are facing today.

Making records easily accessible

Making records easier and faster to locate can be a challenge for most organizations, and especially large enterprises.

Organizations can simplify records searches by:
  • Digitizing records for viewing on computers, tablets or smartphones.
  • Applying metadata to records, so that they are instantly searchable by record type.
  • Use saved searches so it’s faster to locate the types of records you frequently search for.
Application window featuring the Laserfiche repository.
Digitizing records and storing them in an ECM repository makes information easily accessible on computers, tablets or smartphones.

Complying with retention schedules

Organizations have a wide range of records retention schedules to comply with based on their industry and the types of records they deal with. Regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the US Department of Labor — among others — can impose strict fines on organizations that fail to follow the rules.

To meet these needs, organizations can enforce consistent, organization-wide records policies with an electronic records management system:
  • Auto-file newly created records according to industry regulations and corporate policies.
  • Set schedules for the retention, transfer and archival of records based on record type.
  • Group records in a series based on retention and disposition schedules.
Application screenshot showing a list of retention schedules.
Laserfiche can automatically retain, transfer and archive records based on the record type.

Preparing for audits

Organizations are frequently subject to audits as they manage records lifecycles. They need to prove to regulators that they retain records in compliance with retention schedules. An ECM system can bolster an organization’s efforts to prepare for an audit, with features that allow them to:
  • Monitor system events, such as login and logout, document creation and destruction, password changes and more.
  • Log user actions taken on smartphones and tablets.
  • Generate audit reports that specify what users changed within a system and when.

For example, investment advisory firm Hanson McClain easily prepares for audits by using Laserfiche records management tools to track the creation, deletion and modification of the documents stored in the repository. Even if a document is deleted, IT can still locate it, find out who deleted it and restore it in the repository.
Application window featuring audit trails.
Laserfiche can track every interaction with documents stored in the repository, including document creation, deletion and modification.

Managing risk for an entire organization can be challenging, but with a solid strategy and the right tools, you can be ready for whatever comes your way.

Looking to make Laserfiche your records management solution? Customers can get started streamlining regulatory processes, such as building permit applications and inspections, quicker than ever with the pre-built workflows offered through the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace.

To learn more about records management challenges organizations can overcome with ECM, get your complimentary copy of The Ultimate Guide to Records Management.
Download the eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Records Management.

How to Securely Email Documents with ECM

What does your organization do to prevent its emails from being hacked?

With massive email security breaches fresh in mind, many organizations share concerns that confidential email attachments can fall into the wrong hands. Here are three tips for using enterprise content management (ECM) software to securely email documents.

Emailing Documents Inside Your Organization

Email attachments can be vulnerable to theft or eavesdropping. If you need to share information with someone inside your organization, emailing a link to the document or folder in Laserfiche is a safe alternative to emailing a physical attachment. This ensures that the information being sent in the email can only be viewed by users with access to the repository.

workflow_subscriber1
Emailing a link to a document in Laserfiche allows organizations to share information while protecting it from unauthorized access.

For example, if an HR department needs to share six different employee onboarding documents with a new staff member, it could email the recipient a link to a repository folder that contains all of the required documents. This method is faster and more secure than sending all of the attachments in a single email.

Emailing Documents Outside Your Organization

If you’re sharing sensitive information with someone outside of your organization, you can rest assured of its confidentiality by emailing the recipient a read-only document link.

With a password-protected public portal, organizations can protect their core ECM repositories by sharing a link to a non-editable version of a document. This method ensures that the recipient is able to view only the information in the repository that he is authorized to see.

For example, if a financial advisory firm needs to share nine different new account opening documents with a client, it can:

  • Publish read-only versions of the documents to a secure public portal
  • Create a password-protected login to the portal that allows the client to only view those nine documents
  • Email the client a link to the public portal, and provide the login credentials in a separate form of correspondence

Emailing Documents that Need to Be Signed

For organizations that need to securely email and collect a signature for a document, integrating ECM with digital signature software can be a reliable method.

Many digital signature tools use screening methods to verify the identity of the person signing the document. For example, Laserfiche integrates with ARX—a digital signature tool that:

  • Validates the integrity of documents by using a digital certificate to verify who is signing the document, what organization the signer is from and when the document was signed
  • Verifies that the recipient has the authority to sign the document by integrating with user directories—such as Microsoft Active Directory—to access a list of approved signers
  • Protects against unauthorized document tampering by storing the digital signature in a centralized and secure hardware device

laserfiche-2_signing
Integrating ECM with a digital signature tool helps organizations easily collect signed documents while ensuring the signing party is the person he claims to be.

By combining ECM with these digital signature authentication features, organizations can protect sensitive documents and verify that the signing party is the person he claims to be.

To learn more about how ECM can help you automate key processes, save time spent locating documents and be better prepared to meet compliance requirements, check out our ECM software buyer’s guide.