- Introduction
InfiniteECM Fax Server Solution provides an enterprise fax solution for sending, receiving, routing, and archiving high volumes of fax documents based on MS Windows© Server Platform 2003, 2008 or above.
Using InfiniteECM Fax Server you can easily merge advanced electronic fax exchange into your existing business processes and information strategies. Employees and customers instantly share business critical documents across and beyond the enterprise. The Fax Server helps your organization improve cash flow by dramatically shortening the cycle of business operations and the results:
- Streamlined information flow for faster communication.
- Increased productivity for administrators and end-users.
- Reduced messaging and business communication costs.
- Improved competitiveness.
- Improved customer loyalty relief.
InfiniteECM Fax Server delivers versatile, high-performance automated fax for any enterprise environment, cutting costs and keeping business-critical documents in motion.
Using the Fax Server powerful automation features, you can accelerate document exchange, improve user and administrator productivity, and substantially reduce fax-related expenses. All of which helps your organization become more efficient and profitable.
- Friendly User Interface & Bilingual Interface
For ease of use in any client environment and in any location, InfiniteECM Fax Server comes in bilingual interface (English/Arabic) that offers a full range of interface choices it simplifies sending, receiving, and storing faxes for in-office users of InfiniteECM.
InfiniteECM Fax Server boosts productivity and cuts messaging costs by unifying fax and email by providing a versatile tool for automated reception and transmission of faxes, incoming or outgoing from the system with ease and efficiency.
- Fax Management & Multiple Fax Lines
InfiniteECM Fax Server provides centralized or decentralized fax management interface(s) to control multiple fax lines through regular Fax Modems or Fax Boards for sending and receiving faxes from and to multiple sources controlled by the InfiniteECM Fax Server(s) and components.
- Fax Receiving
When a new fax has been received through the InfiniteECM Fax Server, it will detects the incoming RID (Receiver ID – Receiving Fax Line) and SID (Sender ID – If available) and it will automatically route that Fax to the pre-specified document type library and related person.
- E-Mail Notifications
InfiniteECM Fax Server can be integrated with MS-Exchange so that incoming Fax notification can be configured to notify certain users about the reception of new faxes. In addition the system is capable of proving email notification about outgoing faxes status to the user that originated the fax in the first place.
- Incoming Fax Distribution (Internal Simple Workflow)
Using the InfiniteECM Incoming Fax Router, the system will be able to map any address book contact to the required document type library inside InfiniteECM system using a simple easy to use interface in addition to ability to assign the default recipient person he will be notified about the new incoming Fax and will be able to re-send it again to the next person using the system built-in simple routing/workflow engine or by the e-mail client.
- Universal Address Book
Using InfiniteECM address book, the authorized system users will be able to add entries representing contact information including contact name, phone number, fax number, and email address…etc for all contracts of the organization divided into groups and accessed centrally by all authorized persons.
- Fax Sending
When a user needs to send a Fax from within the system, all he has to do is to upload the fax message file (i.e. Word file) to the client system then indicate the name of the recipient(s) from the Universal Address Book and finally send the fax.
InfiniteECM Fax Server will queue all outgoing faxes on the server to be send automatically or optionally can hold fax sending until get administrator approval before the actual transmission takes place.
- Fax Mail Merge (Electronic Files)
InfiniteECM Fax Server adopts the full featured mail merge technology needed to send a Fax Letter to large number of recipients at the same time within the minimum time and efforts by defining a template file (i.e. Word file) including the fax text, logos, images and signatures as well as variable fields or book marks (i.e. Recipient Name, Fax Number, Title & etc) then InfiniteECM Fax Server will handle the full operation to merge the data and generates the final fax letter for each recipient and sending it automatically.
- Content Search (Optical Character Recognition)
Using the optional component “InfiniteECM OCR Server – Full Text Search Engine” the system can provide the users with ability to search within the Text of the incoming Faxes using any word or phrase comes in the Fax Subject or Body (Multiple Language OCR Engine is available i.e. English Arabic, French and etc).
Note: The OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Technology is used to convert the received Faxes from solid images to a searchable text.
- Search for all Faxes by Indexes
The authorized users can use the InfiniteECM Client to search & retrieve all stored fax letters (Received or sent) according to document type library and by the filled-out indexes or composite of them (i.e. Fax Receive Date and/or Party Name and/or Fax Subject and etc).
The output search results can be exported or printed out as report and the individual faxes can be viewed, printed out, send by workflow engine to another user or send by email according to the privileges granted to the current system’s user that by the system’s administrator.
- Retrieve Faxes from Web Interface
Using InfiniteECM Web Light Viewer the users can be retrieve and navigate the stored faxes using the Intranet or Internet network from any place without need to install any software on the client PC.
Gartner deconstructs the mega-vendors.
In a highly informative session at Gartner Symposium on the Gold Coast yesterday, analyst Dennis Gaughan gave a broad overview of the strategic direction of the world’s largest application vendors IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, with some strong recommendations as to how CIOs should engage with each of them.
Combined, the four vendors have US$100 billion at their disposal to influence CIO decisions, he said, but end users needed to ensure they mastered their own destiny by using each of the vendors selectively.
IBM
Gaughan characterised IBM as primarily a services business that uses its professional services arm to “pull through” product sales.
The company capitalises on extensive customer relationships in key verticals like consumer goods, retail and financial services, he said, possessing a great account management structure. “IBM is great at penetrating its install base with new products,” he said.
IBM pitches itself as a thought leader with marketing campaigns such as ‘Smarter Planet’, he said. But most inquiries to Gartner from CIOs interested in working with IBM focused on contract negotiation – understanding the terms and variability of what is licensed, what is negotiable, whether multi-year discounts are available, and whether the CIO can leverage a large IT spend to get a good deal.
“The number one question is: how do you avoid being managed by IBM? Their account managers are very good at influencing strategy,” he noted, whereas a better relationship should be a ‘partner’ or ‘collaborative’ approach.
Looking ahead, Gaughan said IBM was exposing itself to significant levels of risk by moving up the stack from architecture into applications, as exemplified by its acquisition of Sterling Commerce.
“IBM was always selling software tools and hardware, but would shy away from being in the software applications business,” he said. “We are starting to see IBM compete directly with SAP and Oracle around business applications – especially with Sterling Commerce or business analytics and optimisation.
“The challenge IBM has is that they generate enormous revenue from partnering with Oracle and SAP,” he noted. “IBM makes US$15 to US$20 billion a year alone in implementing, hosting, and managing SAP landscapes for its customers. They have to sort out how to compete and cooperate to not impact that significant revenue stream.”
MICROSOFT
Gaughan said Microsoft was clear about its strategy, but less than transparent with customers when it came to software licensing.
“This is a platform story,” he said, describing Microsoft’s strategy. “They are a platform company first and foremost. They continually ask themselves, how do we drive platform and how do we protect our cash cows, Office and Windows?
When approaching Microsoft, consider that Windows is the core – and Microsoft will do everything to protect that core.”
New functionality and integration is drip fed through to users of the core Windows, Office and SharePoint platforms, he noted, using the example of Lync (unified communications) integration, which “drives value into investments customers have already made,” but CIOs should be mindful that this again only aims to protect the core.
That core platform is under attack, he noted, by Apple in the operating system world – which will become more mobile-centric over time, and by Google in the desktop applications space.
“Google is going after Office, mail and collaboration,” he said. “These are Microsoft’s crown jewels.”
Further, he noted that developer communities are “building momentum” on platforms removed from .Net and Windows.
He expects Microsoft to lose market share in 2012 and 2013 as this attack intensifies.
There is room for growth for Microsoft in the cloud, mobile and business applications markets, he noted.
Azure was mature and marketed aggressively, he said, Microsoft Dynamics (business applications) had potential among larger clients (assuming an adjustment in the vendor’s channel strategy), whilst SharePoint continues to dominate enterprise interest in the vendor.
He advised CIOs to consider migration to Windows 7, Office 2010 and SharePoint 10, but said they should only consider Windows 8 for tablet deployments in the short and medium term, and take extreme caution before deployment of Office365.
“Don’t make the mistake of slipping into an all-Microsoft strategy,” he said. “Sometimes you can go too far. Be considerate how much you’re investing with them.”
ORACLE
Gaughan was uncompromising in his assessment of Oracle, one of the most acquisitive vendors in the IT industry.
The company’s “aggressive” sales staff promote an ‘integrated suite’ of products borne of those acquisitions, he said, but the reality is that the company rarely actually provides integration points when compared to rival SAP.
“Just because I am buying multiple products from Oracle, it doesn’t mean it will come pre-integrated,” he said.
Oracle is not looking for where integration is possible but where it is profitable, he said.
“Oracle’s marketing phrase is ‘engineered systems to work together’. But it should be ‘engineered systems to buy together’. It’s a bundling on paper, not in the architecture.
“Total integration across the portfolio… won’t provide software license growth for investors. Profitability influences and colours every aspect of Oracle’s product strategy. Oracle offers a collection of products that might be best of breed, but in most cases the integration burden will always remain with you.”
Oracle is also notoriously evasive when it comes to long-term product roadmaps, he said, fearing cannibalising sales of its existing applications. The long-vaunted, late release of Fusion Applications was a case-in-point.
“Fusion Applications is a big part of their growth strategy, without freezing the market for their existing applications, without it being seen to replace what they have already got.”
Oracle will actively ensure that Fusion Apps is “not at a maturity level for customers to see it as a replacement” to apps they have already purchased, he said.
“Maintenance is king for Oracle – they generate a tonne of money on maintenance revenue,” he said.
“Maintenance accounts for 92 percent of Oracle’s profitability – and they wont do anything to disrupt that maintenance stream. So if you are considering Fusion Apps, you need to continually look to their roadmaps to consider longer-term strategy for the products you have already invested in. Unfortunately, Oracle isn’t always the best at disclosing long-term roadmaps, and maintenance isn’t a guarantee of future investment.”
Oracle’s strategy does make sense for customers in highly profitable, volume businesses, Gaughan said. He was especially fond of the company’s strategy to build tuned database and analytics appliances, and he has no doubt the company may one day build pre-tuned appliances for specific applications.
The vendor’s back flip on provision of cloud computing services was warranted, Gaughan said, but he advised customers to “tread lightly”. He noted that internally, the vendor’s own staff were not 100 percent sure of the company’s commitment to the cloud model.
CIOs most commonly approach Gartner to ask questions about integration between Oracle products and to seek advice on complex and aggressive contract negotiations with the vendor
“Strangely, you report they are the most difficult vendor to deal with, but it doesn’t prevent you from spending more money with them,” Gaughan noted. “It hasn’t changed your behaviour.”
SAP
Gaughan described SAP as a company with a “profitable application base that produces recurring revenue.”
The company had invested wisely in Business Objects (analytics), Sybase (mobility) and its HANA in-memory database technology.
But whilst the SAP core was well integrated, Gaughan said some acquired products required further integration work.
SAP’s strategy was aimed at transitioning its application customers off Oracle database and onto SAP infrastructure, he said.
“SAP is one of Oracle’s largest database resellers – and is naturally interested in lessening its reliance on Oracle.”
Pilot customers of HANA had reported that the in-memory technology enabled “dramatic performance gains”, but once SAP told the customer how much the technology would cost in production, they struggled to make a business case for deployment.
“SAP haven’t sorted out the pricing,” he said. “It has given customers pause.”
One of SAP’s other big challenges is that it has largely exhausted the opportunity to upgrade existing customers from R/3 to Business Suite. Gartner estimates that 70 percent of customers have made the transition. “New revenue from that strategy is largely over, and that will impact total license revenue,” Gaughan said.
Further, SAP customers had proven reluctant to take up modular ‘packs’ that add functionality to the suite and extra revenue to SAP.
Gartner was most often approached by SAP customers to get a better understanding of software licensing.
“SAP has interesting licensing terms for getting data in and out of the system for use in other applications,” he said. That complexity needs to be understood by any CIO adopting SAP for the first time.
He recommends existing SAP customers use any purchase of new SAP solutions as an opportunity to bargain on the maintenance being paid for support of existing infrastructure.
“I would lock in maintenance rates now, as SAP will be aggressive into the future,” he predicted.
General observations
Gaughan said none of the four vendors are “re-imagining” IT, as per the theme of the Gartner conference.
“You won’t find innovation in their product portfolio,” he said. “You might find it if you try and talk to the research parts of these organisations.
“I would argue that a lot of what they are trying to do is keep status quo and find ways to increase share of wallet. There isn’t an innovation agenda. They have to think about investors. If they get on the leading edge, it exposes and impacts them on the short-term.”
Managing the vendors was a full-time role, he said.
“These four organisations have US$100 billion to wage the war for your wallet,” Gaughan said. “You need to take control and not let them manage you. You need to build out our own strategic application roadmap, focusing on what your business goals are, and find what products suit, rather than wait for the app roadmaps of the vendors.”
He warned against the mentality that “I am an SAP/Microsoft/Oracle/IBM shop, and it drives everything I do.”
“You need to create a discipline within team for managing vendor relationships. And while it makes sense to use less vendors, you must always have an exit strategy.”
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Free Brava Reader:
- the policies and procedures are baked
- taxonomies and file plans have been developed
- the content management system has been customized and is ready to implement
- training has been developed
- even audit questionnaires have been made ready.
Business divisions are happy that will be “compliant” with managing information.
Legal is delighted that it can finally locate documents when it needs them.
Technology is relieved that the system testing went as designed (for the most part).
Consultants on the project are notching it off as a success.
Management is checking one thing off their compliance to-do list.
Yet, the ECM/EDMS manager is deep in thought.
The ECM/EDMS manager knows that this was just phase zero. The real success of the ECM/EDMS will be gauged by the success of the deployment and eventual use of the tools by the end users. Getting users to use the system, maintaining content types, adding new ones, updating templates, updating content workflows, developing new procedures etc. means that the work is just starting. But as history has shown time and again, enterprise content management projects rarely work as designed over the longer term. Millions of dollars have been spent, countless hours used up, months and years gone by, but still triumph eludes large-scale ECM projects. But what is wrong with this picture? Why do so many ECM projects start, ramp up, and eventually get put on the back burner either for lack of adoption or (worst of all) because the system never really added value to the business or satisfied its original intent?
Yes, even today, some ECM/EDMS implementation projects continue to tread the same path, hoping for better luck. Requirements are analyzed at enterprise level, vendor evaluations are conducted, ECM packages are procured, teams are hired, and the system is customized to fit the enterprise-level needs, and, at some point in time, scope is reevaluated to retrofit the timelines. Indeed, this model may work great when a focused requirement, for example, a specific Web content management project is to be implemented. When undertaking a company-wide ECM project, however, the traditional model is not always the most optimal. Consider the case when an organization has several geographically distributed offices, a multitude of IT systems, disparate business processes, and all levels of employee skill sets. Just attempting to get a common set of ECM/EDMS requirements across the enterprise is well nigh impossible, let alone having to implement a standard and consistent set of systems and processes across the entire organization.
Models with a Twist
Large-scale content management implementation requires a great deal of planning and understanding not just of the underlying business processes but also of organizational culture, philosophy, and strong knowledge of how similar enterprise-wide projects have fared. Given the ever-increasing focus on optimization of time, cost, resources, and effort, there are several alternatives that content management architects and program managers can evaluate. The following are variations of typical ECM/EDMS implementation model for consideration.
Risk-based View – Determine high risk areas across the various content/document sources and content/document types within the organization. Focus the energies of the ECM/EDMS implementation on these high risk areas. Consider the classic case of managing employee files. Typically most organizations will have an HR system to manage HR related transactions. However HR still needs to create a large and sometimes complex set of documents; many of which are highly confidential with non-public privation information (NPI) data in them. The underlying HR business processes need a tight set of security and access controls coupled with audit trails, chain of custody, and rigorous workflows. Now add to that various federal, state, and local laws and regulations that govern how these documents (records) should be managed and retained, which further increases the inherent risk to the organization of not having proper controls. By prioritizing such business functions and areas within the organization and then applying ECM/EDMS best practices to them, one can plan for a better risk-reward scenario.
Lines-of-Business View – Instead of taking the big bang, all or nothing, company-wide approach, determine what lines of businesses benefit the most from an ECM/EDMS implementation. Not all divisions within a large and distributed organization are created equal and each line-of-business has its own “management style,” processes and divisional sub-culture. In many cases the systems are siloed within the line-of-business and are rarely integrated. The reality is that most organizations still operate within these organizational boundaries. Given this scenario it makes it worthwhile in some cases to develop a cost-benefit analysis of implementing ECM/EDMS in each of the major lines-of-business and then implementing in only those areas where there is sound justification of doing so. Lines-of-businesses that would enhance their operational efficiencies, better compliance through the ECM/EDMS implementations, etc. are clearly the better candidates. These divisions are also more likely to commit to the required time, cost, and resources during the implementation and then ensuring ongoing conformance by establishing follow up policies, governance processes and procedures, and training for their respective personnel.
Macro Business View – A typical ECM/EDMS implementation addresses a number of aspects such as document imaging, forms processing, content tagging and indexing, user collaboration, document management, Web content management, records management, enterprise search, digital asset management, etc. Some implementations attempt to cram most or even all of these aspects into one implementation. While this may work in smaller implementations, doing the “full menu” at the enterprise level is fraught with all sorts of crevices and pitfalls. With the increasing focus on newer ways of collaborating and exchanging information, there are even more uncertainties around what components need to be implemented. It is well suited for ECM/EDMS architects and planners to really step back, take a look at what the enterprise really needs at a macro- and at a strategic-level, and then implement only those aspects of ECM/EDMS that are truly needed. Avoiding the temptation of “we can squeeze it in” may be well advised in this particular scenario. If needed, the implementation can proceed in discrete phases and iteratively address pieces that complement the overall implementation goal.
User-Focused View – Focus on user collaboration and end user ways of working to determine the ECM/EDMS implementation approach. In a traditional model the implementation focuses more on business requirements and not so much on user processes and interfaces. A different perspective is to focus from the outside-in, i.e., rather than taking the standard information architecture view, leverage the knowledge of working with users to determine how the implementation should be structured. In this approach one starts with understanding:
• how users work
• what the various groups and roles are
• how the work products are managed
• how business processes are executed
• interactions between systems and users
• key usage metrics
• what checks and controls need to be developed.
In a way this approach truly emphasizes the end user adoption of ECM/EDMS implementation by giving users what they have always wanted—a set of information management systems and processes that are geared towards how they work and not a system that is super sophisticated but yet is too rigid and too inflexible towards their needs.
Content/Document Type View – Typically, assessing and inventorying the content types will be one of the first few steps performed in any implementation. Once the list of content and document types is known at the enterprise level, a model that is based on these types can be developed. The content architects working closely with business, legal, and compliance can then make a determination of what subset of content types to implement. As an example: the contract document type might be a high value/high benefit when managed at the enterprise level as frequently contracts may be required across divisions, offices, and perhaps even jurisdictions. The selection of content types can be performed using any number of factors ranging from their impact to the business, to operational efficiencies to compliance and discovery benefits and so on. Once the subset of content types is settled upon (easier said than done) one can start to develop strategies and approach to managing them.
Business Process View – The business process view is based on identifying the input/outputs within key business processes steps and managing the content/documents in accordance with the ECM/EDMS requirements. While this may seem obvious in many cases, sometimes determining content and the relationship between content and process steps and then across various business processes may not be that easy. In many cases the same piece of information may be manipulated across many different processes and finding the source and destination may be non-trivial. In the same vein, sometimes finding business processes to associate with content itself becomes a complicated task. In either case, taking a business process view is a lot more straightforward than other options as most organizations will have a list of business processes available along with associated procedures, manuals, process flows, etc., from which one can quickly glean a good perspective on the universe of information within that organization.
Application/Systems View – In this approach the focus is on particular applications/systems within the organization. One can develop content/document management solution on top of a cluster of system applications. For example; an EDMS system could be built that interfaces with HR and Finance systems to manage the underlying content and documents in these systems, such that they are ECM/EDMS-enabled. This way one has end-to-end control on all data associated with that set of applications. This model may be applicable to organizations that have a few core business applications/systems from which the bulk of the documents are generated and thus enabling these applications with content and document management capabilities really complements both the business, legal, compliance, and operational aspects of information management.
Conclusion
A content/document management implementation need not follow the standard cookie cutter approach. Instead in times of cost cutting and optimization, organizations must start to look outside the ECM/EDMS box for information management approaches that mitigate key risks but without the need for massive amounts of time, funding, and resources.
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