VeBridge Blog

Death and Taxes…and Change

September 9th, 2011 by Elizabeth Lucas, VeBridge Vice President of Strategic Markets

There are two certainties in life, as the saying goes, death and taxes. To this list, there should be added a third…change. When recently approached to speak at a national conference later this month regarding managing change, I jumped at the chance. Why? Because change is the essence of our culture. With a prevalent and systemic attitude of get on board or get out of my way, change permeates every facet of our lives.

At VeBridge, change came home in August. We said goodbye to Tom Musgrave, hello to Rob Gower, and anxiously anticipate a move to a new location.

After a decade with VeBridge Tom, a senior account executive, retired. With a promise to spend more time with his family, (particularly his grandson), hit the links, and enjoy volunteer work, Tom is welcoming his new found free time. He left his legacy here at VeBridge touching more than half of our 230 customers. We wish him every happiness as he embarks on his new journey enjoying the change it brings to his life.

As we say goodbye to one employee, another receives greetings. Rob Gower joined VeBridge on August 29^th. With nine years of marketing and sales experience, Rob brings a wealth of knowledge to his new role as the Strategic Markets Manager. You may recognize his name as he spent time working with the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. A Lexington resident, Rob, and his new wife Jess, spend their free time working with the Mercer County Band and Color Guard. So, if you’re at a football game or a band competition this fall and Mercer County is playing, you’re likely to see Rob! We extend a warm welcome to Rob and know he will add instant value to our team and to our customers.

Last, but not least, VeBridge is moving! After almost 10 years in our downtown location, we have outgrown our space! We are planning, coordinating, and fretting…mostly planning. Our estimated date of arrival in our new location is the end of October. Change is definitely upon us! Where are we moving? Would you like to guess? Send your best guess to info@vebridge.com. All correct responses received by September 15^thwill be eligible for a drawing to receive an iPad! (A hint: “Nay, it’s not downtown!”)

The third certainty in life, change, is sometimes scary, sometimes exciting, and sometimes somewhat daunting. We hope you join us in celebrating the changes we’re making at Team VeBridge to better serve our customers and our community.

I Thought I Bought a Cheeseburger but…

August 1st, 2011 by Elizabeth Lucas, VeBridge Vice President of Strategic Markets

There you are – sitting in your car – pulling away from the drive-thru window. You masterfully merge out onto the interstate, open the bag, and there’s a fish sandwich. Not a problem, except for the fact that you ordered a double cheeseburger. Or did you? An analogy stretch in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution world, or is it?

In the day and age when Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions are packaged and sold without understanding the underlying business issues and driving organizational need behind the purchase, what you see isn’t necessarily what you get. So, shop (and order) carefully.

How do I know if the vendor understands what I need?

If the vendor says to you, “this will work, it works for all of our customers – let me bag it up for you”, then run while you can. Worthwhile ECM solutions are not “one-size-fits-all” and, more often than not, an off-the-shelf solution may not be the fit you’re looking for.

Partner with vendors who are willing to invest time upfront in the discovery process to understand who, what, when, where, how and why you do things the way you do. This interactive process has a number of benefits. First, the vendor understands the processes most critical to your business and can leverage best practices and procedures harvested from other projects in your implementation. Additionally, you ensure your organization is taking advantage of the various functions and features the technology affords, while simultaneously increasing efficiency and materially lowering costs. Also, the implemented solution is configured to meet your needs rather than changing the way you do business to accommodate the solution. Finally, until the vendor knows the intricacies of your problems and processes, they can’t say, “sorry, our solution just isn’t a fit.” (Imagine hearing that!) In other words, you won’t have a lingering bad taste in your mouth after your needs assessment experience.

Is cost an issue?

Usually. But the old adage, you get what you pay for certainly applies in the ECM world. Make coupon clippers proud by validating the total cost of ownership includes, at a minimum, project management, software, hardware, implementation services (document capture, application training, go-live support, etc.), conversion services (if applicable), and support services (both during implementation and thereafter). Pricing will vary – even the playing field and make sure you’re comparing apples to apples, or in our case cheeseburgers to cheeseburgers.

Talk to existing customers.

Due diligence as a purchaser means minimizing your organization’s risk. This can be accomplished any number of ways and reference checking is critical. You might ask friends about favorite places to dine in the area or request a taste test before going all in on your selection (maybe not in the burger world but definitely in the ice cream world), so why not take the time to contact vendor references? It is imperative that you understand the scope of the work performed by the vendor for that specific project. So, ask questions and then ask more questions. This is as close as you’ll get to seeing if it will work for you before you implement a solution of your own. And if you really want to see the vendor at work, then visit their offices. See how they do what they do. In this case, seeing is believing!

Purchasing an ECM is an investment – one that is worth spending the necessary time upfront to ensure the right solution is selected. From discovery to reference checking, the time it takes to perform these tasks is necessary and critical to project success. If you want and need a cheeseburger, buy a cheeseburger. If you need a fish sandwich, buy a fish sandwich. Don’t get “on the road” and be surprised by what’s in the bag.

Darkest Before Dawn

July 5th, 2011 by Elizabeth Lucas, VeBridge Vice President of Strategic Markets

Does “darkest before dawn” describe your organization’s view with respect to migrating off legacy imaging and file systems? Has your existing document management system vendor ridden off into the sunset? Is your existing system on its figurative or literal “last leg”? You are not alone. Many early DMS adopters now contemplating a transition to a new enterprise content management system are apprehensive about the transformational shift. And yet, the realization is imminent – the way of doing business today is not working – it’s costly – and hugely inefficient.

In our experience, organizations continue to struggle with the following challenges:

· Growing maintenance fees for legacy systems representing only a small percentage licenses used

· Resource and time drain created by manual processes and workarounds

· Lack of resources to effectively plan migration and validation efforts

· Zero visibility into “ginormous” volumes of data tucked away in disparate systems

· Compliance issues resulting from requirements to retain records indefinitely

· Legal and business risk and implications resulting from sensitive data being stored insecurely

· Fears that current content will not be properly and completely moved to a new system, leaving the organization at risk

· Doing more with less – significantly less, but continuing to maintain quality and increase customer satisfaction

What to do? Find a partner experienced in moving clients from legacy document management systems to modern Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. Your organization will reap the benefits nearly instantaneously – adding dollars to the bottom line, limiting migration costs, streamlining operations, minimizing process inefficiencies, and achieving regulatory compliance.

Organizations that have upgraded to newer, more robust ECM solutions have seen:

· A return on investment in 3-9 months – real money created by eliminating the cash drain caused by manual processes riddled with naturally occurring errors

· Redeployment of resources through task and process automation

· Transparent data and processes – management visibility never “seen” before

· Improved regulatory compliance with organized, accessible digital business records

· Decreased legal and business liability

· Elimination of custom modifications produced using technology that is no longer supported

· Reinvigorated functionality provided by a vendor that is making major investments in ECM rather than operating customer harvests

The sun will inevitably rise and the darkness will dissipate. Is your organization ready?

Did I just buy my ECM from a Hammer looking for a Nail?

June 7th, 2011 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO

I used to love shopping with my dad. He was an uber-geek before it was fashionable. He would take me to the coolest stores; Sears hardware department, Radio Shack, and Tandy (when they sold electronics). My dad would ask the sales associate a question. Upon receiving the answer, he could sometimes be heard muttering, “another hammer looking for a nail!” One day I asked him to explain. He told me there was an old saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything you see is a nail.” He further explained what would happen if you used a hammer to pound in a screw. Bad idea.

His point was some sales people couldn’t hear your question because they only knew how to sell what they had, and didn’t want to walk away from a sale. Half the time, we would walk out of the store without making a purchase, and my dad would confide that he saw exactly what he was looking for on the shelf, but he’d be darned if he would buy it from the “hammer salesman.”

We see this same behavior too often in the ECM world. The sales representative has a cloud solution, so that’s what the rep pitches. Or they have a scan/retrieve system with weak or no workflow. So that’s what the rep pitches.

I had a customer who was replacing their ill-fitting ECM system. He and I discussed the fact that he had bought his ECM from a hammer looking for a nail. He got it right away. Then he posed the big question. “How could I have known?” My answer was almost too simple for him to fathom. I answered, “The lack of discovery.”

Turns out the sales rep he had bought from scheduled a demo and slide show as their first meeting. Didn’t ask any questions. Just showed my future customer what he was selling and closed him. We went to the company’s web site and, lo and behold, they had only one product to sell.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not just a sales problem. There’s a buying problem here, too. I can’t tell you how many times we have received calls from buyers who want “a demo and proposal” for an ECM system. We explain that our first meeting is for discovery. Unless we understand what problems they are trying to solve, we can’t even guess what product, if any, is the right one.

The moral of this story is that ECM isn’t simple. Not all problems whose solution is ECM are the same. And not all business problems can be solved with ECM. If the company you are considering buying an ECM system from doesn’t insist on a fairly thorough discovery session prior to determining the direction they should take with respect to solutions, move on. You can’t afford to buy an ECM from a hammer looking for a nail.

Whipping up a Successful Project

May 3rd, 2011 by Elizabeth Lucas, VeBridge Vice President of Strategic Markets

If project management was like cooking, we’d all be Paula Deen or Emeril Lagasse. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. But there are common ingredients that make managing projects much more palatable. Hungry for more? Read on for the basic recipe necessary to take the bite out of your next project.

If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen.

In 2009 the Standish Group reported…

· 32% of IT projects were considered successful (completed on time, on budget, and with the required features/functions)

· 24%, nearly one in four, were considered failures (cancelled before complete or delivered, but never used)

· 44% were challenged (finished late, over budget or with fewer than the required features/functions)

The Fallen Soufflé.

Projects fail for a number of reasons. At the top of the list are lack of user involvement, long or unrealistic timeframes, poor or no requirements, scope creep, no change control system, and poor testing. Understanding the obstacles you face when beginning a project is the key to overcoming them.

Key Ingredients.

Forget Betty Crocker. There’s no such thing as a pinch of this or a pinch of that when you’re talking about project success. You need it all, you need equal parts of each, and in no particular order. Executive support, user involvement, project management, clear business objectives, minimized scope, and formal methodology are all critical components of successful projects.

The Recipe.

As is most things, it’s the start that stops most people and managing projects is no exception. You definitely need a project schedule outlining project direction, tasks, resources, timelines/milestones and deliverables. Make sure to set expectations at project kickoff – for all team members. Reinforcing and updating expectations as the project progresses is also a must.

Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew.

It’s your kitchen and you are the chef. Should you choose to accept the challenge, wearing that fluffy white hat means you are responsible for managing the project contract, financials, communication (internal & external), schedule, resources, and issues. Knowing when to do it yourself and when to hire an expert is also important. If managing projects is not a cornerstone of your business then hiring a caterer may be in order! When hiring, make sure you employ a project management professional (PMP) - these folks are highly trained and “seasoned”! VeBridge requires project managers to secure PMP status before undertaking any project. BAM!

Tools of the Trade.

While a Kitchen Aid mixer may be shiny and quite handy, it’s not the tool we need. To manage your project to success, you need at a minimum:

· Project Charter – The project blueprint.

· Requirements Definition Document – What are the business requirements and how are we meeting them?

· Communication Plan – Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How will information be communicated?

· Training Plan – Address training needs, change management – what behavior are you affecting?

· Change Control Document/Process – If it’s not documented, it didn’t happen!

· Risk, Issue, Jeopardy Tracking/Resolution Process – Conflict happens, be proactive.

· Financials – The bottom line.

· Methodology – Solid, repeatable, proven.

Ding. Are We Done Yet?

The timer goes off, the project is complete. But don’t leave the kitchen yet. The project cleanup should include a lessons learned session – what went well, what didn’t, what should we change next time? Additionally, if there’s another project on the horizon, start the planning now.

Managing projects is not an exact science – it’s an art, much like cooking. By understanding the challenges, getting started, preparing the ingredients, selecting the right tools, and espousing the right attitude we can all emulate the kitchen craftsmanship exhibited by Paula Dean and Emeril Lagasse when managing our projects. Have no fear… take that bite!

Sustainability: It’s That Easy!

April 4th, 2011 by Elizabeth Lucas, VeBridge Vice President of Strategic Markets

If going green were as easy as clicking the red “Easy” button, we’d have all done it by now. With Earth Day quickly approaching, we are all motivated to find ways to conserve and preserve our world for many generations to come. In the work environment, where paper and other recyclable materials abound, we are constantly challenged to find ways to re-use materials. More and more employees and organizations alike are moving to a more paperless environment.

The statistics are staggering…

· An average office employee prints more than 10,000 pages per year

· Around $4 billion dollars are spent each year in the US to purchase 4 million tons of paper for business purposes

· The average employee prints 6 wasted pages per day – totaling 1,410 pages per year

· Over 400 billion pages are on file…92 billion are added annually

· Over 775 billion pages are generated annually by computers – what, seriously…why?

Sound overwhelming? Let’s simplify and make it easy. Think about what would result if every organization replaced just one paper-based business process. Just one. Rewards would be recognized from both an employee’s perspective as well as an organization’s perspective. Making work easier and steps repeatable, increasing employee satisfaction, eliminating cumbersome manual workarounds, and adding to the bottom line would be just a few benefits that could be readily achieved in this transition from paper to paperless.

Why wait? Pick a process, any manual, paper-intensive process, and automate today. Taking one step in the right direction toward a more paperless environment…it’s that easy. The earth thanks you.

ECM: Fish or Cut Bait?

March 10th, 2011 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO

The bean counters seem to be leading the technology wave in Britain. The Accounts Payable folks are moving ahead with an attitude of Fish or Cut Bait!

In an article on www.accountingweb.com, the UK bean counters are swimming in a land with no paper.

“In a recent article on the site, practitioner Kevin Salter urged fellow accountants to ’hurry up and get on with it!’ Consultants Charles Verrier, Simon Hurst and Jon Milburn from ScanWorx have all made similar points in articles. Judging from the responses to the site’s paperless debates and our latest poll, AccountingWEB members have heeded the calls to ditch their filing cabinets and go electronic.”

The most interesting news is this: A survey sent to the British AP group revealed that one in seven respondents had first-hand electronic document management experience. Of those surveyed, 26% declared themselves totally committed to the paperless office.

Wow! And the best part: “…The UK accountancy profession has entered what industry analyst Gartner calls the ‘slope of enlightenment,’ a period of less widely trumpeted, but more commercially successful technology adoption.”

That’s not to say that the group didn’t have their negative feelings about ECM: 40% said paper would never be completely removed from accounting. To an extent, I think they are right. We as a group love paper. We love to touch it. It serves as reminders or markers. Many people prefer to read documents on paper and not on a screen.

What does this mean to us (US)? With the implementation of technology solutions encompassing workflow, organizations are now, more than ever, embracing the notion of a more paperless work environment. So, the days of paper as a driver of our work are coming to a close. In essence? Fish or cut bait.

http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/topic/paperless-processes-take-hold-accountancy/408111

Got ECM?

February 8th, 2011 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO

Got ECM?

Remember when the “Got Milk?” advertising blitz began? The campaign cleverness and branding leverage created a spinoff advertising frenzy still alive today. We thought; why not apply the same concept to Enterprise Content Management (ECM)? Have you got ECM? If not, here’s why you should…

Make Sneakernet a thing of the past.

The invoice comes in. The data is entered. The copies are made. The inter-office envelopes are addressed. The paper-chase has begun! Are you kidding me? When speed, responsiveness and the currency on which business reach exponential growth, why are we putting up with this? Not only are our mundane work-flows primarily paper-based, so are our mission critical ones! This needs to be a thing of the past. GET ECM!

Reduce labor costs instantly.

No more employees going to the file cabinet, walking by the water cooler, talking the water cooler talk, forgetting where they’re going, walking back to their desk and then suddenly remembering what they were doing in the first place.

Provide immediate access to documents.

Wait no longer! In a time where information silos are no longer fashionable in a business environment, critical records must be available and accessible 24X7. All documents should be at your fingertips.

Eliminate time-consuming document filing and retrieval.

No more stacks on the desk to be filed and then reaching out to the intern to file your most sacred of documents because your full-time employees don’t have time to file.

Implement disaster recovery plan immediately.

Worry no longer about what you will do if there is a fire or a flood! Your documents are electronic now and are backed up as well. Your organization’s historical knowledge is protected.

Provide answers quickly!

“I’ll need to pull the file and call you back”, will be a saying of the past. Answering inquiries from customers, vendors, auditors are a snap when information is located in one place.

Email documents right from your computer.

No more searching through filing cabinets or email archives looking for the impossible needle in a haystack. Within seconds documents can be located and thereafter emailed in a few additional seconds.

Retire your copier and your courier.

There’s no reason to copy documents now! It’s all at your fingertips. You can send it electronically. And there’s certainly no reason to transport those hefty boxes anymore.

Sweat no longer necessary.

Don’t sweat the small stuff takes on a whole new meaning. No more lost of misfiled documents! You KNOW where your documents are and you can produce information at a moment’s notice.

Improve information sharing.

Sharing is no longer an option – it’s an expectation. People have access to the same information at the same time and even concurrently!

SAVE MONEY!

Putting a price tag on: labor-intensive manual processes, lack of information sharing, the lost and misfiled documents, the angst you experience when the auditor requests a document and you can’t find it, the copier and courier, the time you spend looking through your electronic files searching for the document you need, the employees who are sitting and waiting around for someone internally to track down a document, the bottle neck in one department in duplicating documents so others can have access, and those endless trips by the water cooler. It’s expensive. ECM is priceless.

Got ECM? How can you not?

Dirty Little Secret

January 7th, 2011 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO

The All American Rejects cashed in on it. So has the Imaging Service Bureau industry. In fact, the American Rejects’ lines – “Just to waste my time with you. Tell me all that you’ve thrown away” – are quite apropos.

When I started VeBridge almost thirteen years ago, I was SHOCKED to find out what Service Bureaus across the country were throwing away. I was more shocked to find out that they either didn’t disclose this loss of content to their clients or, worse still, didn’t know they were destroying content. It is our industry’s dirty little secret. Let me explain.

The dirty deed is done on jobs that are partially duplex. If a job is all single-sided or all duplex, there’s not a problem. It’s the jobs where some percent of the content is double-sided. Clients don’t want to pay for, or receive the blank sides of the simplex pages. There are three common methods for Imaging Service Bureaus to process partial duplex jobs:

1. During document preparation, a prepper looks at every page of a batch and manually flags duplex pages. Then, the scanner is set for simplex scanning, and the scan operator feeds the flagged pages back through the scanner to capture the back. Why this is a lousy solution: This adds labor cost and slows the scanning process, as the flags are removed and re-fed, thus adding even more cost.

2. The scanner can be set to duplex and capture both sides of every page. This requires a manual post-process requiring an operator to review every page and delete the blank pages. Why this is a lousy solution: Although some of the post-process can be sped up through technology, it adds labor cost. Since this can be a tedious task, it is subject to human error.

3. The capture software can be set to discard pages based on their size or other algorithms designed to determine if the page is actually blank. Why this is a lousy solution: The means by which the software decides is subjective and subject to the scanner settings, which can change over time. Every Service Bureau I have surveyed that uses this method sets an images size threshold of between 2,500 and 3,500 bytes. The problem is, in our studies, we have found content on pages as small as 800 bytes. So, although the blanks disappear, so does the content.

With any of these choices, the customer is getting a rotten deal.

“Great,” you say, “How am I going to deal with this little bombshell?” Easy, just ask a few questions. Ask your current, or prospective, vendor how they deal with those pesky blank pages in a partial duplex scan job. If they answer:

· “We handle it in prep,” then turn on your heels and get out of there as fast as you can. Or,

· “We do a manual post-process,” then run a little faster. Or,

· “We have the software delete based on file size,” then run the fastest.

The dirty little secret is out. So, what should you do now? Pose the question. Your vendor certainly isn’t going to bring it up, and it’s not going to be in your contract. Take comfort in knowing that VeBridge geeks have conquered the problem, our customers love it, and that’s no secret!

VeBridge adds another branch to its family tree

May 24th, 2010 by Elizabeth Lucas, VeBridge Vice President of Strategic Markets

Team VeBridge is growing by one — again.

We are excited to announce that Endy Gamboa is joining Team VeBridge. Endy brings to VeBridge 20 years of hardware and software sales experience in Alaska and Florida and will fill the role of Senior Account Executive. Welcome, Endy!

Here’s a little from the press release:

“Gamboa will focus on expanding VeBridge’s sales opportunities in OnBase software and services. A fully integrated enterprise content management (ECM) software suite, OnBase is utilized by more than 7,400 mid-tier and Global 2000 enterprises to capture, route, manage, share and archive high volumes of corporate information critical to business operations, audits and customer service.”

VeBridge Blog is proudly powered by WordPress
Joomla! Component integrated by 'corePHP'
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).

Email Us

Industries Served

Software