Friday, 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 29th. 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 15thwill 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.
Monday, 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.
Thursday, 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.
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO
Elizabeth Lucas
Like anyone else, Team VeBridge gets really excited when our family is promoted and grows.
We are excited to make two announcements. First, Director of Litigation Support Services Elizabeth Lucas is now Vice President of Strategic Markets. Congratulations, to Beth!
Our family has grown by one. We have added a new position to help serve our clients better. Bill McGrath will focus on service delivery as our Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Implementation Consultant. Welcome, Bill!
Here’s a little from the press release:
Lucas, formerly VeBridge Account Manager and a General Manager of Consulting and Education for Fortune 500 company ACS, brings more than 20 years of court-related consulting, business workflow, education and training experience to the position. She will manage marketing/sales initiatives and personnel. Lucas received her bachelor’s in History from Transylvania University (Lexington) and earned a master’s in Communications from the University of Kentucky.
McGrath brings more than 12 years of project management, implementation delivery, contract administration and consulting services to VeBridge. He is formerly a project manager responsible for implementations for Fortune 500 company ACS. McGrath will spearhead technical services in the ECM space. He received his bachelor’s from Transylvania University. In 2007, he earned his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute.
Friday, March 19th, 2010 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO
I was catching up on my reading this weekend when I happened across the February issue of Business Focus from Commerce Lexington . The cover boasted: “How do cities & businesses thrive in dire economic times? They get creative.”
If you haven’t read it yet, it’s announcing that Lexington will host the Creative Cities Summit from April 7-9 this year. Previously held in Detroit and St. Petersburg, Fla., it’s an international conference drawing speakers to discuss “savvy economic development.” Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear was quoted as saying: “The summit will provide an opportunity for collaborative brainstorming that will strengthen both cultural dynamics and offer economic solutions.”
That phrase “economic solutions” resonated with me, especially as Team VeBridge has been planning for the upcoming year in the face of some trying economic times here in the Bluegrass State. While some areas around the country are showing signs of rebounding from the latest economic crisis, our state government and our companies continue to broadcast woeful economic news.
In the face of businesses cutting back and losing revenue, friends and peers have asked me, “So, how’s business?” And interestingly enough, it’s in the tough times that demand for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions rise exponentially here at VeBridge. When companies are cutting, the paper shuffle they have to do doesn’t go away. Those companies have just as much paperwork with fewer resources to get it done.
That’s where ECM comes to the rescue. For those employees who are left with not enough resources to do the accounts payable paper shuffle or the human resources documents management, or the Manufacturing Safety Data Sheets compliance paperwork dance, an ECM system can streamline a company’s processes and its workflow. Shuffling paper is no longer necessary. An employees’ time is now driven by the workflow lever in the ECM system. There is no longer any worry about an employee’s silo. Anyone granted access can now review the documents associated with a company’s key knowledge.
And the best part? It doesn’t require capital expenditures. Organizations that opt for a hosted solution don’t have to shell out precious cash for new hardware, software and implementation services. They can simply pay as they go. And, at the same time, they are satisfying their disaster recovery and business continuity requirements. Talk about a strong ROI!
Along with all the creative thinking that will be arriving in our fair city in April, we’re also a creative solution. Consider it.
Thursday, February 11th, 2010 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO
Being a financial guy, I love auditors. I’ve lived through audits, and I live for the day when the bean counters walk in my door…NOT. Since I’ve been in the business of Enterprise Content Management (see the ECM blog for a definition), I tell my customers I can make their auditors disappear.
Here’s why I love my auditor (and please don’t let the sarcastic tone in any way distract you from my message):
They enjoy full-fare flights - to and fro - which gets billed to me.
They eat in the finest restaurants - which gets billed to me.
They stay at the nicest hotels - which gets billed to me.
They take over my conference room - for which I have paid.
They make spontaneous demands on my accounting staff, which is already overworked - for which I pay.
They leave my files in total disarray, and sometimes they mingle content between my folders - which I have to pay someone to clean up.
And then they drink all my coffee - for which I pay.
I’m not the exception. They treat all their clients the same. No longer. Here’s what happens when companies install ECM.
For the auditors who insist on having a handoff of information, clients have the auditors send them a list of accounts that they intend to examine. In less than 10 minutes, clients conduct a search, export the results, burn those results to a CD and ship that CD to their auditor’s office via FedEx.
That’s compared to: going to the files, pulling the files, dropping a “pulled” card into their filing cabinets to mark where the file goes and where it is, boxing up the files and setting them on a conference room table to await their auditor’s arrival.
The auditors everyone loves to miss the most are the ones that allow a company to set up a user ID for the auditors to use remotely. The auditor then can access whatever records they need from the comfort of their own offices. If that strikes fear in your heart, let me just say, the document management systems we offer can limit an auditor’s access to documents. An auditor will only be able to view documents their client allows them to view. And then - on a daily basis - our customer’s document management system can email a report of the documents the auditor viewed, what the auditor printed, and how long the auditor was in the system.
Our clients have now eliminated any contact with their auditor, well, at least until they receive any follow-up questions.
Thursday, January 28th, 2010 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO
These are just a few of the PepsiCo's products in its vast trunk of products. A judge recently handed a $1.26-billion judgment after PepsiCo's attorneys were a no-show in court. Attorneys didn't know to show for the court appearance because a document notifying the titan of the suit's filing was lost. The document would not have been lost had the juggernaut installed an Enterprise Content Management system.
There are so many ways I can begin this blog.
A: Save $1.26 billion in business today.
B: $1.26 billion, Pepsi and the lost paper – what they have in common.
C: An ROI of 1,260,000,000%!
In this economy when businesses around the world are trying to hold on to their bottom line and are faced with laying off employees, how would you like to learn there’s been a $1.26 BILLION-dollar judgment against you, and you didn’t even show up in court to defend yourself?
That’s exactly what happened to Pepsi. We’re not talking about your local bottler or distribution center. We’re talking Pepsi Corporate – the owners of grocery giants like Tropicana, Frito-Lay, Gatorade and Quaker.
So here’s the skinny. Charles Joyce and James Voigt filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo, Inc. in April of 2009 alleging that the conglomerate had stolen their intellectual property – their idea of bottling and selling purified water. The alleged “theft” happened after a conversation occurred during discussions dating back to 1981. A letter notifying the soft drink titan of the suit was delivered to PepsiCo’s law department on Sept. 15.
Once routed to the corporate law office, a funny thing happened. (It was NOT funny “ha ha.”)
A PepsiCo employee put the letter aside to prepare for a board meeting. That critical piece of paper was never forwarded for action. I have no idea what happened to that critical correspondence. What I do know, though, is that PepsiCo attorneys were a no-show for the Oct. 5 court appearance. The Wisconsin judge banged his gavel resulting in a $1.26 billion default judgment.
What a pickle. Imagine how much cheaper it would have been if Pepsi had set up a workflow enabled ECM system. This is my ending to this story.
That document would have been scanned at the mail room or by someone with whom Pepsi contracts. The document preparation team would have opened the mail, scanned it into the system and indexed it as a legal notice. The letter would have entered a workflow, which would have routed it to the appropriate person or pool of people. If someone had not taken action within the required timeframe, notices would have been sent to other people who then would have intervened to make sure this letter did NOT fall through the cracks.
With my ending, PepsiCo could have saved itself a mint.
Well, gotta run, I’m gearing up for some cold calls into PepsiCo. I have an ROI I’d like to share with them.
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO
As disaster aid workers try to land on Haitian airstrips covered in rubble, and as international aid tries to figure out the best approach to getting aid to the disaster-stricken country, the world is mired in disaster and catastrophe. As we have watched, we also wonder. An article about Tulane University and the effects it felt from Hurricane Katrina, which was the sixth strongest hurricane on record, popped up in a Google search in one of our wondering moments.
The article was written on Aug. 5, 2009, significantly after the initial August 2005 hurricane. Tulane University, located in New Orleans, had closed only once before in its 170-year history, and that was during the Civil War. Before Katrina, the university was imaging all its files for “tactical business use,” as the article will state, but each department or college was left to decide its own fate for its own internal and student documents.
No longer. After Katrina, the thought of digitizing documents drastically changed. The university put an Enterprise Content Management System into place across the entire university. The barriers to digitizing records broke in the face of the disaster that faced the entire city and this University.
The article demonstrates how disaster can affect institutional thinking.
Here is an excerpt of the article. The link is below.
Enterprise content management a player in disaster recovery program
By Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer
05 Aug 2009 | SearchCIO-Midmarket.com
“For all the talk about living in a digital age, paper content, from account invoices and HR records to intellectual property, still fuels the business processes of many organizations, even those with sophisticated IT systems. But quick recovery of paper content — a fragile medium in fire and flood — is often an afterthought in disaster recovery and business continuity planning. An enterprise content management system, the modern-day descendant of tactical document imaging tools, can act as a safety net in a disaster and even play a strategic role in a disaster recovery program…”
Click here to go to the article.
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO
No, it’s not a radio station, but stay tuned.
Don’t you hate sales people who think their job is to “sell?” You know you’ve got one within minutes of their mouths starting to move. The biggest hint is that there are no question marks. There’s just techno-babble. I admit that most of my visits with sales people last under five minutes. I just don’t have the patience.
I think the root of it is that they want to impress me with their product knowledge. Maybe it’s just an ego thing.
It takes a special, egoless sales rep to get me excited. They have that strange combination of industry knowledge and the ability to act as if this is the first time they’ve heard my problems. They spend 10% of our time together asking questions, and I spend the rest of the time answering. They skillfully extract the problems I’m having, even those hidden from myself.
My theory is that they can do this because they employ WIIFM. (The “What’s in it for me” tool.) What differentiates them from the losers is that the “me” in their quest isn’t THEM! It’s ME. How else could they ask the questions they ask? How else could they find the pithy truth that will drive me to spend money to solve a problem? They can do these things because, before they even walk through my door, they have put themselves in my shoes and thought about the investment of my time I’m about to make in them. And they wonder to themselves, “If I was him, what would be in this for me?” And, presto, they are able to drive a powerful problem-solving session rather than a feature recital.
I admire people who show their respect for me by asking WIIFM. I model my behavior after these WIIFM practitioners. At VeBridge, we apply WIIFM at our sales meetings, when we are planning kickoffs, and any time we are contemplating a meeting with a prospect or client. It makes our job easier. The people with whom we meet sense our respect for them and their time. What’s even better is that they tell us their problems. We then make intelligent recommendations to them about the best product for their organization to solve their document management problems.
The bottom line – it’s so much easier for us to solve their problems if we know what they are and if we understand their WIIFM.
Friday, January 8th, 2010 by Paul Engel, VeBridge President and CEO
You know those moments. You’re at a party, you’ve just met someone, and they’re trying to explain what they do in their 30-second elevator speech. Somewhere in their explanation, they get lost in their own jargon, their own language, their own alphabet soup – acronyms for their programs. Then you start looking around the room trying to figure out who else you want to speak to or meet.
When team VeBridge talks to people with a problem we are trying to solve, we make sure we don’t get lost in the language of document management, enterprise content management systems, imaging services, litigation support and electronic document discovery. When you’ve been doing this as long as we have, your everyday language changes as your brain starts to adopt the words you use as the norm. Finally, you are talking a lingo that only you understand. The listener is not nodding their head because they agree, they just don’t want to hurt your feelings. To successfully communicate, we know that we have to painting a picture in terms that lay people can understand. It’s not always as easy as it looks.
So, when we find others within our industry that find a good way to communicate our passion and deliver that “aha” moment, we feel obliged to pass it along.
Hyland Software, one of our partners, has a great video that helps explain that dragon-of-a-phrase – Enterprise Content Management. It gave us a good chuckle. Enjoy!
